Tele's List of 100 Lesser-Known or Under-Appreciated Films Everyone Should See (THE LIST IS COMPLETE! p26)

[RandomCat]

 That was Danny Trejo.

 

And Lin Shaye. 

[RobinHood26]

Not a great movie, but its a fun movie. Knows what it is.  Seeing the cast that young is awesome though

[JohnnyGossamer]

Long Goodbye, After Hours, Dead Again, Top Secret! and To Live And Die In LA would appear on my personal list of 50 films I've revisited most.

Edited June 16, 2016 by JohnnyGossamer

[Dementeleus]

34 minutes ago, Jay Hollywood said:

Not a great movie, but its a fun movie.

 

[Daxtreme]

Of course, the only movie I've seen in Tele's last 20 choices is a 1938 Russian propaganda film  

 

Oh dear. This thread is not good for my ego  

[Dementeleus]

45. The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming! (1966)

written by: William Rose (based on the novel by Nathaniel Benchley)

directed by: Norman Jewison

starring: Carl Reiner, Eve Marie Saint, Alan Arkin, Jonathan Winters

 

Synopsis: 

Without hostile intent, a Soviet sub runs aground off New England and sends a team ashore to the nearby village to search for a boat. When they’re discovered, many villagers freak out, suspecting this is the first wave of an invasion.

 

Made in the heart of the Cold War, this was one of the rare movies released by Hollywood that portrayed the Russians on-screen in a positive light. It seems very obvious now, but the simple act of showing regular Soviet seaman as normal people with similar hopes and desires as Americans (or anyone else, for that matter) was a bit of a seismic shift in the perceptions of the time. And, as it turned out, the movie was screened both in Washington D.C. and in the Kremlin.

 

But real-life geopolitics aside, this is a funny, humane fish-out-of-water comedy about misperceptions. Alan Arkin -- in his feature film debut -- shines as the leader of the Soviet shore team, struggling to get understood and not let things get out of hand. He is a delight, and so is the movie.

 

 

 

[Dementeleus]

44. The Ruling Class (1972)

written by: Peter Barnes (based on his play)

directed by: Peter Medak

starring: Peter O’Toole, Alistair Sim

 

Synopsis: 

A member of the House of Lords dies, leaving his estate to his son. Unfortunately, his son thinks he is Jesus Christ. The other, somewhat more respectable, members of their family plot to steal the estate from him. Murder and mayhem ensue.

 

A scathing, pitch-black comedy about the upper crust of British society—the landed aristocracy. The movie starts out on a light-hearted, silly note and gets progressively darker and nastier. Peter O’Toole is marvelous as Jack, the 14th Earl of Gurney, who’s completely insane and believes he’s Jesus Christ. (He has a full-sized cross installed in his main room where he can rest and relax… sans crucifixion, of course). Jack is in line to become a member of the House of Lords, but no one in high society could possibly accept anyone who thinks they’re Jesus, so the first order of business is getting Jack cured.

 

Complications ensue… let’s leave it at that. A must see, and it feels all the more daring now because most movies today choose not to attack esteemed institutions like organized religion and systems of government. Brilliant stuff.

 

 

[Jason]

2 hours ago, Daxtreme said:

Of course, the only movie I've seen in Tele's last 20 choices is a 1938 Russian propaganda film  

 

Oh dear. This thread is not good for my ego  

The only film I've seen on the entire list is Alexander Nevsky. Hope that makes you feel better.  

[Dementeleus]

43. Paris, Texas (1984)

written by: Sam Shepard, adapted by L.M. Kit Carson

directed by: Wim Wenders

starring: Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Natasja Kinski

 

Synopsis: 

A man wanders out of the desert after a four year absence. His brother finds him, and together they return to L.A. to reunite the man with his young son. Soon after, he and the boy set out to locate the mother of the child, who left shortly after the man disappeared.

 

A beautiful, haunting story about seeking redemption, the meaning of family, and what it means to be alone. It’s also a visual tribute to the open West of the United States, the start and odd beauty of the deserts, the little towns, of diners and motels and gas stations at night. Harry Dean Stanton delivers one of his best performances as Travis, the man of mystery who stumbles out of the desert after disappearing for four years. He’s reunited with his brother, and begins to start to put the pieces of his life back together… including his (now) eight-year-old son, whom he hadn’t seen since he vanished.

 

The cinematography by Robbie Muller and the score by Ry Cooder deserve special praise. This is a movie of quiet emotion and cumulative power. Outstanding.

 

 

 

[Dementeleus]

42. The Wages of Fear (1953)

written by: Henri-Georges Clouzot and Jerome Geronimi (based on the novel by Georges Arnaud)

directed by: Henri-Georges Clouzot

starring: Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Folco Lilli, Peter van Eyck

 

Synopsis: 

In a decrepit South American village, men are hired to transport an urgent nitroglycerine shipment without the equipment that would make it safe.

 

The setting is a small South American village, the sort of place men gather from all corners of the globe, ex-pats from many nations, all fleeing some aspect of their former lives and finally grinding to a half in the middle of nowhere without the ability to earn enough money to begin their travels again. But suddenly, there’s an opportunity: an oil rig is burning out of control, and the only way to get the fire out is to blow it up. So four men are hired to transport highly dangerous and unstable nitroglycerine — the only nearby supply of explosives — along dangerous, treacherous, and unpaved roads through the heart of the jungle. Two trucks are sent, because the slightest jolt could blow up the vehicle carrying the load. The odds of survival are low, but accordingly the pay is high. Four desperate men take on the mission, and as they drive deep into the wilderness, the situation gets more and more impossible.

 

This is an elegant and tense thriller, with sequences that’re still tense and nail-biting to this day.

 

 

 

[Dementeleus]

41. Animal Crackers (1930)

written by: George S. Kaufman & Morris Ryskind & Bert Kalmar & Harry Ruby (based on the play by Ryskind)

directed by: Victor Heerman

starring: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo Marx, Margaret Dumont

 

Synopsis: 

Mayhem and zaniness ensue when a valuable painting goes missing during a party in honor of famed African explorer Captain Spaulding.

 

The Marx Brothers began their careers in vaudeville and musical comedy, then moved on to Broadway, where they became a huge success, and eventually on to movies. There were originally five brothers who performed: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Gummo, but the core of their troupe were the classic three: Groucho, Harpo, and Chico. They were all talented musicians in their own right and each movie always featured them playing their signature instruments: Chico on the piano, Harpo on the, er, harp, and Groucho singing. 

 

The Marx Brothers specialized in absurdist, zany comedy: rapid verbal non-sequiturs combined with pratfalls, slapstick, and as much risqué humor as they could squeeze past the Hayes Code. They’ve alway been my favorite classic comedy team. ANIMAL CRACKERS is their second movie, and like their first (COCOANUTS), it's adapted from one of their extremely popular Broadway shows.

 

In ANIMAL CRACKERS, like any Marx Brothers movie, the plot is really just a framework for skits and pranks and gags. Here, Groucho plays Captain Spaulding, a legendary explorer returning from a voyage to Africa. A rich socialite (Margaret Dumont, who made a career out of playing the haughty straight woman constantly pranked by the Marx Brothers) throws a party in his honor, but a painting is stolen and the Marx Brothers must discover who took it.

 

The classic trailer (amazingly!) chooses only to show the brothers singing and performing, so here’s a clip of Groucho wooing Dumont:

 

 

 

[Dementeleus]

40. Topper (1937)

written by: Jack Jevne & Eric Hatch & Eddie Moran (based on the novel by Thorne Smith)

directed by: Normal Z. McLeod

starring: Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, Roland Young

 

Synopsis: 

A fun-loving couple, finding that they died and are now ghosts, decide to shake up the stuffy lifestyle of a friend of theirs.

 

A cheerful and lighthearted comedy featuring Cary Grant at his best. He and Constance Bennett are a couple who die in a car crash… but who promptly wake up to discover they’re now ghosts, trapped in a sort of purgatory: they were terribly irresponsible people, but they never did anything that good or bad. So they’re stuck, in between, until they can figure their way out. They decide their “good deed” will be to improve the life of one of their stuffy older friends, Mr. Topper.

 

TOPPER was a big hit in 1937, and it’s not hard to see why — it’s still very appealing today, nearly 80 years later.

 

 

 

[Dementeleus]

39. Re-Animator (1985)

written by: Dennis Paoli & William Norris & Stuart Gordon (based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft)

directed by: Stuart Gordon

starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton

 

Synopsis: 

A dedicated student at a medical college and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue when an odd new student arrives on campus.

 

Stuart Gordon went to college at the University of Wisconsin, but he wasn’t able to get into any film classes, so he ended up majoring in theater. He was always interested in pushing the limits of what was considered acceptable and ended up getting arrested on obscenity charges when he directed a crazy production of Peter Pan as a political satire. Dropping out of college, he formed a theater group in Chicago, and ended up launching David Mamet’s career when his group produced Mamet’s “Sexual Perversity in Chicago”.

 

In the 1980s, he struck upon the idea of making an independent movie. Research showed that the best way to turn a profit was to make a horror film cheaply, so he found an H.P. Lovecraft story in the public domain and adapted it. But true to Gordon’s nature, he wasn’t interested in doing a straight adaptation that sought only to scare. Like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, he melded the outrageously gory with wild slap-stick humor, and the result was RE-ANIMATOR, a movie that uses the classic horror trope of bringing the dead back to life as a metaphor for all sorts of organizational hypocrisy at universities. 

 

Gordon went on to a long career working mainly in the low-budget horror and crime genres, but he did have one odd outlier that was an unexpected success: he co-created the story of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS for Disney.

 

As a minor side note, Gordon gave me my first break in the industry by hiring me on as an intern for one of his features. Perhaps paradoxically for someone who focuses so much on the dark and horrific side of human nature, he’s a very sweet, kind and gentle man.

 

But anyway, RE-ANIMATOR. Laugh your ass off and get disgusted at the same time.

 

 

 

[Infernus]

Aha! I've heard of this one

[The Stingray]

Thief and Runaway Train are both excellent.

Paris, Texas is in my top 20 of all time. Such a beautiful movie.
 

[The Stingray]

18 hours ago, RandomJC said:

The Hidden seems like my kind of movie.

 

was that the FBI guy from Twin Peaks???

[The Stingray]

9 hours ago, Daniel Dylan Davis said:

Thief is such a cool movie. Dig that score by Tangerine Dream too.

 

Love it!
 

 

[ttr]

39. Re-Animator (1985)

written by: Dennis Paoli & William Norris & Stuart Gordon (based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft)

directed by: Stuart Gordon

starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton

 

Synopsis: 

A dedicated student at a medical college and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue when an odd new student arrives on campus.

 

Stuart Gordon went to college at the University of Wisconsin, but he wasn’t able to get into any film classes, so he ended up majoring in theater. He was always interested in pushing the limits of what was considered acceptable and ended up getting arrested on obscenity charges when he directed a crazy production of Peter Pan as a political satire. Dropping out of college, he formed a theater group in Chicago, and ended up launching David Mamet’s career when his group produced Mamet’s “Sexual Perversity in Chicago”.

 

In the 1980s, he struck upon the idea of making an independent movie. Research showed that the best way to turn a profit was to make a horror film cheaply, so he found an H.P. Lovecraft story in the public domain and adapted it. But true to Gordon’s nature, he wasn’t interested in doing a straight adaptation that sought only to scare. Like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, he melded the outrageously gory with wild slap-stick humor, and the result was RE-ANIMATOR, a movie that uses the classic horror trope of bringing the dead back to life as a metaphor for all sorts of organizational hypocrisy at universities. 

 

Gordon went on to a long career working mainly in the low-budget horror and crime genres, but he did have one odd outlier that was an unexpected success: he co-created the story of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS for Disney.

 

As a minor side note, Gordon gave me my first break in the industry by hiring me on as an intern for one of his features. Perhaps paradoxically for someone who focuses so much on the dark and horrific side of human nature, he’s a very sweet, kind and gentle man.

 

But anyway, RE-ANIMATOR. Laugh your ass off and get disgusted at the same time.

 

 

 

Looking at your choices, I hope you have Bad Taste here also, or is it too known?

[Porthos]

I have so much love for the Marx Brothers, you wouldn't believe.  Well, actually Tele probably would believe.   Too late at night for me to give a proper post about them, but one of the great things about their films is how well most of their skits still hold up today, decades later.  Even though they've been copied, referenced, and rehashed countless times, there's still something fresh and pure about them.  

 

Perhaps it's the timelessness of the "little guy versus society" at work.  Maybe it's how well the rest of the cast plays off against them (for instance, Margaret Dumont is criminally underrated as an actress and is absolutely a 'Marx Brother' as far as I am concerned).  Or maybe it's just because each of the Marx Brothers were just really good at what they did.  The Harpo-Chico double team was almost always a highlight, for instance. 

 

But in the end, it probably was the King of the One Liners himself (Groucho) that held it all together.  He was almost always at the center of the plot (or at least the instigator of most of the events of the plot).  That he consistantly knocked it out of the park shows, IMO, just how great he was.  That the rest of the Brothers (and, yes, that included Zeppo!*) also consistantly excelled is what keeps these films in the realm of classics to this day.  IMNSHO, of course.  

 

*  Being the 'Straight Man' is hard.  Being a Straight Man who shows that he is in on the joke and gives his own (very very dry) comedic takes about what is going on around him while staying in the role assigned is harder still.

Edited June 16, 2016 by Porthos

[4815162342]

6 hours ago, Telemachos said:

45. The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming! (1966)

written by: William Rose (based on the novel by Nathaniel Benchley)

directed by: Norman Jewison

starring: Carl Reiner, Eve Marie Saint, Alan Arkin, Jonathan Winters

 

Synopsis: 

Without hostile intent, a Soviet sub runs aground off New England and sends a team ashore to the nearby village to search for a boat. When they’re discovered, many villagers freak out, suspecting this is the first wave of an invasion.

 

Made in the heart of the Cold War, this was one of the rare movies released by Hollywood that portrayed the Russians on-screen in a positive light. It seems very obvious now, but the simple act of showing regular Soviet seaman as normal people with similar hopes and desires as Americans (or anyone else, for that matter) was a bit of a seismic shift in the perceptions of the time. And, as it turned out, the movie was screened both in Washington D.C. and in the Kremlin.

 

But real-life geopolitics aside, this is a funny, humane fish-out-of-water comedy about misperceptions. Alan Arkin -- in his feature film debut -- shines as the leader of the Soviet shore team, struggling to get understood and not let things get out of hand. He is a delight, and so is the movie.

 

 

 

 

My man.