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

[Dementeleus]

25. Used Cars (1980)

written by: Bob Gale, Robert Zemeckis

directed by: Robert Zemeckis

starring: Kurt Russell, Jack Warden

 

Synopsis:

When the owner of a struggling used car lot is killed, it's up to the lot's hot-shot salesman to save the property from falling into the hands of the owner's ruthless brother and used-car rival.

 

In the late 1970s, Zemeckis and Gale were two young writers (both recently graduated from USC) breaking into the biz. They hooked up with Steven Spielberg and ended up writing 1941 for him. During that production, John Milius (who executive produced it) suggested an idea to them: a story about used car salesmen outside of Las Vegas. Zemeckis and Gale took Milius’ pitch and wrote USED CARS, a zany comedy that Milius and Spielberg ended up producing. 

 

The film is notorious for receiving some of the best test screening responses in Columbia Pictures’ history, yet it only did modest box-office. Zemeckis and Gale think the film’s own internal success worked against it: Columbia was so excited about the movie’s prospects that they moved its release date up a month. It debuted — with little advance marketing — one week after the juggernaut that turned out to be AIRPLANE.

 

Regardless of box-office, though, this was the movie that put Zemeckis and Gale on the map. Zemeckis nowadays is known for big VFX spectaculars and motion capture movies, but earlier in his career he was known for wacky, zany, mad-cap adventures: this, ROMANCING THE STONE, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?, and of course BACK TO THE FUTURE. Bob Gale collaborated with Zemeckis on most of his early pictures and — perhaps of interest to people here — also wrote comics for both Marvel and DC.

 

 

 

[baumer]

Seen Pharlap in elementary school. Good flick. Saw Return to Oz. Not quite my tempo. Used Cars of course I saw. Really funny film. The other two I've never heard of.

[The Stingray]

Once Upon a Time in China is great. I'd argue the second one, with Donnie Yen, is even better. Haven't seen the third.

Speaking of Yen, Ip Man is another excellent historical martial arts epic.
 

[Jake Gittes]

5 hours ago, Telemachos said:

26. Letter Never Sent (1962)

written by: Grigory Koltunov, Valeri Osipov (story by Valeri Osipov, Viktor Rozor)

directed by: Mikhail Kalatozov

starring: Tatyana Samoylova, Evgeniy Urbanskiy, Evgeniy Urbanskiy

 

Synopsis:

Four geologists search for diamonds in the wilderness of Siberia.

 

The plot of this is relatively slim (and more or less summed up by the synopsis). The only human complication is a love triangle. The real conflict is Man vs Nature, and here you could vaguely describe LETTER NEVER SENT as THE REVENANT without Inarritu-ism. The cinematography here is stunning. There’s a sequence — maybe ten or fifteen minutes long — where basically as far as I can tell the filmmakers decided to burn down a Siberian forest with the actors and camera crew stuck inside.

 

Highly recommended.

 

YAAAAAASSSSSSSS

[RascarCapat]

Omg Tele you managed to pull out a Zemeckis movie that I actually haven't seen...

 

I had to check Wikipedia and actually there are two other film from him I havn't yet seen but still !

I'll be sure to check that one out.

[Dementeleus]

24. How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989)

written and directed by: Bruce Robinson
starring: Richard E. Grant, Rachel Ward

 

Synopsis:

Dennis Dimbleby Bagley is a brilliant young advertising executive who can't come up with a slogan to sell a revolutionary new pimple cream. His obsessive worrying affects not only his relationship with his wife, his friends and his boss, but also his own body - graphically demonstrated when he grows a large stress-related boil on his shoulder.

 

Bruce Robinson started his career as an actor -- among other things, he appeared in Zeffirelli's ROMEO AND JULIET. But despite appearing in a few movies, he wasn't very successful at his acting career, and so he turned to screenwriting. This led him to meeting famed British producer David Puttnam (Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express, The Mission), who ended up producing his script THE KILLING FIELDS (which got Robinson an Oscar nomination).

 

But Robinson is probably most known for his bleak, bitter dark comedy WITHNAIL & I -- an autobiographical movie about two starving out-of-work actors wandering around England. He followed up that movie with HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING, another black comedy (albeit considerably more absurdist) about an advertising exec slowing going insane… or is he? Richard E. Grant (who also starred in WITHNAIL) plays the lead character, and it's a wonderful over-the-top performance. He's under deadline for writing some copy for an ad campaign for pimple cream, and he can't come up with anything. Under tremendous stress, he breaks out with a nasty boil on his neck… which starts talking to him and slowly taking over his personality.

 

Hilarious, and a savage commentary on consumerism, HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING is a must-see.

 

 

[Dementeleus]

23. Repo Man (1984)

written and directed by: Alex Cox
starring: Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez

 

Synopsis:
Young punk Otto becomes a repo man after helping to steal a car, and stumbles into a world of wackiness as a result.

 

Alex Cox never really broke into mainstream filmmaking, and I think he's perfectly satisfied with that; he would've clashed constantly with any sort of studio interference. He was very much a part of the punk movement that broke out in England and the US in the late 70s, and he brought that "fuck the establishment" mentality to his filmmaking. REPO MAN was filmed for a few hundred thousand, and never made much money at all during its initial theatrical release. But Cox had  managed to put together a tremendous soundtrack featuring a lot of punk bands who were blowing up at the time, and the movie soundtrack (featuring music by Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies) sold very well.

 

Due to its low budget, the filmmakers were forced to avoid using many major brands for commonly used items, but -- befitting their overall attitude towards corporatism and mainstream culture -- they put this limitation to sardonic use, labeling all products in the movie with the same bland blue text, using the most generic term possible: "beer", "food", "soda", etc.

 

This was Emilio Estevez's first movie, and it's one of his best.

 

 

[Dementeleus]

22. The Tall Guy (1989)

written by: Richard Curtis
directed by: Mel Smith
starring: Jeff Goldblum, Emma Thompson, Rowan Atkinson

 

Synopsis:
A struggling stage actor in London longs for a satisfying career and a satisfying love life. When he falls in love with a nurse, it seems he might have the opportunity for both… until complications ensue.

 

Jeff Goldblum and Emma Thompson at their most charming. Need I say more? Okay, it's written by Richard Curtis (Black Adder, Four Weddings and Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones's Diary). What are you waiting for? Go see it.

 

Goldblum is absolutely hilarious -- and Goldblum-y -- as Dexter King, an American actor living in London and slaving away with a crappy job as a supporting actor to a despicable comedian's variety show (Rowan Atkinson plays the comedian, as a nasty and evil version of himself, basically). As a romantic comedy, the movie hits all the various beats you'd expect, although frequently it manages to invert them or arrive at them through unexpected means. Plus it features some funny send-ups of musical theater (Goldblum's big break is a lead role in a Lloyd Webber-esque musical adaptation of THE ELEPHANT MAN, called (of course) ELEPHANT!). And it also has one of the funnier sex scenes ever shot.

 

@Dexter of Suburbia @MrPink @Jeff Goldblank

 

 

[RobinHood26]

4 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

24. The Tall Guy (1989)

 

 

 

 

Damn he looks good

[John Marston]

So 24 is a three way tie?

[Dementeleus]

11 minutes ago, John Marston said:

So 24 is a three way tie?

 

GODDAMMIT

 

 

[Jake Gittes]

Everything about Repo Man sounds right up my alley. I need to get to it already.

[Dementeleus]

21. The Wind and the Lion (1975)

written and directed by:  John Milius

starring:  Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith

 

Synopsis:

At the beginning of the 20th century an American woman is abducted in Morocco by Berbers. The attempts to free her range from diplomatic pressure to military intervention.

 

Another Milius movie and another splendid old-fashioned adventure, loosely based on real-life events. Sean Connery plays Raisuli, an Arab chieftain at odds with the Sultan of Morocco, who hopes to provoke a civil through an international incident when he kidnaps an American woman and her children. The Sultan is involved with multiple Western countries (Germany, France, Britain) and each is vying for influence in Morocco. Back in the United States, Theodore Roosevelt uses the incident in two ways: to drum up support for his re-election campaign and to demonstrate America’s new strength as a fledgling superpower.

 

This sounds rather dry, but it isn’t — all this is backdrop for spectacle and adventure. The film is pretty cheeky about its endorsement of militarism and foreign intervention (it’s worth remembering that the movie was made and released in the context of Vietnam), and some people have quibbled about the liberties taken with actual events. But Milius was always clear that he never intended this as strict docudrama: his inspiration were the boyhood stories of Rudyard Kipling and the like. He actually wanted to use Orson Welles to cameo as Charles Foster Kane (which shows how much fun he was having with the story, and also how he wasn’t intending it as historical fact), but ironically MGM was worried about being sued by RKO (who owned the rights to CITIZEN KANE), so Milius had to “settle” for using the real historical figure that Kane was based on, William Randolph Hurst.

 

Sean Connery as a Berber Arab? He’s awesome, obviously, as he always is, and if anyone gets caught up in using this as another example of Hollywood choosing to whitewash people of color, Milius wanted to cast Omar Sharif (and actually wrote the role with him in mind). When Sharif passed on the project, Milius had to turn to other options.

 

 

 

[baumer]

Repo Man is a good film and Alex Cox has done some good work.  

 

For someone as famous as John Milius is, I really have not seen a lot of his work.  Reading your list Tele, it just proves to me that I need to see a lot of movies.  I think half of your list I haven't seen and of those films, half I haven't even heard of.  

[Fancyarcher]

The Wind and The Lion's a great adventure film, even if Connery is technically miscast, but we accept it cause it's Connery. Goldsmith's score is especially great, which surprisingly received an Oscar nomination.

Edited June 21, 2016 by Daniel Dylan Davis

[Dementeleus]

20. Schizopolis (1996)

written and directed by: Steven Soderbergh

starring:  Steven Soderbergh, Betsy Brantley, David Jensen

 

Synopsis:

Fletcher Munson is a lethargic, passive worker for a Scientology-like self-help corporation called Eventualism. After the death of a colleague, he is promoted to the job of writing speeches for T. Azimuth Schwitters, the founder and head of the group. He uses this as an excuse to be emotionally and romantically distant from his wife, who, he discovers, is having an affair with his doppelganger, a dentist named Dr. Jeffrey Korchek. As Munson fumbles with the speech and Korchek becomes obsessed with a new patient, a psychotic exterminator named Elmo Oxygen goes around the town seducing lonely wives and taking photographs of his genitals.

 

That synopsis.   It’s accurate, but it also doesn’t tell you much. 

 

In the mid-90s, Soderbergh was feeling burnt out. He’d had a big success with SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE, but his follow-up, KAFKA, was a nightmare of a production where he struggled against the demands of working with heavy studio involvement. His film after that, KING OF THE HILL, flopped, and Soderbergh felt he was at a crossroads. He wondered whether he should drop out of the industry. He wondered if he really knew his craft.

 

So he decided to do everything you weren’t supposed to do. He self-financed a movie. He starred in it. He broke every cinematic rule he could think of. It was complete, pure, unadulterated experimentation. The result was SCHIZOPOLIS, which defies easy definition. It’s certainly rambling, and it’s certainly indulgent — in fact, that’s sort of the point. Enough of it works, IMO, that it’s not only funny, but it’s fascinating to look at as the result of a filmmaker forcibly re-inventing himself.

 

And that’s exactly what happened. Soderbergh came away from the project with a new sense of excitement and purpose, and promptly set out on what’s arguably the greatest creative stretch of his career: OUT OF SIGHT, THE LIMEY, ERIN BROCKOVICH, TRAFFIC, and OCEAN’S ELEVEN.

 

 

 

[RandomCat]

I've noticed a lot of Connery on this list.

[Dementeleus]

12 minutes ago, Daniel Dylan Davis said:

The Wind and The Lion's a great adventure film, even if Connery is technically miscast, but we accept it cause it's Connery. Goldsmith's score is especially great, which surprisingly received an Oscar nomination.

 

I forgot to mention the score! Thanks for bringing it up.  

[Fancyarcher]

6 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

I forgot to mention the score! Thanks for bringing it up.  

 

No problem, it was one of the most notable aspects of the film for me, and that's not a slight against the film. I especially love the love theme (no pun intended).

 

 

[Dementeleus]

19. Black Narcissus (1947)

written and directed by: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (from a novel by Rumer Godden)

starring: Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, Sabu, Jean Simmons

 

Synopsis:

After opening a convent in the Himalayas, five nuns encounter conflict and tension — both with the natives and also within their own group — as they attempt to adapt to their remote, exotic surroundings.

 

Okay, so I know this is pretty famous, but on the other hand, I bet only a few people here have seen it. I think I’m reasonably up to speed with older movies, but I confess the first I heard of it was when clips were shown in the 2009 Oscar Memorium for the famous cinematographer Jack Cardiff. I hadn’t heard of the movie (or him, frankly), but the images I saw blew me away.

 

Powell and Pressburger are a famous British writing/directing team: they’re probably best known for THE RED SHOES, and they also wrote and directed another excellent film worth seeking out (among others), THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP. They — working with Cardiff — were early innovators with Technicolor, and their films are lush with color as few films are. 

 

BLACK NARCISSUS is one of the most vivid examples of this. Almost every frame is stunning, not necessarily in the “epic” sense that we take for granted today, but painterly, using color and light to express emotions being felt by the characters. You can examine a still frame and notice color that isn’t there for logical reasons, but fits perfectly for emotional ones (tinges of violet and purple highlights as jealousy floods a person’s gaze). 

 

When you watch this movie, you realize that for all the amazing technical innovations that’ve happened in the last 20-30 years, our films are — for the most part — drabber and use less-interesting color palettes than they did 60-70 years ago.