Movies You Love That Most People Have Never Heard Of — Page 3

I think nearly all of the films in the Wes Anderson canon are known, whether celebrated or despised (to me his weaker stuff is definitely working with Noah Baumbach).

I enjoyed The Upside of Anger. Probably one of the few times in recent memory where Kevin Costner's jock ethos is perfectly acceptable but the film belongs to Joan Allen.

In Bruges in one of my favorite films in recent memory.

Others that popped up in my mind the last couple of days:

Out of the Blue- Probably Dennis Hopper's best film as a director

Films by Kenji Mizoguchi such as Ugetsu and Sansho the Baliff. Classic foreign films in general are just not well-known but Mizoguchi should be more well-known.

The Miracle at Morgan's Creek- People know Preston Sturges films but for some reason this delightful film is not nearly talked about as it should.

Clean, Shaven- A film about a schizophrenic that has body horror that rivals just about anything Cronenberg has put out.

Withnail & I- Richard E. Grant's performance, much like Colin Farrell in In Bruges, is brilliant as both heartbreaking and hysterical.

Grave of the Fireflies- If you think Disney animated films get dark....

Updated On: 8/1/12 at 10:05 PM

Gaveston, it's just a random link from googling the title, but it seems to be a popular poster as it came up on a number of poster shops' sites.

Well, 1980 was still the tail-end of the 1970s, culturally speaking, so maybe that logo was allowed in U.S. newspapers. I doubt it would today.

I only saw Taxi zum Klo this past month, after reading about it for a while. Terrific film and a nice change from the majority of gay themed films I seem to run across lately.

Nice to see Grave of the Fireflies mentioned. The Studio Ghibli animated films not done by Miyazaki tend to get forgotten over here (Grave's director, Takahata's amazing animated drama Only Yesterday isn't even available in Region 1 despite Disney owning the rights, probably due to them not knowing how to market an adult, non fantasy, non pornographic, anime). Oddly it's Grave, and another animated film, Plague Dogs that are the only two films to *always* cause me to cry at the ending, no matter how many times I've seen them.

I'll go ahead and bring up two films by the great Bill Forsyth--

LOCAL HERO and HOUSEKEEPING. Two marvelous little films that seem to have fallen off the map. LOCAL HERO centers on an oil man who is sent to a small Scottish village in order to buy it up for the huge oil company he works for. He finds himself, shall we say, changed by the experience. That sounds rather grim, doesn't it -- don't worry, the film is a comedy, very very low key and genuinely magical.

HOUSKEEPING only just got a DVD release from Warner Archive. It stars Christine Lahti as Sylvie, a woman who arrives in a small town in the Pacific Northwest to take care of her orphaned nieces. Sylvie, though, is a rather unconventional person, and her nieces are rather perplexed. Another of Forsyth's quiet masterworks, HOUSKEEPING is one of the most unfairly neglected films of the last 30 years, it deserves to be better known.

See these films. See them now. Drop everything.

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@Roscoe - You should check out Marilynne Robinson's novel. Gorgeous.

INSERTS is a fantastic movie that I never hear about.

@aaron -- I read the novel after seeing the film all those years ago and like it very much indeed. I think the film does the book justice for the most part -- if Forsyth had gotten a professional actress for the role of Ruth he might have been able to go a bit deeper than he does. That said, the film gets more right than otherwise.

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I adore LOCAL HERO and I haven't seen it in ages!

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Less unknown than forgotten, but RACHEL GETTING MARRIED, WAITRESS, and AN EDUCATION.

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Three great summer movies:
A Summer Story
with the wonderful Imogen Stubbs, set in early 20th century England, one of the greatest tear jerkers of all time.

Summer Lovers
set on a Greak isle, early Daryl Hannah, but Valerie Quenneser and Peter Galagher steal the show.

Tempest
Also set on a Greek isle, and a take on the Shakspeare play. Early Molly Ringwald, also Susan Sarandon, John Casavetes, and Raul Julia who delivers the unforgetable line "and my charisma is growing like a mountain flower in springtime".

The Last Days of Disco

Talk To Her (original Spanish title, Habla Con Ella)

It is Pedro Almodovar's finest work to date.

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And just to be clear, because of how my post came out, the giant vagina was a reference to Talk to Her, not Julie Christie or The Go-Between... LOL