10 films you love that are rarely mentioned

great films,

First titles that come immediately to mind happen to uniformly be of the sixties:

Strangers When We Meet (1960)
Look In Any Window (1961)
Le Petit Soldat (1961)
Two For The Seesaw (1962)
Carnival Of Souls (1962)
Les Carabiners (1963)
Lilith (1964)
The Immortal Story (1968)

And the rest:

Masked And Anonymous (2003)
The Baxter (2005)

And must not pass up an opportunity to promote Wanda (1970), of course.

@Ruby
Glad to hear a reliable endorsement of *The President’s Analyst". I might finally pull the trigger on watching that one then.

Without You I’m Nothing (1990, John Boskovich)
The Hospital (1971, Arthur Hiller)
The Claim (2000, Michael Winterbottom)
Towelhead (2007, Alan Ball)
Bitter Moon (1992, Roman Polanski)
Ritual (2000, Hideaki Anno)
Strange Days (1995, Kathryn Bigelow)
Water Lilies (2007, Céline Sciamma)
Talk Radio (1988, Oliver Stone)
Heartless (2009, Philip Ridley)

“The Baxter (2005)”

Wait, is that the romantic comedy about the guy who is always left at the alter in romantic comedies?

That movie was surprisingly good.

Also, made me an interesting friend…

—PolarisDiB

“Interesting friend,” eh? (heh)

And yes, it is. I can only defend it so much as it’s nothing too exceptional in any wide sense—I simply have endless adoration for it—particularly due to being a longtime fan of the work of those actors/writers(i.e. the guys that make up the Stella trio, were also responsible for Wet Hot American Summer and so on).

Oh, and

Which I can’t argue with…

Can’t believe I forgot Kicking and Screaming (1995)….

Here are 10 more that haven’t been mentioned yet:

Lord Love a Duck (1966)
Sunday (1997)
Daughters of Darkness (1971)
Who Am I This Time? (American Playhouse, 1982)
Human Resources (1999)
Miami Blues (1990)
A Scene at the Sea (1991)
Innocence (1997)
Awakenings (1990)
Ghosts (2006)

There are truly too many negleted films, just mention few of them…

Två människor (1945)
House of Strangers (1949)
City That Never Sleeps (1953)
The Graceful Brute (1962)
Cathy Come Home (1966)
La Religieuse (1966)
Minnie and Moskowitz (1971)
The Boxer (1977)
Ma saison préférée (1993)
Tout est pardonné (2007)

Nice topic

Obscure or despised?

I’ll try to do a combination of the two:

Obsdure:

Death of a Bureaucrat (1966)
The Staircase (2004)
Culloden (1964)
Surviving Desire (1993)
Fighting Elegy (1966)
Reconstruction (1968)

Despised:

Ernest Goes to Jail (1990)
The Singing Detective (2003)
No Such Thing (2001)
The Ladykillers (2004)

Heh I kinda like those early Ernest movies. Anyone remember the Ernest show that used to play after Pee-wee’s Playhouse on CBS? It was often really bizarre. Kind of a proto kid’s version of Tim and Eric.

These are great films that I recommend in their top 10 any day

Los Olvidados – Luis Buñuel (1950)
Sawdust and Tinsel – Ingmar Bergman (1953)
Divorce Italian Style – Pietro Germi (1962)
La Belle Noiseuse – Jacques Rivette (1991)
Spoorloos (The Vanishing) – George Sluizer (1988)
Touchez Pas au Grisbi (Hands Off the Loot) – Jacques Becker (1954)
Ukigusa (Floating Weeds) – Yasujirō Ozu (1959)
Gertrud – Carl Theodor Dreyer (1965)
Lancelot of the Lake – Robert Bresson (1974)
Spring in a Small Town – Fei Mu (1949)

Great topic.

Off the top of my head, chronologically:

Outcast of the Islands (Reed)
Miracle in Milan (De Sica)
The Terror (Corman)
Ride in the Whirlwind (Hellman)
The Shooting (Hellman)
Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (Lucas)
Finian’s Rainbow (Coppola)
Grand Theft Auto (Howard)
The Mosquito Coast (Weir)
CQ (R. Coppola)

Hon. mention: The Endless Summer (Brown)

My first five…

Kansas City Confidential (Karlson)
Privilege (Watkins)
Billion Dollar Brain (Russell)
Phase 4 (Bass)
The Cars That Ate Paris (Weir)

Five more…

Winchester ’73 (A. Mann)
The FBI Story (LeRoy)
That Man From Rio (de Broca)
The Jokers (Winner)
The Keep (M. Mann)

Yol – Yılmaz Güney
The Horse Thief – Tian Zhuangzhuang
Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul – Nacer Khemir
The Last Wave – Peter Weir
Closely Watched Trains – Jiří Menzel
Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion –Elio Petri
Léolo – Jean-Claude Lauzon
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Philip Kaufman
Marat/Sade – Peter Brook
Ruling Class – Peter Medak

Not all ‘obscure’, but just a few of my own favorites that need some more respect in these parts…

Smoke (Wayne Wang & Paul Auster, 1995)
Goin’ Down the Road (Donald Shebib, 1970)
Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road (Bob Gale, 2002)
Meantime (Mike Leigh, 1984)
Mindwalk (Bernt Amadeus Capra, 1990)

Dogville (2003)
Afterschool (2008)
Weekend (2011)
Mouchette (1967)
Love Is the Devil (1998)
Carnage (2011)
Funny Games (1997)
Salo (1975)
A Single Man (2009)
Never Let Me Go (2010)

Dan O’Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead (1985) is absolutely genius in every single way.

I’ll think up nine more later.

Barbarella
Braindead ( slowly fading into obscurity )
The Proposition
They Came from Within ( Cronenberg )
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Nomads
Wild Zero
THX1138
Cronos
The Big Sleep

Isao Takahata’s Only Yesterday (1991) is another one, a masterpiece in my opinion, and one of my favorite animated films of all time. I think the real reason this film is rarely mentioned, though, is because the corporate fuckfaces over at Disney who own all the Studio Ghibli films have yet to release the picture on DVD. I’m sure they think that a Japanese anime aimed at adult females would be a hard sell in America, and I can’t say that I disagree with them, but so what? I want a damn copy of Only Yesterday, even if I’m the only one who buys it. I shoulda recorded the film years ago when Turner Classic Movies did a salute to Studio Ghibli…

^Quality post mov mon, I’ve never even heard of that film before. The studio Ghibli / Disney partnership is really full of cons. I hate the fact that Disney / Buena Vista mangled the U.S. release of Nausicaä to make it more kid friendly.

Rod, if you’re interested, and don’t mind watching a film online, here is Only Yesterday with English subtitles: http://www.kumby.com/omohide-poro-poro/

It might not compare to seeing the film in theatres or on DVD, but it beats never getting to appreciate the film at all. I hope you give it a chance, and enjoy it as much as I did.

@ Dave
Good one for Black Dahlia!

@ Jack Lineman
It’s nice to see another appreciation of Ruggles of Red Gap, quite an over looked work.

I would say overall, it seems to me that these films are not rarely mentioned, and I’m wondering what this definition implies. It does seem that 90% films that I’ve seen listed I would consider to be quite visible to those whom are “cineastes,” through festivals, periodicals (online, or printed), retrospectives and dominant forms of distribution. Although if the concept behind this forum is to mention works for those whom are not cineastes, this makes sense -although if this is so, what is the objective of these lists if it’s on this site? I’m curious as to the context before really mentioning ten films.

Sundays and Cybele-Serge Bourguignon-1962
The One-Armed Swordsman and Return of the One-Armed Swordsman-Chang Cheh-1967/1969
Sawdust and Tinsel-Ingmar Bergman-1953
Chicken Heart-Hiroshi Shimizu-2002
High Art-Lisa Cholodenko-1998
Lord Love a Duck-George Axelrod-1968
Martin-George Romero-1978
Satyricon-Federico Fellini-1969
Seconds-John Frankenheimer-1966

Huh, lots of stuff from the ’60s now that I look it over.

Mov Mon, Thanks a lot. I’ll check it out.

When the Clouds Roll By (1919)—Victor Fleming
The Asthenic Syndrome (1990)—Kira Muratova
Wisconsin Death Trip (1999)—James Marsh
Sadie Thompson (1928)—Raoul Walsh
Verboten! (1959)—Sam Fuller
The Book of Life (1998)—Hal Hartley
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (2007)—John Gianvito
Jesus’ Son (1999)—Alison Maclean
Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine (2000)—Bahman Farmanara
Lord Love a Duck (1966)—George Axelrod

I found the name of so many great films here!!!

The Desolute Beach (Tapan Sinha, India 1963)
Autumn Days (Roberto Gavaldón, Mexico 1963)
Brick and Mirror (Ebrahim Golestan, Iran 1965)
Valparaíso My Love (Aldo Francia, Chile 1969)
Grabbe´s Last Summer (Sohrab Shahid Saless, Germany 1980)
Kuei-Mei, a Woman (Chang Yi, Taiwan 1986)
The Mouth of the Wolf (Francisco Lombardi, Peru 1988)
The Travelling Circus (Việt Linh, Vietnam 1988)
Suddenly, One Day (Mrinal Sen, India 1989)
Travellers (Bahram Beizai, Iran 1992)

1. Every Young Man (Pavel Juracek)
2. Between Marx and the Naked Woman (Camilo Luzuriaga)
3. Postman (He Jianjun)
4. L’Itinéraire de Jean Bricard (Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub)
5. Garrincha: Hero of the Jungle (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade)
6. Walkover (Jerzy Skolimowski)
7. Eroica (Andrzej Munk)
8. Marathon (Amir Naderi)
9. The Days (Wang Xiaoshuai)
10. Siddeshwari (Mani Kaul)