Any obscure, weird, underground, low budget, independent, mainstream movies that you would like to recommend? Post em here.
Last edited:
Movie(s) You Recommend
- Thread starter PunkNinja
- Start date
Any obscure, weird, underground, low budget, independent, mainstream movies that you would like to recommend? Post em here.
Gozu (2003) - One of Takashi Miike's weirdest film.
Laserblast (1978) - Incredible Hulk plays laser tag with aliens.
I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) - Experience Beatlemania in your living room.
Visitor Q (2001) - Takashi Miike's wholesome classic family film.
Jakob the Liar (1999) - Good Morning, Vietnam goes to 1944 Poland. Robin Williams' take on the 1975 classic film.
Top Secret! (1984) - Jim Morrison plays Elvis. The "cow scene" alone is worth the price of admission.
Just Watched ''The Drop'' with Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini and I really enjoyed it, worth a watch
The Drop
The Drop
(1993) Hilarious mockmentary about the making of a low budget biblical film. It really IS for film what SPINAL TAP was to music. Moses coming down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments & a Six-Pack of Coke for product placement? Oh My God! (Also Andy Dick's Abel is killed by Lou Ferrigno's Cain!!)
(1992) Former actor Keith Gordon (Christine, Back to School) directed his second feature and killed it. Shot by Indie DP legend Tom Richmond, this stars Ethan Hawke & Gary Sinese (among other up & comers) as soldiers holed up in a chalet in the Ardennes forest on Christmas Eve WWII, where they forge an uneasy truce with the (unseen) enemy for the holiday. Atmospheric, haunting. Great music by Mark Isham.
(2010) Tyler Labine & Alan Tudyk are hilarious in this reverse Friday the 13th, where they are the innocents, and the kids are (accidentally) the killers killing themselves! Alan Tudyk was the real comic surprise of A KNIGHTS TALE, and this cements him as comedy gold. They say there will be a sequel. Man, I hope so!
(2012) This came out of nowhere to kick my ass! The first 5 minutes are more original than most movies! And you never knew where the hell it was going! For hardcore film fans, an unpredictable story like this is a gift (it mostly does not play the cliches and roadmaps you are used to). Paul Giamatti's character's fate- if you say you saw it coming you are a liar! A great underseen gem. Backhanded dry humor that I love.
Seriously bummed the sequel it sets up won't happen.
(I feel like it's BUCKAROO BANZAI all over again.)
(1988) & (1986) Two of the greatest concert films of two of the most visual musical artists ever. The closest you will ever get to seeing what they were like in their 100% prime.
Both films right up there with STOP MAKING SENSE.
SADLY, neither has ever been released on DVD or Bluray.
(1991) I've called Lars Von Trier a narcissistic wank. And I still think he is. But before he started believing his own hype, he made a great great movie. Much like Coppola's BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, he threw every cinema trick in the book into this film- reverse action, rear & front projection, different film stocks, forced perspective, etc. It's far from a perfect narrative- but the structure of living through a stylized WWII dreamscape through hypnosis is a wild one that has to be appreciated. Visually and musically an achievement. Too bad the director of this film became, well...a wank.
Last edited:
(1990) William Peter Blatty's movie of his novel LEGION is fantastic.
Atmospheric and intellectual horror.(though you will jump!).
Famously tampered with by the studio, 90% of what he was attempting remains and is glorious.
I am not joking when I say that it is criminal that Brad Dourif was not up
for an Academy Award for this.
If you can get your hands on the FanEdit version, do so. Amazing sound design too.
(1986) My favorite Michael Mann film, hands down. This is the movie that, yes, introduced Hannibal. But more importantly, this is the movie that started the forensic investigator. (That's why it was poetic justice that William Peterson finally got his due with CSI! He started all this in '86!).
William Peterson kills it as Will Graham, putting himself in the mindset of the killer (knowing full-well he almost didn't make it back to sanity on his last case).
Amazing music and lighting, and very precise masterful use of widescreen framing by Mann.
The cast, top to bottom is perfection.
(1990) It kills me.
It physically hurts me that people don't know that Gary Oldman is an amazing comic actor.
I wish there were 5 sequels to this movie. I just want more of Tim Roth & Gary Oldman wandering the countryside playing word games written by Tom Stoppard. Best bit: throughout the movie Gary Oldman's character (you never sort out which is which) keeps anachronistically inventing
things like the paper airplane & The Whopper!
And of course Hamlet keeps wandering through to remind us we are watching bit characters from the larger play!
(2005) Neil Gaiman's longtime illustrator, Dave McKean, directs one of Gaiman's stories. This 'Alice in Wonderland'-esque film is so overloaded with imagination and one-of-a-kind visuals that you swear you've never seen anything like it (likely, you haven't). I don't know why this didn't connect with an audience, but its classic story of redemption through a journey in a fantastical world is universal to me. I think the visuals are stunning. And it's not kiddie stuff...those talking cats with human faces are scary and dangerous!!
(1988) Vincent Ward would go on to direct MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART, and WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.
He even wrote one of the early scripts for ALIEN3 (the one with monks on a wooden planet).
But this was his first film.
A stunning film about the Black Plague decimating a villiage. A boy has a vision of salvation, so he and a group travel and make their way from 14th Century England (in stunning B&W)
to 20th Century New Zealand (in Color) in order to save their village.
(They don't know they have travelled through time, just to a strange place).
One of a kind film. Easy to see why people took notice of his talent.
(1995) One of my favorite movies. Wayne Wang's slice of Brooklyn written by Author Paul Auster. The lives of Brooklynites intersect at Harvey Keitel's smoke shop. William Hurt, Ashley Judd, Harold Perrineau, Forrest Whitaker and others live these intertwining tales that are engrossing and human. Has one of my favorite camera dolly creeps of all time (pushing home the point that 'the story is the thing'). A movie of the first order. Award caliber storytelling. Keitel & Hurt give an acting Masterclass. Quasi-sequel BLUE IN THE FACE came after, made up of extra plot that was left over. (And it's not bad. Different tone though.).
(1980) This is where Bob Zemeckis & Bob Gale honed their non-stop, go-for-broke pacing they would later use for the BACK TO THE FUTURE movies. Kurt Russell's second best comic role after BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA... (OVERBOARD is a great one, too). It's got every bit of the magic of the '80's comedies like BLUES BROTHERS & STRIPES. But once it gets going, it's like a freight train!
Last edited:
Can't count the number of times we've watched this when my kids were younger
it was a nice watch, I really liked Tom Hardy in it, he was very calm it gave a nice vibe to the movie...
@PunkNinja @Cobster and @C.C. 95 (don't know if you like independent movies) also a nice watch was I Origins ( Drama | Sci-Fi) Directed by Mike Cahill and stars Brit Marling (Also main Actress he used from the movie he Directed in 2011 called ''Another Earth'') both movies if I am not mistaken were picked up by a Production company at Sundance to have an official release....same as The Signal also think was picked up at Sundance.
Love Sundance/independant movies and I.Origins (Drama | Sci-Fi) this is one that I really enjoyed.
Last edited:
@Actarus ,
I'll add 'I,Origins' to the list.
I thought 'The Signal' had much going for it, but fell apart (logic-wise) and did not earn it's (very) 'Dark City' ending. (I believe in another thread I called it Grand Theft!!)
I am very keen to watch another sci-fi called 'Coherence' which I have heard good things about.
And curious about one from last year (I think) called 'Plus One'.
I love sci-fi (especially mind-benders) and am always on the lookout for the next great indie one full of new ideas.
Perfect example would be the great film:
Last edited:
@Actarus ,
I'll add 'I,Origins' to the list.
I thought 'The Signal' had much going for it, but fell apart (logic-wise) and did not earn it's (very) 'Dark City' ending. (I believe in another thread I called it Grand Theft!!)
I am very keen to watch another sci-fi called 'Coherence' which I have heard good things about.
And curious about one from last year (I think) called 'Plus One'.
I love sci-fi (especially mind-benders) and am always on the lookout for the next great indie one full of new ideaS.
I FEEL THE SAME WAY and really dig for those ones and when it's Sundance season I really look for titles...
I did enjoy the Signal for hat is was, but always in search for nice little ones...for Me Primer I could not get past the Kitchen scene at the beginning if I remember correctly, just thought the acting was so bad, it was painful
haha but love the little gems that we discover through it all...
'Upstream Color' is a trip. 'Predestination' is one of the ultimate mind-jobs. I really don't know whether to blow it up or praise it. I actually had to sit down, quietly, for 1/2 and hour to make sense of the whole thing. (It's one of those flicks where seemingly 'throw-away' scenes hold really important info in retrospect).I FEEL THE SAME WAY and really dig for those ones and when it's Sundance season I really look for titles...
I did enjoy the Signal for hat is was, but always in search for nice little ones...for Me Primer I could not get past the Kitchen scene at the beginning if I remember correctly, just thought the acting was so bad, it was painful
haha but love the little gems that we discover through it all...
Definitely one of those "WTF?!" Endings. (Which I generally like!)
But it has a kind of chicken and egg story. Snake eating its tail story. (They actually reference that in the movie).
I can't wait til more people have seen it so I can have conversations about it!!
If you like it or not, it will certainly start discussions!
SPOILER ALERT
@C.C. 95 I saw Predestination and yes the whole ending just make you rethink the whole movie got me so confused some scene made sense while other were just all mixed up. I enjoyed it for what it was but discussing theory about this movie is way outside of my scope of Understanding hahaha either I am dumb or the writer is all F***ed Up and it really wasn't written right to make all sense at the end. Actually when I watch movies I just like to excare and not think for once, to escape my reality but this movie just makes you think and wonder and I wish it would have made more sense without having to take the pen and paper and try to do a whole line history lol my friend to what like ''what the f***''...my friend tried to find explanation on google, as I was like I am done with this film but just didn't want to try to make sense of something I feel was made to NOT make sense.
I much preferred Nightcrawler
@C.C. 95 I saw Predestination and yes the whole ending just make you rethink the whole movie got me so confused some scene made sense while other were just all mixed up. I enjoyed it for what it was but discussing theory about this movie is way outside of my scope of Understanding hahaha either I am dumb or the writer is all F***ed Up and it really wasn't written right to make all sense at the end. Actually when I watch movies I just like to excare and not think for once, to escape my reality but this movie just makes you think and wonder and I wish it would have made more sense without having to take the pen and paper and try to do a whole line history lol my friend to what like ''what the f***''...my friend tried to find explanation on google, as I was like I am done with this film but just didn't want to try to make sense of something I feel was made to NOT make sense.
I much preferred Nightcrawler
@Actarus ,
O.k.! After watching PREDESTINATION, I had to look at all the reactions on the internet, to see what people thought the story really was. Here are a couple that I just loved. One loved it. One hated it. But both described the story similarly and kind of hilariously:
review one (loved it)-
Were else have you seen a movie which can lead to you having sex with you, giving birth to you, then bringing yourself back to 1963 to break up the relationship between yourself and yourself and taking yourself as a baby back in time and topping it all by killing yourself?
Review two (hated it)-
SPOILERS: . . . The plot of the movie is this: A man travels back in time, to recruit himself from the past, to time-travel further back into the past, to impregnate himself from the even further past (when he was a woman), so that he can steal the resulting freak-baby from himself, which grows up to be himself from the even further further past - growing up as a woman and eventually giving birth to himself by being impregnated by himself.
Yes. It's that f**king stupid, folks...
Funny!
My biggest problem was- logically, THERE WAS NO STARTING POINT (when did the whole cycle start??)!
Were else have you seen a movie which can lead to you having sex with you, giving birth to you, then bringing yourself back to 1963 to break up the relationship between yourself and yourself and taking yourself as a baby back in time and topping it all by killing yourself?
Review two (hated it)-
SPOILERS: . . . The plot of the movie is this: A man travels back in time, to recruit himself from the past, to time-travel further back into the past, to impregnate himself from the even further past (when he was a woman), so that he can steal the resulting freak-baby from himself, which grows up to be himself from the even further further past - growing up as a woman and eventually giving birth to himself by being impregnated by himself.
Yes. It's that f**king stupid, folks...
Funny!
My biggest problem was- logically, THERE WAS NO STARTING POINT (when did the whole cycle start??)!
I love the Speirig Brothers (Undead and Daybreakers are great), but I'll stick with Looper and Inception!!
@Actarus ,
O.k.! After watching PREDESTINATION, I had to look at all the reactions on the internet, to see what people thought the story really was. Here are a couple that I just loved. One loved it. One hated it. But both described the story similarly and kind of hilariously:
POSSIBLE SPOILER
Review two (hated it)-
Yes. It's that f**king stupid, folks...
Funny!
My biggest problem was- logically, THERE WAS NO STARTING POINT (when did the whole cycle start??)!
ALSO- this was marketed wrong. It was very much NOT the film I thought it was. It really didn't get to the 'meaty' part of the plot until 30 mins. in when it feels kinda 'too late'. A nice attempt.
I love the Speirig Brothers (Undead and Daybreakers are great), but I'll stick with Looper and Inception!!
haha loved the 2 reviews lol they are as F***@d up as the movie lollll loved them, they are as confusing as the movie and makes no more sense than the movie and I quote ''Yes. It's that f**king stupid, folks...'' lol something went wrong the movie in my opinion was not made right and I agree you are pulled in and when you are at that point it's kinda too late...I think they were trying to make a complex back in time story which I love time traveling movies but this was way over thought and not very well I may add... I don't know I smell a case of Heineken while they were writing the script.
and they did Inception ? This is just a mind boggling movie, can't believe after making such a well thought of sci-fi movie they came up with this.
Last edited:
@Actarus
No, they didn't do INCEPTION. I was just comparing. Similar mind jobs, but INCEPTION was better. As was LOOPER.
ah ok that makes more sense, how can they make a freakishly awesome sci-fi movie and such a bad one with predestination fioouuuuu but Inception was such a thrill ride !
@Actarus ,
O.k.! After watching PREDESTINATION, I had to look at all the reactions on the internet, to see what people thought the story really was. Here are a couple that I just loved. One loved it. One hated it. But both described the story similarly and kind of hilariously:
ALSO- this was marketed wrong. It was very much NOT the film I thought it was. It really didn't get to the 'meaty' part of the plot until 30 mins. in when it feels kinda 'too late'. A nice attempt.review one (loved it)-
Were else have you seen a movie which can lead to you having sex with you, giving birth to you, then bringing yourself back to 1963 to break up the relationship between yourself and yourself and taking yourself as a baby back in time and topping it all by killing yourself?
Review two (hated it)-
SPOILERS: . . . The plot of the movie is this: A man travels back in time, to recruit himself from the past, to time-travel further back into the past, to impregnate himself from the even further past (when he was a woman), so that he can steal the resulting freak-baby from himself, which grows up to be himself from the even further further past - growing up as a woman and eventually giving birth to himself by being impregnated by himself.
Yes. It's that f**king stupid, folks...
Funny!
My biggest problem was- logically, THERE WAS NO STARTING POINT (when did the whole cycle start??)!
I love the Speirig Brothers (Undead and Daybreakers are great), but I'll stick with Looper and Inception!!
I love time travel films.
@C.C. 95 @Actarus check out an excerpt from Michio Kaku's The Physics of Time Travel: Is it real, or is it fable?
"In H.G. Wells’ novel, The Time Machine, our protagonist jumped into a special chair with blinking lights, spun a few dials, and found himself catapulted several hundred thousand years into the future, where England has long disappeared and is now inhabited by strange creatures called the Morlocks and Eloi. That may have made great fiction, but physicists have always scoffed at the idea of time travel, considering it to be the realm of cranks, mystics, and charlatans, and with good reason.
However, rather remarkable advances in quantum gravity are reviving the theory; it has now become fair game for theoretical physicists writing in the pages of Physical Review magazine. One stubborn problem with time travel is that it is riddled with several types of paradoxes. For example, there is the paradox of the man with no parents, i.e. what happens when you go back in time and kill your parents before you are born? Question: if your parents died before you were born, then how could you have been born to kill them in the first place?
There is also the paradox of the man with no past. For example, let’s say that a young inventor is trying futilely to build a time machine in his garage. Suddenly, an elderly man appears from nowhere and gives the youth the secret of building a time machine. The young man then becomes enormously rich playing the stock market, race tracks, and sporting events because he knows the future. Then, as an old man, he decides to make his final trip back to the past and give the secret of time travel to his youthful self. Question: where did the idea of the time machine come from?
There is also the paradox of the man who is own mother (my apologies to Heinlein.) “Jane” is left at an orphanage as a foundling. When “Jane” is a teenager, she falls in love with a drifter, who abandons her but leaves her pregnant. Then disaster strikes. She almost dies giving birth to a baby girl, who is then mysteriously kidnapped. The doctors find that Jane is bleeding badly, but, oddly enough, has both sex organs. So, to save her life, the doctors convert “Jane” to “Jim.”
“Jim” subsequently becomes a roaring drunk, until he meets a friendly bartender (actually a time traveler in disguise) who wisks “Jim” back way into the past. “Jim” meets a beautiful teenage girl, accidentally gets her pregnant with a baby girl. Out of guilt, he kidnaps the baby girl and drops her off at the orphanage. Later, “Jim” joins the time travelers corps, leads a distinguished life, and has one last dream: to disguise himself as a bartender to meet a certain drunk named “Jim” in the past. Question: who is “Jane’s” mother, father, brother, sister, grand- father, grandmother, and grandchild?"
@PunkNinja
Yup! That last bit there was PREDESTINATION! (Based on Heinlein's ALL YOU ZOMBIES).
Yeah, I love the time travel stuff too. Definitely give NAVIGATOR (which I highlighted above) a look.
David Twohy's DISASTER IN TIME aka THE GRAND TOUR aka TIMESCAPE is interesting.
(David Twohy directed & wrote all the RIDDICK movies & also co-wrote THE FUGITIVE).
TIME CRIMES is good.
One of my favorites... and it IS a time travel movie, is DONNIE DARKO. (and NOT the director's cut. Director's cut was not an improvement in my opinion).
Also, of you can find it- a great little 1993 film called 12:01 directed by Jack Sholder (The Hidden)
starring Johnathan Silverman, Helen Slater, Martin Landau, and Jeremy Piven.
It is and adaptation of a 1990 Academy Award Nominated short of the same name about a man caught in a 'time bounce' who has to relive the same day over and over until he can fix the time bounce.
GROUNDHOG DAY, right? Well, kinda. They both came out it 1993, but 12:01 was based 1990 short that was based on a 1973 short story. The producers of 12:01 sued the producers of GROUNDHOG DAY for plagurism, and settled out of court, I think. It's a neat little film, and it was released on DVD- I know cuz I made a copy back in the day!
Check them out if you haven't seen 'em!
Yup! That last bit there was PREDESTINATION! (Based on Heinlein's ALL YOU ZOMBIES).
Yeah, I love the time travel stuff too. Definitely give NAVIGATOR (which I highlighted above) a look.
David Twohy's DISASTER IN TIME aka THE GRAND TOUR aka TIMESCAPE is interesting.
(David Twohy directed & wrote all the RIDDICK movies & also co-wrote THE FUGITIVE).
TIME CRIMES is good.
One of my favorites... and it IS a time travel movie, is DONNIE DARKO. (and NOT the director's cut. Director's cut was not an improvement in my opinion).
Also, of you can find it- a great little 1993 film called 12:01 directed by Jack Sholder (The Hidden)
starring Johnathan Silverman, Helen Slater, Martin Landau, and Jeremy Piven.
It is and adaptation of a 1990 Academy Award Nominated short of the same name about a man caught in a 'time bounce' who has to relive the same day over and over until he can fix the time bounce.
GROUNDHOG DAY, right? Well, kinda. They both came out it 1993, but 12:01 was based 1990 short that was based on a 1973 short story. The producers of 12:01 sued the producers of GROUNDHOG DAY for plagurism, and settled out of court, I think. It's a neat little film, and it was released on DVD- I know cuz I made a copy back in the day!
Check them out if you haven't seen 'em!
Last edited:
The Man from Earth (2007) -
Jesus is a Cro-Magnon.
The Langoliers (1995) - aka Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: The True Story.
2014's version of Stephen King went back in time to 1989 to write this sci-fi.
The Forgotten (2004) - God is an alien. We're just ants in a jar.
Pervert! (2005) - PEN!S serial killer. Nuff said.
Last edited:
Just found a clip of Michio Kaku talking about this paradox.@PunkNinja
Yup! That last bit there was PREDESTINATION! (Based on Heinlein's ALL YOU ZOMBIES).
Yeah, I love the time travel stuff too. Definitely give NAVIGATOR (which I highlighted above) a look.
David Twohy's DISASTER IN TIME aka THE GRAND TOUR aka TIMESCAPE is interesting.
(David Twohy directed & wrote all the RIDDICK movies & also co-wrote THE FUGITIVE).
TIME CRIMES is good.
One of my favorites... and it IS a time travel movie, is DONNIE DARKO. (and NOT the director's cut. Director's cut was not an improvement in my opinion).
Also, of you can find it- a great little 1993 film called 12:01 directed by Jack Sholder (The Hidden)
starring Johnathan Silverman, Helen Slater, Martin Landau, and Jeremy Piven.
It is and adaptation of a 1990 Academy Award Nominated short of the same name about a man caught in a 'time bounce' who has to relive the same day over and over until he can fix the time bounce.
GROUNDHOG DAY, right? Well, kinda. They both came out it 1993, but 12:01 was based 1990 short that was based on a 1973 short story. The producers of 12:01 sued the producers of GROUNDHOG DAY for plagurism, and settled out of court, I think. It's a neat little film, and it was released on DVD- I know cuz I made a copy back in the day!
Check them out if you haven't seen 'em!
View attachment 126522
