Here's a list for those of you on the hunt. A list of "overlooked" movies. By that I mean that you won't the movies on this list on other best-of lists. Some of these you might've heard of, others perhaps not, but they are all great. Of course they are great according to my standards, which are nebulous even to me. Nevertheless I hope this is helpful. In no particular order ...
1.
The Fall (2006). A little girl with a broken arm makes friends with an injured stuntman in an early 20th Century hospital. He tells her stories. I won't tell you more, except that I think this is one of the ten best movies yet made. Visually rich, with symbols and themes combining and recombining in every frame --- watch it and tell me how many "falls" there are in the movie, and how they all connect. Also contains one of the best child actor performances.
2.
Babe: Pig in the City (1996). I won't hide it; this is is my favorite movie. Entertaining, sad, funny, profound, with a lot of anthropomorphisms. Gene Siskel picked this as his Movie of the Year in 1996. It's not really a kid's movie, but not many adults seek out talking animal movies, so this one's been forgotten.
3.
Jean de Florette / Manon of the Spring (1986). Two movies that are really one long one split into two. Here two French farmers conspire to deny their neighbor his water supply ... and that's the plot summed up. Yep, that's right. Sometimes the simplest premises are the best.
4.
Local Hero (1983). Imagine a movie plot where a giant oil company wants to buy up a small town. What'll happen? Well, everything that you think would happen does not in this movie. Warning: contains richly developed, realistic characters. A movie that's human through and through.
5.
The Mosquito Coast (1986). An eccentric genius, angry at the moral decline of America, moves his family to a Central American jungle. Sort of Robinson Crusoe meets Frankenstein meets Henry Ford and Ben Franklin.
6.
The Ladykillers (1955). All of the Alec Guinness, 1950s Ealing Studio comedies are worth watching, including
Kinds Hearts and Coronets and
The Lavender Hill Mob. But
The Ladykillers is my favorite. A group of thieves use an elderly lady's house as a base to plan a major theft. Guinness is great, as usual, with Peter Sellers, but the star is the elderly woman, who gives one of the greatest natural performances ever.
7.
Bringing Up Baby (1938). The best screwball comedy. (With apologizes to all of Preston Sturges' efforts.)
8.
The Dresser (1983). An intense drama about a London acting company that puts on a show of
King Lear during the London blitz. Knowing King Lear well will greatly enhance your viewing experience.
9.
Ace in the Hole (1951). Billy Wilder's overlooked gem (see
The Spirit of St. Louis for another). A journalist goes on the hunt for a sensational story, makes himself the center of the story ... and prolongs the story for his own glory.
10.
The 39 Steps (1935). An overlooked Hitchcock movie, along with
Strangers on a Train.
11.
The King of Kong (2007). A documentary about the quest of two men, competing against one another, to break the World Record highscore in Donkey Kong. Hilariously sad and sadly hilarious.
12.
Breaker Morant (1980). Great war movie about the Boer War. Well, that probably makes it the only movie about the Boer War, too.
13.
Whale Rider (2002). A seemingly ordinary movie about a Maori community torn between the modern world and tribal traditions, which are quickly fading. But this one, again, avoids cliches.
14.
K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). Captivating movie about a Russian nuclear sub that is on the verge of sinking and exploding. Not for those with queasy stomachs.
15.
The Man Who Would Be King (1975). Everyone knows not to start a land war in Asia, especially Afghanistan, and here two British officers prove the truism in John Huston's update of Kipling's story.
16.
Kagemusha (1980). I'm cheating a bit here. All Kurosawa movies should be watched and studied by cinophiles. I choose this because it comes much later than his major works, yet it is also a major work, too.
17.
Red River (1948). Also not overlooked, really, but I wanted to put a John Wayne-Howard Hawkes collaboration on this list.
18.
My Darling Clementine (1946). And right after Howard Hawkes comes a John Ford movie, this one about Wyatt Earp.
19.
Galaxy Quest (1999). A personal favorite. Hollywood comedies like this tend to be terrible, but this is quite well done. It's about a collection of TV celebrity has-beens who are famous in sci-fi convention circles for their Star-Trek-like TV show.
20.
Zulu (1964). Engaging war movie about a small British troop attacked and outnumbered by the Zulu.
21.
Tender Mercies (1983). Robert Duvall finds redemption as a washed-up country singer. Also see Duvall in
The Great Santini.
22.
Solaris (2002). No movie version could top Stanislaw Lem's novel, and Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film version is well known. But this effort, starring George Clooney, is fascinating and profound -- especially for married couples. This version focuses on false projections of the spouse in marriage and on our failures to empathize with others and to be other-centered.
23.
Heartland (1979). Roger Ebert says that this movie "affirms life." A realistic portrayal of life on the Wyoming prairie in the early 20th century, from the prospective of a widowed housekeeper. Probably the only movie to feature the breached-birth of a calf in a key scene.
Here are a few more:
Babette's Feast,
The Iron Giant,
The Thin Red Line,
The Ghost Writer,
Zathura,
A Walk in the Clouds,
Sherlock Jr.,
Touching the Void,
A Little Princess,
My Father's House/My Mother's Castle.
