I am bored, therefore there will be Audience Participation.

[theweaselking]

What's your favourite movie that you think is obscure, and that relatively few other people will have seen, but that you think they SHOULD see?

I've got a bunch, but today I'm going to go with Weirdsville, where the plot summary on IMDB neglects to mention exactly how funny it is. In fact, between this and Todd And The Book Of Pure Evil I think I'm just going to conclude that Satanists in smalltown Ontario is always going to be comedy gold.

Anyway. Weirdsville. Scott Speedman as a stoner who owes a small-time drug dealer a lot of money, Jordan Prentice as Tyrion Lannister, Matt Frewer as Matt Frewer quietly chewing all the scenery he can reach without moving because he's in a coma for most of the film. No, really. It's funny and dark, the characters are believable and likeable[1], and I think I can count the number of people who I know have seen it on one hand.

And that's sad, because it is very much a good film.

So: What's your favourite obscure movie that you think more people should see?


[1]: Even the villains, who are dicks, are entertaining dicks who are fun to watch.

Comments

[jerril]

Dark City!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

.... didn't everyone see that?

(My sample is probably skewed)

ETA: Not to imply it's not an excellent movie. It is! I grabbed it to watch again a few days ago.

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

Nacktschnecken. Seriously. Couple of young people, who like to smoke weed a bit too much, have no money, but owe quite some to someone shady, and decide to produce a porn flick, starring mostly themselves.

'course, it's in German only.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Sleep Dealer, a Mexican SF movie.

Tai Chi Hero (steampunk martial arts comedy) and Let the Bullets Fly, both Chinese movies.

[fuster-cluck.livejournal.com]

Repo, The Genetic Opera...

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

It is a great film, with a great cast. I have no idea why it was not more widely released.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

Alien Raiders. The title is absolutely atrocious, but the movie itself plays out like a Delta Green RPG scenario, and is fantastic. Plus it's available on Amazon as an instant stream movie!

The movie is awesome because it takes the 'aliens are invading by taking over human bodies' and approaches it from a direction you don't see very often, where the people who are 'in the know' might actually BE crazy and not keepers of secret knowledge. They aren't members of some highly trained paramilitary group, and they aren't supersoldiers who are awesomely funded. They're people who discovered something deeply terrible, and don't have a choice but to try and fight it, because it also knows about THEM.

I liked it!

Also on the short-film front, if you like Lovecraftian-but-not-specifically-Cthulhu, 'AM1200' is amazing.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Ohh, thanks for the headsup.

[stormfeather.livejournal.com]

I... actually don't think I have any recent ones, or once that I've even watched recently, mostly because I just haven't been as much into movies lately. Even the big names, which means that the smaller ones pretty much fall by the wayside even moreso.

There are a couple of movies that pop into my brain from when I was younger, but I haven't watched them in ages so I can't say how they hold up:

Adventures in Babysitting: I don't know that this one is especially obscure, just older. (Like, 80's older, not "classic" older). But from what I recall, it was a hell of a lot of fun. A high school girl (well, played by an adult, but hey) babysitting a geek-girl younger kid, dragging along her brother and his friend for.. some reason, having to go to the big city to bail out her friend for convoluted reasons, and having to drag said kid and male sidekicks along through a night where absolutely *nothing* goes right, running afoul of dangerous crooks, and having to try to get the kid home and in bed before the parents make it home... It sounds weird, but I remember it being hilarious. Bonus points for the kid being totally into the Thor comic, and that being milked for quite a bit... It actually hasn't been QUITE as long since I've watched this one (still years though), so it would probably hold up decently well, if you're looking for something light and fluffy and just fun.

Midnight Madness: Now this one, I haven't seen in soo long, I was probably around middle school age last time I watched it. So I really can't say how it would hold up now. But I remember it being fun as well, revolving around some sort of weird scavenger hunt all over town, trying to solve clues to lead from location to location. I forget what the prize was, some big amount of money or some such I think. It was just one of those wacky fun things. For bonus points, IIRC it had Michael J. Fox when he was still able to play late teenagers. Hell, he might not have been too far off of a late teen in real life at the time.

[swwoodsy.livejournal.com]

I remember both of those movies fondly! I still love "Babysitter Blues." Didn't Midnight Madness have the guy from American Werewolf in London in it?

[aaron (from livejournal.com)]

"The Fall"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/)
Absolutely breathtaking visuals, great story and interesting characters. Saw a trailer with Massive Attack's "Paradise Circus" playing behind it and was hooked.

[andrewducker]

It's an amazingly beautiful film. And the only Tarsem movie with a half-decent plot.

[andrewducker]

Last Night.

A Canadian movie about the end of the world. Or rather, about what a bunch of ordinary people get up to while the world is ending. With David Cronenberg as an employeee of the electricity company, phoning everyone up to thank them for their years of custom.

Absolutely delightful, and starring all sorts of people that then went on to have careers.

[paddie-gal.livejournal.com]

that's one of the first films Rich showed me when we got together, it's brilliant - good choice!

[alephz.livejournal.com]

Ink.

Indie urban fantasy with eighteen tons of heart.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I just saw Ink the other night, what a trip. Good one.

[jack-ryder.livejournal.com]

Quick Change

Bill Murray, Geena Davis and Randy Quaid rob a bank, then spend the rest of the film trying to escape New York. With Jason Robards as the cop after them.

Funny, tense and surprisingly sweet as you find yourself rooting for both Murray AND Robards. It feels like it could have been made in the 70s as it is reminiscent at times of The Out-Of-Towners and Little Murders.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

The Call of Cthulhu. It's a black & white silent movie, made by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society, which is faithful to the original story and just superb if watched in a darkened room. That story really does suit being a silent movie.

[fuster-cluck.livejournal.com]

Great flick too. Dagon is another one of my favorites...

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

Six String Samurai.

It had the Red Elvises, no budget, and Elvis was the late king of post-apocalyptic Vegas.

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

Oh, and "Gunless" which is what would happen if "Shane" had been set in Canada and nobody had any guns.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

Metropolitan, a sort of awkward teenage drama that manages, in the end, to be both an exploration of the ending of childhood and the class chasms that education can't overcome.

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

I'll offer up two:
Strings (2004) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374248 from Denmark and Sweden. A puppet show about rulers that lie. Quite extraordinary, in that the cast *are* puppets, and their puppet nature is an integral part of their culture. Dark, moody, and moving.

As Time Goes By (1988) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094680 from Australia. Good luck finding a copy, as it never made it to DVD, and the VHS is long out of print. A surfer on the run heads out to a desert town following a mysterious note. Stars the inimitable imitator and political satirist Max Gillies as an alien who can only speak in quotes, the deeply missed Bruno Lawrence as the town cop, and features a town that has been on the edge of civilization for a bit too long. Favourite exchange: (cynical surfer girl) "Cheryl... your foot's on fire". (hippy surfer girl) "Oh... which one?"

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

And if you have not seen another of Bruno's films "The Quiet Earth" out of NZ, hunt it down and see it!

[iblis-kukl.livejournal.com]

[iblis-kukl.livejournal.com]

[atesh42.livejournal.com]

Intacto - Spanish Urban Fantasy Thriller where people with unnatural levels of luck compete in questionable contests where the winner gets everyone's luck and the losers.. well, they become rather unlucky. Also, it has Max fucking Van Sydow as the antagonist.

After Dark, My Sweet - Neo Noir based off a Jim Thompson novel where Jason Patric is a quiet former boxer recovering from a murder in the ring when he's roped into a kidnapping scheme.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I've got Intacto on DVD. It's brilliant.

[chrisrw109.livejournal.com]

The Spanish Prisoner
- Twisty Plot
- Good performances by some fun actors (in different sort of roles)
- Solidly entertaining
- Another movie (like Ronin) that is about all of the plotting and scheming around a prize, without getting too far into what the prize actually is.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

The Advocate, featuring a very young Colin Firth as a lawyer in medieval France who moves to the country to escape the corruption of city life, and is so idealistic that he doesn't realize the village inn is also the village whorehouse. Also stars Ian Holm and Donald Pleasance. Supremely weird: opening scene involves a man and a donkey both about to be hanged for the crime of beastiality; the donkey is pardoned following the intercession of a character witness. Medievalists have described it as one of the better renditions of the medieval European mindset.

Party Girl. Parker Posey discovers maturity, self-worth, and the wonders of the Dewey Decimal System. Cult favorite among librarians for obvious reasons.

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

oh! I've seen the Advocate, and you are right, it is... weird. Esepcially the end.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Hmm, tough one. I could go for an Almodóvar, which is probably obscure for anyone who isn't primarily a Latinophone or a fanboy. "Talk to Her" would be my #1 choice, about two women in a coma and the men who love them.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Loved that one, but very dark. The scene where one emerges from the giant vagina. . . .

[clinkerfiasco.livejournal.com]

Moon. (Duncan Jones, he's also David Bowie's son.)

The Holy Mountain. (Jodorowsky)

El Topo. (Jodorowsky.)

Really, anything by Jodorowsky. It would have been amazing had he been able to make his version of Dune. If you haven't heard about it, here: http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I saw a Holy Mountain/El Topo double bill a few years ago. It was.... odd.

[kjn]

Pisma myortvogo cheloveka. An 1986 post-apocalyptic sf movie, made in the Soviet Union. I saw it in Norway in 1989 (with Norwegian subtitles), and still remember the final scene vividly.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

Molière (2007)

It's sort of like "Shakespeare In Love" only actually good. Okay um... another way of putting it. Plot synopsis I guess...

Moliere is a well known French playwright, known for doing farces. The film shows him, prior to his fame, convinced that he will make a name for himself as a writer of serious dramatic plays. His troupe isn't making enough money and his debts lead to him being thrown into prison, however a rich man pays off his debts on the condition that he help him prepare a small and very personal one-act play.

Nothing I saw about this film is going to make clear how sweet, funny and generally great fun it is, but quite frankly I have no idea why this isn't more widely talked about. It's a brilliant film.

[kytheraen.livejournal.com]

You Might Like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_%26_Dale_vs_Evil

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

It's like the Mirror Universe version of Cabin in the Woods.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Cannibal! The Musical....and anything by Troma really.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

Given that we've got Dark City (filmed in Australia) heading the responses, I feel totally justified in pointing out a few neglected Aussie (+1 ish) films.


First up, Two Hands (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145547/), Heath Ledger's breakout film, which is possibly the only reason more people have seen it than otherwise would have.
Sort of like an Australian Guy Ritchie film, with less contrivance and more subtlety. Also one of Bryan Brown's best performances.

Next, Gettin' Square (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0341376/). I don't know why Australia has such a love affair with quirky urban crime films, but this is one of the best of them. If nothing else, it's worth watching for David Wenham's standout performance as a not very reformed herion addict. (According to one interview, he had no less than five people ask him if he'd based the character on them.)

In the documentary category, the +1 is the Turkish film Gallipoli (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450426/) (not to be confused with the pretty decent early Mel Gibson film of the same name (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082432/)). Every Australian / New Zealander and every Turk knows about the Gallipoli campaign of WWI, but it's practically unheard of in the rest of the world. This heart-rending documentary might explain why it has such national cachet.


Finally, Japanese Story (http://movies1.netflix.com/WiMovie/Japanese_Story/60031554?locale=en-US). Don't read anything more about it, just watch it. The best performance of Toni Collette's career.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Canadians tend to know Gallipoli. But.