What's Your Favorite Underappreciated Movie?

Moses Lawn asks: "With the impending re-release of Spirited Away, I've been wondering about this. There are a lot of movies I love that no one else seems to know about. Some of them disappeared from theaters within a week, some came out years ago and seem to have been forgotten. Here are a few of my favorites: The Hot Rock, The Pope Must Diet (formerly 'The Pope Must Die'), They Might Be Giants, and The Big Hit. Maybe you like these, too. Maybe you think they stink up the joint. So what are your favorite forgotten movies?"

Re:Hudson Hawk

[DuckWing]

It was funny, but almost went to extremes for the humor so a lot of it was missed by many people.

The Big Lebowski

[Eponymous Coward]

Fantastic cast, characters, and story.
Well acted and directory.

Miracle Mile

[corebreech]

Great soundtrack, appropriately depressing, and so they don't air it nor let you rent it anymore.

Re:One of my fav movies...

[NanoGator]

>I have NO idea how you relate the shit ending with "interesting if you've done programming" either. Seems like you just tossed that in for some reason or another.

He's referring to David's program. He was programmed to love his 'mother'. But once his mother was established, there was no way for them to change who his mom is. It was a one shot deal. So when his mother eventually died of old age, that was it for him. Tragically, he couldn't finish his program. I think the programming reference the AC was making was that it's sort of like a un-trapped error event. His program can no longer be completed.

At the end of the movie, the super-robots at the end scanned his memory and they found out how tragic his programming was, so they found a way to fix it. They fed him a BS story that they could clone his mother so that they could trick him into thinking he could see her again, providing a way to complete his program.

The setup there was that she'd go to sleep and when she wakes up, she'd die. So when she went to bed, still alive of course, it was time for David to sleep as well. He started to dream. For him, she's still alive until he wakes up to discover she's dead. So, knowing she'd die, he just never wakes up. He spends the rest of his existence, with his program satisfactorally complete, dreaming. Sure beats being awake and having a mission you can't fulfill, duddn't it?

The AC's right, that's a very creative ending. Killing him off underwater would have been pointless.

Re:Hudson Hawk

[Mac Degger]

Ah, Brazil...I'm still shocked to find that so many people haven't seen or even heard of this one. It has cool tech, a great story, an ending which provokes discussion, action, amazing atmosphere, depth, it's funny, witty and sharp, it's relevant and deals with certain issues. What more do you want in a movie?

zardoz!!!

[airdrummer]

great flick, from the conceptual p.o.v., if not cinematic;-) but isn't all scifi that way;-)

my fave scene was when connery, trying to aclimate
himself to the boredom of immortality, asks the computer to show him the evolution of automotive design. it responds with a rapid slideshow of still pix of cars thru the years, and he's dissatisfied...he wanted to see evolution, not history, as visualized by morphing from 1 model to another...

it wasn't until 1990 that his vision came to pass in the chrysler minivan ads, which showed the original boxy design morphing into the more streamlined 2nd gen...i think that was the 1st use of morphing in nat'l advertizing.

Re:Forgotten (Zardoz and Buckaroo Banzaii)

[athanatic]

I am a big fan of Zardoz, though it is a product of its time and has loads of detractors [mrcranky.com]. It is an extropian [extropy.org] cautionary tale about what happens if you get more life but don't really evolve yourselves. As for Buckaroo Banzaii. I can't get enough of it and wish the sequel and TV series had gone somewhere. The writer [ernestcline.com] of the best-candiate spec. script for the sequel in recent years has this [ernestcline.com] to say about Buckaroo Banzaii (at 1:10, and a few other geeky films).