Love Repoman and They Live! Culty classics. Moon, Sunshine, Dog Soldiers (though its more horror action), Paul (comedy sci-fi), attack the block, Threads… Best genre for me.
The wiki summary of The American Astronaut is absolutely bonkers. Then realizing that it was released on DVD post-2000 and not pre-1975 is even more crazy!
The backstory is that distribution rights were sold for thebfilmnat Sundance 2001 but shortly after the company who bought the rights went bankrupt. When I heard about it, the only way you could buy it was by emailing the director, Cory McAbee, and ask to send me one.
Someone described the movie to me as “a scifi, musical, western about a trucker in space.” This was before YouTube so I couldn’t see a trailer for it… I knew I needed to see it though. I emailed the director, paid for a dvd by PayPal, and got it a little while later.
There is just so much charm surrounding the movie… When you watch it you can just tell everyone was having so much fun with it.
I heard Equilibrium was stifled by people who opposed the anti-religious nature of the movie. The more I think about it the more it makes sense. It could have been a much bigger deal at the time. (Same goes for The Golden Compass.)
My underrated picks would be **Melancholia **(2011) about a planet passing unsettlingly close to the Earth during a wedding, and **Coherence **(2013) about a group of friends gathering for a dinner party on an evening when a comet is passing overhead.
Typing this out I realise they actually both sound quite similar but I promise you they are very, very different and worth a watch.
Robot Jox - saw it as a kid and it blew me away. Giant robot fights! But it has just enough plot and political intrigue to not be completely cheesy. Like, why don’t we solve all our problems with giant robot fights instead of all out war? It totally made sense to 10 year old me, anyway.
Produced by Japan's Toho (famously the studio of the Godzilla films), it's an end-of-the-world flick featuring a frankly astonishing international cast in what could be considered a "conference room drama" -- bottled-up high stakes human interaction in a true dystopic end to humanity. I can't figure how I never saw this back in the 80s; I only discovered it recently and I was blown away.
I'll second The Andromeda Strain, it's also a "conference room drama" and it really works. James Olson was a hugely underrated actor of the era.
Colossus: The Forbin Project, also wire-taut conference room drama with imminent destruction hanging on every decision.
And while we're at it, War Games, probably the best known of all these films, and maybe the only one that doesn't merit the categorization as a conference-room drama. But the stakes are the same.
<span style="color:#323232;">Asteroid City (2023)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">The Andromeda Strain (1971)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">The Prestige (2006)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Paprika (2006)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Under the Skin (2013)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Stalker (1979)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Westworld (1973)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Dark City (1998)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Ad Astra (2019)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Annihilation (2018)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Attack the Block (2011)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Solaris (1972)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Life (2017)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Silent Running (1972)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Soylent Green (1973)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">The Iron Giant (1999)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Repo Man (1984)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">La Jetée (1962)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">They Live (1988)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Them! (1954)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">The Thing From Another World (1951)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Ghost in the Shell (1995)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Donnie Darko (2001)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
</span>
With the exception of Them! or Life, I’d argue that none of these are particularly “underrated”. To reach that category, I’d say that a movie would need to have a less-than 60 rating on Rotten Tomatoes or other similar review aggregation site to demonstrate some degree of negative or “meh” critical consensus.
The Langoliers needed to be trimmed down. It was broadcast as two large chunks: it needed to be leaner. Still, Bronson Pinchot uncontrollably tearing strips of paper will always be a haunting image.
“underrated” and “movies that never get the credit they deserve” seems a bit hard to define. But at least subjectively I disagree with placing some of these movies on this list.
Asteroid City: can a movie that has just barely come out even be considered “underrated”? Feels like not enough time has passed for public opinion to truly form. Besides that it feels like it gets plenty of credit being a Wes Anderson movie.
Under the skin: bombed in the box office as far as I know, but imo also isn’t easily accessible for the average viewer and not mainstream. But it does seem to get plenty of praise from the critic side, so I don’t see it as underrated from this perspective.
Solaris and Stalker: again I don’t think they are underrated by critics and are highly praised. Just not movies that are easily accessible for the average viewer.
Paprika and ghost under the shell: are both a bit niche simply by being anime, but at least from the critic side I don’t see them as being underrated. I think ghost in the shell is reasonably known, Paprika maybe a bit less. So that could fit.
Donnie Darko: is a cult classic that definitely has a decent sized following. It’s maybe not a mainstream hit, but imo I wouldnt call it underrated.
What I would agree with is “Ad Astra”. Definitely flawed and not perfect, but I still liked it quite a bit. So at least from my biased perspective it would count as being underrated
Asteroid City's "play within a play" and that unnerving chant at the end was it's undoing. None of that needed to be there, but the movie would have been too short without it.
I’m not sure if i really liked the “play within a play” part either. But at least the scene where Jason Schwartzman’s character goes out of the asteroid city play to the director, and says something along the lines of “i don’t understand” and “am i doing it right”, seems important. My interpretation is that the whole movie is about the meaning of life and that scene in a way directly addresses it.
What do you mean with “unnerving chant”? The sleep part?
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