Glad to see a post here mention Layer Cake. The crime film genre is maybe my favorite and been starving for one made w/ adults in mind for some time. Left really satisfied.

Seems that the 'Quality flicks' well has been pretty dry for awhile now. Before 'Layer' it had been months and months since I'd been looking forward to anything. Would love to see a good movie more often, but they just ain't been there, Hollywood or indie. (okay, 'Downfall' was pretty darn good - but that's bout it that I can think of.)

I remember all the talk bout how we were headin into the age of the indie, how the economics of the marker had shifted so we were gonna get this renaissance of the small batch, artisan crafted 'grown up' movie. Well, where are they? I live round tons of 'art houses.' How come they're filled w/ boring crap? Can't I get one smart flick bout a man in a tight spot clawing/fightin his way out instead of endless string of 13 year old Taiwanese girls struggling with their exquisitely delicate conflicted feelings? Blah.

The first off-the-beaten-path movie that comes to mind is The Way of the Gun. It's not totally unknown, but it wasn't exactly well received, either. Killer dialogue, and some of the more realistic shoot-out scenes ever portrayed in a movie like that. Good stuff.

Ray-- yeah, I really enjoyed Downfall too (even wrote up a review of it).

I don't idealize "independent" movies, and I have nothing against movies filled with explosions, car chases, and multi-million dollar special effects. It's just that so few of those are any good. I'm willing to forgo the big budget spectaculars for something more modest if in return I get a better movie. I'm sure that with a larger budget, something like Downfall would have been even more impressive-- but the odds are the story would have been lost in the shuffle.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Does Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels meet your criteria? What about some of Tarantino's early stuff? What about Boondock Saints? Equilibrium?

Yup on all of those Tim, great flicks.

BTW, Matthew Vaughn, the producer of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is the director of Layer Cake, if that tells you what you need to know about the latter's pedigree.

Anybody see Videodrome? Mid 80's flick with James Woods and that chick from the group Blondie. Awesome film - I loved it. You get to see James whip a skin covered tv set while the blondie chick moans. Deeply strange film and you don't know what to expect from it at every turn.

Another deeply strange film was Naked Lunch. Stars Peter Veller (Robocop). I saw it three times and I never could figure what the hell it was about. I even took notes one time. Just enjoy it for the surrealism. And typewriters eating each other.

Finally, I give you "Brazil". Another surrealist movie about government run amok and has created a society that normal people cannot live in without going absolutely bonkers. Basically a society entirely run by liberals. It was directed by the American guy that did all the animated stuff for Monty Python. Terry Gilliam. He doesn't do many movies, but he always does strange ones - 12 Monkeys & Time Bandits are two others. I don't know of any more.

Oh, and DO go see Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Great action flick and very funny. Impressive body count too.

One movie that caught me completely by surprise was The Dreamlife of Angels. I had expected it to be another art-house snorefest, but it's really quite absorbing.

I probably ought to be smacked for recommending anything French, but Luc Besson's thrillers "La Femme Nikita" (the original; it inspired a really insipid Hollywood remake and a pretty good TV show) and "The Crimson Rivers" are well worth checking out. "Crimson Rivers," especially, is downright twisted; think of it as a French "Silence of the Lambs," with Jean Reno as a detective chasing a particularly fiendish serial killer.

Besson also did a sequel to the latter film,, "Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse," which isn't quite as good, but has a fun plot centering around an ex-Nazi (played by Christopher Lee) looking for a missing Vatican treasure inside the Maginot Line.

Wes, I like French movies when they're not about being French. Hence, Luc Besson gets a pass.

Ditto Jean-Pierre Jeunet, although his movies are most definitely "French." Still, how can anyone hate anything with Audrey Tautou in it? She's the best thing to come out of France since the fries.

No, my problem with French cinema is the self-indulgent crap for crap's sake that comes out of that country. I can respect Godard and Truffaut from a technical standpoint, but sweet Jesus, I'd rather shove a pen in my eye than watch their films.

And don't get me started on the other "great" European directors, like Bertolucci and Fellini. . . yeesh. I'm crying for a Steven Seagal pool hall scene at that point.

CHUD.com is running a feature now: 100 movies that deserve more love.

A lot of their picks are great.

Wow, that CHUD list is outstanding. Some real stinkers on there (I mean, "Long Kiss Goodnight"? Yechhh), but there are easily fifty of my favorite movies on that list.

Yup, good food for a post, thanks!

Try SLC(Salt Lake City) PUNK! Little known, but a better and more instghtfull commentary on the self-centered, poseur and ultimately LOSER world of the terminally hip druggie youth culture than all the sociology and cultural anthropology texts ever written. And sardonically funny to its core.

Also try "Liquid Sky"--Art house flick with award-winning mucical (and VERY weird!, but appropriate) score (by a Frenchy, no less) . A combination of sci-fi gloss on the the NYC drug/culturally hip/gay-lesbien-bi/art-house crowd cum performance-art 80's scene. Main riff is gal who, everytime she has drug addled sex, at moment of climax, lurking alien space-ship sucks her lover inside ship Via ray-gun-like beam which hones in on drugs. For the non-hip among us opening credits remind us that "Liquid Sky" is an old term for herion. Double entendre, get it? aliens in sky--drugs--so badly way cool its good.
Although don't get me wrong, this flick is played deadly seriously straight, and, in B&W, it achieves ( especially with the musical score, which really MAKES the film) a facinating , surreal effect well worth watching--though the pace is art-house slow. Still, worth sticking with to the suprising end. Only problem is that first half of film gives little clue as to where its ultimately headed but is a "can't-take-eyes-off train-wreck" portrait of the NYC mis-en-scene of that time.

P.S. One other little known 80's classic: An Australian work entitled "This Quiet Earth". Very hard to find on video now but well worth the hunt. A Sci-fi flick set in NZ about a world-wide scientific electromagnetic atmospheric experiment gone awry. (An unconscious precurser to the USAF "HARP" experiments now going on up in Alaska?)
Basic plot is that when energized the current sends everyone in world to some other unk galaxy/dmension. Only ones left are people who were unconscious at time (via accident, drunken stupor, etc.) Our main man awakes from latter to find he is only one alive in NZ--last man on Earth?!! First half of film finds him coping with realization of what it all means as he moves about NZ looking for others. Finally, after resigning himself to idea he is truly alone he unexpedly meets young girl who had been unconscious due to auto accident. May-december relationship follows (he is fiftyish). BUT THEN! they discover young buck Maori stud who had been put unconscious while being drowned in stream by rival in fight. Love triangle, jealousies ensue. MEANWHILE---

Background theme running parallel with their daily lives is fact that pulsations from still actively running experi-
ment gradually powering up again causing temp distortions in time/space. Our main man knows he has find /destroy NZ station ground-link to system or they too will be disappeared. Realizing where his relationship with girl is headed he decides to pull suside-bomber-like mission with tank-truck of Gas. Ending will blow your mind--will not be what one think should logically happen. (no pun intended) A very brooding interesting , well-acted and thoughtfull film that holds one's attention from start to finish with no slow spots--perfectly paced.

I recommend _The Hot Spot_. Noirish drama starring Don Johnson, (naked!)Jennifer Connolly, and Virginia Madsen.

I did get a lot of laughs out of _Long Kiss Goodnight_. It was awful but it was funny.

The best "underappreciated" movie ever... "Flesh and Blood".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089153/

Wow!!

Paul Verhoeven(Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct) ... Rutger Hauer... Jennifer Jason Leigh(unbelievably youthful and full-frontal nekkid!)... Not to mention Bruno Kirby - "Young Clemenza"(Godfather II) and Brion James- "Ben Kehoe"/ AKA 'The Iceman'(48 Hrs.)... all set in a brutal look at life in a plague-ridden, medieval world.

The viewer comment at IMDB says it all- "No movie, at the time, was more unabashedly filled with gore and nakedness."

I like!

"One False Move", written by Billy Bob Thornton, was something I'd like to see again.

"Don't Look Now", directed by Nick Roeg, may have been good or it may have just been awful. There is a point in the movie which is unrivalled for sheer WTF'nF strangeness, though.

Again these aren't flat out recommendations so much as movies I'd like to see again to see whether they're any good.

I am partial to the German movie "Run, Lola, Run." It's, short, loaded with action and instead of a 90 minute movie trying to cram in a plot line spanning days, weeks or years, this movie takes place over about 20 minutes..those 20 minutes being lived out 3 different times by the lead actress, a la "Groundhog Day." I think this was the first movie for Franka Potente, Matt Damons girlfriend in the Borne movies, who even sang on the soundtrack. The action is non-stop (though it's mostly Franka running around a German city..literally) and there are some hilarious moments although it is not really a comedy. It's interseting from the standpoint of how little choices and random meetings can change your life dramatically. Plus I'm pretty sure it was at least part of the motivation for the TV show "Alias"..or at least the hairstyles in the first season.

Two of my favorites are "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands", based on the novel by Brazilian writer Jorge Amado, and "the Return of Martin Guerre" (French, yes).

I like "Dona Flor" because the book is one of my favorites and the film does a darn good job capturing such a rich book.