Best Movies You've Never Seen

Joe at EO has another nice movie list, 100 Most Overrated/Underrated Films.  Here's my list of great movies that most people have missed:

• A Life Less Ordinary - ALLO is a stylish and strange romantic comedy with stellar performances from everyone, including Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz, Delroy Lindo, and Holly Hunter as the tobacco-chewing, tough-chick angel.
• Brainstorm -  Brainstorm, starring Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood (her last movie), and Louise Fletcher (remember Kai Winn from DS9?), has both a fantastic screenplay and acting.  Fletcher's heart-attack scene is amazing and powerfully done, and this movie is just plain cool.
• The Cell - The Cell is visually stunning, and Vincent D'Onofrio's villianous serial killer is masterful. 
• Double Take - a light but intelligent and funny identity-switch comedy with Orlando Jones and Eddie Griffin - with some great music to boot. 
• ExistenZ - This low budget David Cronenburg film asks the question, "What happens when you can't tell the game world from the real world?"  It's got a little too many gratuitous squishy noises and grossness, but nice job by Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and great cameo by Willem Defoe.

• Final Fantasy - most of you geeks have already seen this movie, but I missed it in the theaters because I thought it was just a video game movie like Mortal Combat.  Boy was I wrong!  Even though this film was made "back in" 2001, it has some of the most impressive computer-animated humans ever seen on screen.  Beautiful animation and good space adventure story. 
• Max - this Nazi-era drama is a very unique treatment of Hitler.  It stars John Cusack as a German Jewish art dealer who has a young artist named Adolph who is trying to get his paintings noticed in Cusack's gallery.  His failure in art makes him decide to use "politics as his art."  Some Jewish organizations did not like this movie becuase it "humanized" Hitler, and it does, not by exusing his decisions, but giving us a somewhat fictional but fascinating and different look at Hitler.
• The Tao of Steve - this philosophic, low-budget romantic comedy is smart and funny. 
• Wedding Movie:  My BF Greek Wedding / Monsoon Wedding - the former is way overrated, the latter is a really fun masterpiece of the wedding genre.

Comments

[Aaron]

Yeah, I really enjoyed Final Fantasy. You have to get past the Gaia religion, but the animation was fantastic. I saw it in college with some friends who were Final Fantasy freaks, playing all the games, waiting in line to get the newest one. I had only played the first one on the original Nintendo, but I still was able to enjoy the movie. (the best part is the "bloopers" on the DVD.)

[seeker]

What? I've never looked at the bloopers!

[Aaron]

Those are hilarious. Some are your standard computer animation movie bloopers, wild hair, disappearing limbs, etc. but some they made especially for the blooper reel - like having them mix up lines or having them accidentally shoot someone. I'm not sure if the feature is hidden or not, but it is definitely there.