FAN RECOMMENDATIONS
Underexposed Cinematic Treasures is asking fans to let people know what their favorite unseen or underseen movies are. Please, go to our contact page, email us or post on our Facebook Group Page your suggestions with a one-paragraph review telling everyone why more people should watch it.
THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD – During the depression, Lady Port-Huntley, a Canadian beer baroness holds a contest to find the nation with the saddest music in the world. $25,000 will be awarded to the winners and the contest attracts Chester Kent (Mark McKinney) a former lover of Port-Huntley, as well as Chester’s Father, Fyodor Kent, and musicians from all over the world. Port-Huntley is played by Isabella Rossellini and you can’t take your eyes off her or her glass beer-filled legs. This movie is perverse and weird and the aesthetic mimics early film. Maria de Medieros is Narcissa, Chester’s girlfriend (Some may remember her role in PULP FICTION; explaining to her boyfriend Butch her desire for a perfectly round pot belly). Fun and truly unique. – GG Dasher – Film Lover
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN is a great movie for all ages. It is not just for children. The story is cute, powerful and touching, with great characters, some of which many of us grew up with. The story reminds us of who we are and what we may have lost along the way as we became adults. We can become consumed with our hectic adult lives, especially work, and sometimes forget what’s truly important – things like love, family, and friends. – Hoa Oguschewitz – Film Lover
Virtually unseen since its theatrical premiere in 1953, FEAR AND DESIRE was the ambitious first feature film by legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. An existential war film often compared with the director’s PATHS OF GLORY (1957) and FULL METAL JACKET (1987), FEAR AND DESIRE follows a squad of soldiers who have crash-landed behind enemy lines and must work their way downriver to rejoin their unit.
In the process, they encounter a peasant girl (Virginia Leith) and bind her to a tree, where she is tormented by a mentally unbalanced soldier (future director Paul Mazursky). Before making their escape, the soldiers determine the location of an enemy base and formulate a plot to assassinate its commanding officer. – Singleton Makin – Film Lover
A FACE IN THE CROWD – This 1957 film is Andy Griffith’s debut into the world of cinema. The film follows the life of Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes from being discovered by a female radio producer played by Patricia Neal (THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL) in a drunk tank to him achieving national fame with his own television show. The film is an exploration of what fame can do to a man by showing Griffith’s Rhodes go from a homeless drifter to an absolute megalomaniacal monster. Although the film is 64 years old it remains extremely relevant by showing how the media can take a nobody with a certain amount of charisma and launch him into a cult of personality and puts on display the destruction left in his wake. This film is directed by the great Elia Kazan and has a tremendous supporting cast consisting of the aforementioned Neal, Walter Matthau, Tony Franciosa and Lee Remick. I highly recommend picking the version now available through The Criterion Collection. – Patrick Izzo – Film Lover
FATSO – written and directed by Anne Bancroft. While billed as a comedy, and it certainly has its funny moments, it really goes into the struggles faced by an overweight man in an Italian family in 1970s America. Anne Bancroft not only helms the film, she also plays one of the principal characters and has an excellent performance alongside Dom Deluise in the lead role. — Adam Sartain – Actor and Host of the Podcast INSIDE ANIMATION
TAPEHEADS – 1988 was a year of great comedies (BEETLEJUICE, HEATHERS, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?, MIDNIGHT RUN, etc!), but to me the one that stands heads above the rest is TAPEHEADS! I originally saw this film because it was produced by Mike Nesmith of the Monkees. Knowing how revolutionary he was, having been the one who originated MTV: Music Television and the sketch comedy/music video, Elephant Parts, I knew this was going to be a cinematic journey. I was right. so right! When I do a share-a-film night with friends, my selection will always be TAPEHEADS!
The plot centers around Ivan and Josh, played by John Cusack and Tim Robbins, who want to start calling the shots in their own lives and start up a video production company. Being heavily involved in video production myself at the time, I felt this was calling out to me. And at this time in history, these production companies were sprouting as fast as Starbucks. So, it still bewilders me why TAPEHEADS only grossed $343,786 and no one knows what I’m talking about when I bring it up. But then again I love spreading the word about this little film and having everyone know I was the one that brought them to this underexposed cinematic treasure! — Richard Woloski – Co-host of the popular podcasts: Skywalking Through Neverland and Talking Apes.
WATERLAND is a little-known coming of age movie told through the eyes of an adult on the verge of a mental crisis. Director, Stephen Gyllenhaal, directs Jeremy Irons, Ethan Hawke, and Sinead Cusack in the film, which is based on Graham Swift’s 1983 novel. Irons is a history teacher in early 1970’s Pittsburgh where he takes his class on a “personal” tour of his own history, life, and experiences. The story transports the viewer to the Fenlands of England around the time of WWII. The journey, the characters met along the way, and Carter Burwell’s haunting score left me reminiscing over my own youthful joys and the real impact of sorrows that come with growing into adulthood. It is a touching film I believe any film buff would enjoy. — Chris Palmer – Film Lover
Watch WATERLAND
THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH – Directed and written by John Sayles (based on the book THE SECRET OF RON MOR SKERRY by Rosalie K. Fry). A young child learns of the special secret surrounding a small fishing village in Ireland. Despite the brief nudity, this is a wonderful family film, with a special magic for children and adults. It doesn’t talk down to young viewers. Fun fact, Susan Lynch, who plays the Selkie (the shape-shifting creature who goes from seal to woman and back), is now in the TV series “Unforgotten,” as a continuing guest star (She’s superb in the series, in a complex role). — Mona Miller – Film Lover
Watch THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH
Maverick director Robert Altman’s 1970 film, BREWSTER McCLOUD, is one that far too many have still not seen. This was the film that he made right after his big breakthrough with M*A*S*H, and it’s a remarkable satire of nearly everything both in America and American filmmaking. Set as a kind of Texas-based retelling of the Icarus myth, this movie’s seemingly absurd story about a young man who builds wings in order to fly is a stand-in for Altman as iconoclast filmmaker trying to bring forth an original creative vision within the cookie-cutter Hollywood system. This film also expands Altman’s use of overlapping dialogue, features the movie debut of the great Shelley Duvall, and swaddles the great Bud Cort (HAROLD AND MAUDE) within an especially corrosive yet poignant mise-en-scene…the American flag as Altman’s very own freak flag. An “underexposed” Altman classic. — Anthony Pomes – Film Lover
Watch BREWSTER McCLOUD
My choice is the criminally overlooked, brilliant comedy FEAR OF A BLACK HAT by writer/director Rusty Cundieff. This movie is the “This Is Spinal Tap” of the early ’90s rap world, and it is absolutely hilarious. Everything gets skewered, from Prince to Spike Lee to Ice Cube, and it’s just astonishingly good. It’s a terrible shame and pretty astonishing that this film never found an audience. All I can think is that it was an ITC movie and never got a substantial theatrical release. But if you’re a fan of Spinal Tap and Monty Python, and you grew up with ’90s rap culture (or even if you didn’t,) you’ve got to seek this one out. I even own the soundtrack, which is astonishingly good. “Booty Juice comes right from the source. What’s the source? An ass, of course!” — Jim Cirile – Screenwriter & Producer: TO YOUR LAST DEATH
Watch FEAR OF A BLACK HAT
MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY is a wonderful story: heart-warming and funny, with standout performances by the leads, Francis McDormand and Amy Adams, along with a host of experienced talent in supporting roles. The script is lovely and the director, Bharat Nalluri, nails the time period of 1939 America, the character roles of the era and the growing pains the country endured between the First and Second World Wars…A beautiful story. Well done. — Andronica Marquis – Independent Filmmaker
My pick of Underseen film is SHORT TERM 12 written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. Despite the fact that it got a lot of critical praise and won the Grand Jury as well as the Audience Award at South by Southwest, nobody seems to actually have seen this movie. The film is set at a group home for teenagers and focuses on one of the supervisors, Grace, who herself struggles with the abuse she experienced at the hands of her father when she was a child. A description like that might lead one to believe that this is a downbeat character study but far from it. Instead, the movie is full of love and hope – as well as entertaining. — Tanya Klein – Screenwriter & Producer: TO YOUR LAST DEATH
Watch SHORT TERM 12