Topic: Underrated Movies

Speed Racer is the best and the only live action anime that gets exactly its source material right. It is such a fun movie. It prob needed to be 20 minutes shorter though.

I don't think one could "litrerally" say that The Goonies is underrated, it became a cult movie and it absolutely deserved to, but I have discovered that many younger people out there don't even know what it is. This is so wrong and sad.

@LuckyLand I went to uni with someone who didn't know who Marty Mcfly was! 😵

I remember not hating Speed Racer but remembering anything else... no sorry I can't. Maybe I'll watch again I do remember the Wachowskis talking a lot about capturing that anime feeling.

Caddyshack 2

Since George Romero just died ill mention one of his forgotten films.
Martin is truly a brilliant piece of grind house horror cinema.

The Emperor's New Groove. I love this movie's humor!

Gremlins is great - a proper 1980s cult comedy-horror. I don't think it counts as underrated. Gremlins 2, on the other hand, is much funnier and better than it has any right to be. Plus Danny Elfman's score is great.

More controversially, I'll throw Constantine up there. Everyone seemed to hate it, especially fans of the original comic; I saw it at the cinema with three friends and they all hated it. I loved it. One for lapsed Catholics, I guess...

Pocahontas - Disney.

Not many people knew about "If I Never Knew You" by Jon Secada + Shanice. Very romantic song yet underrated.

Underrated Disney Movies That I Love:

The Fox and the Hound
A Goofy Movie
The Great Mouse Detective

AGM is my fave Disney movie (although Zootopia is very close), and the other 2 are among the best IMO, but they're so criminally underrated. Not sure if Bolt is underrated, but I liked it a lot too.

Another really good movie that rarely, if ever, gets talked about is Ernest et Celestine.

I LOVE all of them! With the exception of A Goofy Movie (just saw that fairly recently, though I saw its "meh" sequel years ago), the other two were frequent visitors to the old VCR.

Plus, Ratigan in TGMD is perfectly voiced by Vincent Price, and The World's Greatest Criminal Mind is one of my favorite Disney songs.

Oz the Great and Powerful.

It got mixed reviews, but my god its one of the best family adventure movies I have ever seen. It has this honest sincerity to it, and a lot of characters I genuinely care about. It's the Wizard of Oz in the style of Spider-man.

Transcendence. Great sci-fi film that was unfairly panned.

Strange Days. Hardly ever hear about this gritty, disturbing cyberpunk murder mystery!

Changing Lanes. Samuel L. Jackson and Ben AFFLACK (sorry) are both great in this mainstream satire on wall street corruption and the insulation of the rich and powerful in American society.

@Ralizah Strange Days! I love that film. I must have watched that seven or eight times back in my teens. Superb cast, from Ralph Fiennes to Tom Sizemore, plus the PJ Harvey music, channelled by Juliette Lewis, is amazing. Can't Hardly Wait, with that evil guitar lick. Stunning.

Speed Racer 2007. The best anime adaptation ever created. Got crapped on for its cheesy dialogue and hyper visuals, but couldnt have captured the spirit of its source material any better.

I enjoyed it in theaters, but on dvd it became apparent how much of it was filmed to wow on 3d screens, almost to the point of being distracting.

@Krillin_ It's one of the few cyberpunk movies I've found that really establishes its own unique sense of futuristic noir, instead of feeling like it cribbed the visions of Gibson or Sterling. The POV sequences are also fantastic: gut-churning, but amazingly done.

I feel one of the more recent underrated movies I've seen has to be the recent Ghost in the Shell adaptation. People seem to bash on for both being an anime adaptation (thanks to Dragonball Evolution on giving it bad stigma) and for it's casting (but really, the casting is one huge meta joke that I kinda love it too much. It really does pay tribute to the original on it's presentation and from specific set pieces, but also it simplified the story from the original anime film, although doing it a bit too much (because sheesh, in a formal and not a visual perspective, Ghost in the Shell is awful on telling a story. It seems to have to have the same issue as Akira, but Akira has an edge on telling story better, although it still goes nuts with it.). Despite simplifying the story, I really saw alot of care and effort was put into this adaptation and I feel people should really give it a chance as it is pretty effective as an adaptation.

@Malcrash The "whitewashing" controversy always came off as kind of bogus to me, as just another artifact of the culture wars, but, truth be told, I was incredibly put off by the casting. Particular with Scarlett Johansson, who doesn't have the brawn or presence to convincingly play the major, imo. Also, the trailers made it look a bit... ah... Hollywood-ish. And then the reviews came out, so I never actually ended up seeing it.

@Ralizah I can see that, and those trailers make it look like it's a fast paced action flick. But once I actually get to watch it, the pacing feels actually a bit slow, similar to how the original somewhat does. There are bits of action here and there, but it is more about story surprisingly.

@Malcrash I mean, the original has action here and there as well. I'll give it a watch when it releases on DVD, and try not to compare it to Oshii's film.