Ten Great Movies You've Never Seen (Part One)

The U.S. box-office has been down for the 18th week in a row this past weekend despite the much-hyped releases of Revenge of the Sith and Batman Begins in the coming weeks, it does not look likely that this trend will be broken. A lot of analysts attribute this to the rising ticket prices, the subpar quality of a lot of the films being churned out and of course the convenience of viewing movies on DVD.�

These days, a lot of people prefer to view their movies on DVD. A lot of cinema's greatest works can now be viewed more often than not in their impeccable pristine flawless picture and sound quality on DVD's that can easily be rented or purchased on-line. (Netflix rent them out in very affordable prices).�

But with the splurge of movies being released on DVD these days crowding the shelves, a lot of worthwhile movies often get lost in all the hype of mediocre Hollywood releases. For those of you tired of the current Hollywood theatrical releases or are looking for other alternatives from old but rather overexposed favorites, here are just ten worthwhile films of all nationalities and all genres which I feel more people should be seeing:

THE BAND WAGON (1953, Vincente Minnelli) - When people think of great movie musicals, they usually think of The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz, An American in Paris, Singin' in the Rain. Very seldom do people list this truly wonderful gem in their lists of great movie musicals. Starring a Ginger Roger-less Fred Astaire, this film pairs him for the first time with the beautiful and equally talented Cyd Charisse. Astaire plays Tony� Hunter, a washed up movie actor who upon the insistence of his writer/actor friends (based loosely on the film's screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Greene) tries for a comeback as a Broadway song and dance man. What Singin' in the Rain did for movies, The Band Wagon did for the Broadway stage. From Fred Astaire's Shoeshine number to the famous ditty That's Entertainment number to Fred and Cyd Charisse's simply magical Dancing in the Dark�number, it's not difficult for one to get swept up with this film. Though a lot of people still don't know it, this movie truly is one of the best musicals of all time.�

SHOCK CORRIDOR (1963, Samuel Fuller) Director Samuel Fuller is one of the granddaddys of the American independent film movement. He made films that were often way ahead of their time in comparison to the Hollywood releases being released at the same time. This one is no exception. An overly ambitious reporter (Peter Breck) wants to win a Pulitzer Prize so he goes undercover into a mental asylum in order to solve a murder involving one of the staff members. But the murder mystery takes a backseat to the horrors he would find inside where he gets more than what he bargained for. The disturbing images is offset by truly twisted dark humor as we get to know the inner workings of the asylum and the world that will forever change the protagonist leading to a downer of an ending, almost unheard of in Hollywood at the time.�

THREE WOMEN (1977, Robert Altman) - This is a little know gem of a film from one of Hollywood's maverick filmmakers, Robert Altman. This one has Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek as nursing home attendants, Millie and the shy and meek Pinky. The women move in together, become friends but their relationship goes through a series of conflicts and tension. The film then changes into something....else. An unconventional drama that's a bit in the vein of Ingmar Bergman's classic Persona and the 2001 David Lynch film Mulholland Drive, it is a dream like film where the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred. The ending of the film, in particular, is open to various interpretations.�

ONIBABA (1964, Kaneto Shindo) Akira Kurosawa is the most famous Japanese director but he's not the only great Japanese director there is. There's Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, Masaki Kobayashi and then there's Kaneto Shindo. His most famous work is Onibaba which is also known under the English titles The Devil or Demon Woman. This is about two women, a mother whose son is fighting in the war and her daughter in law living in ancient Japan during the medieval wars. They survive by killing wounded samurai and trading their armour, weapons and other valuables for food and supplies. When their neighbor, a soldier who survived the war, returns this ignites tension between mother and daughter-in-law. This is further aggravated when the older woman steals a demon mask from mysterious warrior. Erotic, suspenseful and ever so subtly creepy and disturbing, this film is a hidden gem. Oh and it also features a fantastic score which only heightens the tension and erotic atmosphere.

THE HOUR OF THE WOLF (1968, Ingmar Bergman) Bergman, the master auteur who gave the world landmark classics like The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and Persona tackles the horror genre quite effectively with this freaky exercise in gothic horror. A troubled artist Johann (Max Von Sydow) and his wife (Liv Ullman) encounter an aristocrat (Erland Josephson) in the isolated island in which they live in and sucks the former into a surreal and occasionally disturbing descent into madness which may or may not be real. It's very apparent Stanley Kubrick drew a lot of his inspiration for his version of "The Shining" from this film. The title refers to that hour where it is believed children usually die.�

MONSIEUR VERDOUX (1947, Charles Chaplin) Chaplin is of course known for his famous silent comedies like The Kid, The Circus, The Gold Rush, Modern Times and City Lights. His most famous talkie is The Great Dictator. This is second and often one of his more overlooked films. A charming, mild mannered banker of the title (played by Chaplin) makes his living by marrying then killing rich widows and uses their money to support his real wife and family. Outraged audiences during its time, it all seems pretty mild now but its message and theme still carries weight in our trouble contemporary world ("Killing one person makes one a criminal. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify."). Despite its morbid theme, the film still contains a lot of laughs courtesy of the scene stealing Martha Raye playing one of Verdoux's potential victims.,�

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IN A LONELY PLACE (1950, Nicholas Ray) When you think of Humphrey Bogart, you think of Casablanca, The African Queen, The Treasure of Sierra Madre or The Maltese Falcon. Hardly anyone mentions this wonderful picture. Here he plays a troubled, hot tempered Hollywood screenwriter, Dixon Steele who is suspected of murder. His beautiful woman neighbor (Gloria Grahame) provides him with an alibi and gets him off the hook temporarily. They begin a love affair but Steele's temper causes his lover and the police to renew their suspicion of him once more. This all leads up to truly intense final minutes which I believe contains Bogart's best acting work. Only Hitchcock has pulled off romance and suspense just as perfectly.�

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PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975, Peter Weir) Before he wowed Hollywood and produced such films as Dead Poets Society and most recently Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, director Peter Weir made the cinematic world turn in its ears with this truly haunting film. A couple of boarding school students and their teacher mysteriously disappears while on a picnic at Hanging Rock. I don't know why but this film really creeped me out. The ending does not solve the mystery and leaves the viewers to surmise what really happened. This is what makes the film all the more haunting, intriguing and disturbing.�

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THE DECALOGUE (1988, Krzysztof Kieslowski) This is a 10 hour miniseris made for Polish television but don't let that stop you from devoting 10 hours of your life for this film. It'll probably be the best ten hours you will ever spend watching movies. Ten films that is more or less each an hour long dramatize the ten commandments with stories that's set in the same apartment complex in Poland. Don't be fooled. This is not a religious film and the "lessons" of the commandments are often not clear cut but they are ten profound stories of the human condition. All of them are alternately though provoking, funny, moving, sad, heartbreaking and uplifting. It may not be a religious but it is a spiritual film.

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STAR 80 (1981, Bob Fosse) At the surface, this film is a trashy, exploitive biopic on murdered Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway) and her sleazy boyfriend Paul Snyder (Eric Roberts) but below the surface its really a dark tale of obssession and broken dreams. Eric Roberts gives probably the best performance of his entire career as Snyder, Stratten's boyfriend who shoots himself after murdering Stratten. This is legendary stage and film director Bob Fosse's final film and the film he himself considers as his best. I would personally disagree but this film still qualifies as one of his more overlooked works.�

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These ten barely just scratched the surface of cinematic joys to be had buried underneath the mass of overhyped Hollywood releases and this will only be the first in hopefully will be a series of articles highlighting some of cinema's greatest films barely talked about much less watched outside of the film geek community. If you're tired of the current, you can always look back and if you're tired of looking back, look underneath. You're bound to find treasure.