Outside the Box - PHOENIX's Top 100 Not Quite Obscure Films

Aww, I enjoyed Malignant if only for how crazy the twist is

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Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure exposes modern masculinity as a joke, and is an absolute blast to watch. Funny, observant and fully aware of the emotional vulnerability of guys who stand as great protectors of their family - until something scary happens, wherefore they run like hell. Nothing like a big shocking incident to lay bare the facades and inner uncertainties of people in relation to each other - especially when people are fronted by false projections of security and confidence. I rushed to see this after watching The Square, and both films had me revved up for the release of Triangle of Sadness, which didn't let me down. Thought-provoking and well made, I'm very into this kind of stuff - but as Ruben Östlund has really been outed as a great filmmaker known by nearly everybody now, I don't know if this is in any way slightly, or even a tiny bit, obscure. I'm including, as an honorable mention, another film about falsity, facades, and the way they crumble - 1948 Carol Reed film, The Fallen Idol.

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LOOOOOOOOOOOVE Force Majeure. It is absolutely hilarious. I'm not usually a fan of cringe comedy (too much vicarious embarrassment, even if the main characters are terrible people), but this one got me good.

I enjoyed The Fallen Idol. My favorite part is (correct me if I have the wrong film!) when the little boy is at the police station and the sex worker finds out what family he comes from and goes, "Oh, I know your daddy!".

Going via the numbers, I'm really surprised as to how widely seen Frank is - a film that kind of snuck up on me unheralded. It seems to have been perceived in wildly different ways by different people. I love Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Scoot McNairy in this film - but the real showering of praise is reserved for Michael Fassbender who miraculously gives a standout performance with that thing on his head. I mean, there are masks and such and then there's that - but he's superb. I also really like everyman character Jon Burroughs, who is given a lovably comic sheen by an easygoing Gleeson. But it's Frank, of course, who bounds from the screen as a towering figure given his powers by hiding who he truly is behind a papier-mâché monstrosity, which was already iconic before a film was made and an invented narrative wrapped it's way around it. This is one of those films where I really don't care how objectively good it is - I love it, and that's all that matters here. Sometimes you really take to certain characters - and Frank is full of ones I take to very much indeed. My honorable mention (which I'm thinking I'll make a semi-permanent feature from here on out) is John Waters film Pecker. My love of all things John Waters is all-encompassing.

Frank is the film that put Gleeson on the map for me. I also think that Gyllenhaal's performance is absolutely brilliant.

The Fallen Idol is very good. It's a contender for my noir ballot.

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IMDb
Letterboxd

You're spot on with that - Dora Bryan with a wonderfully comedic line right as that scene ends in The Fallen Idol.

I'm always extremely happy when I hear someone likes Frank! It's such an endearing film, but often splits people into "love it" or "hate it" camps - I obviously love it.

The ultimate blending of documentary and crime drama has the real participants of a bizarre real-life heist describe what happened and what they were thinking as we see it played out as a biographical true story - featuring the likes of Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan. There's something about the way this keeps touching on the real people that makes the events of American Animals feel unmistakably real and "happening" as we watch it, and even though the robbery itself is as ridiculous as the bank job in Dog Day Afternoon (probably more so) my heart pounds when I see these kids try and pull it off. Yeah - it's a funny film as well, and I'm a huge fan of it. I need more time to see if it advances up into the very top tier of greats, but I'm still quite a fan of American Animals. Since this is part documentary, I choose as my honorable mention Martin Scorsese's George Harrison: Living in the Material World - a great doco.

Force Majeur is one of my favorites from the last ten years or so, and I'm glad that it is now being regularly understood as a comedy, because people used to look at me like I was a crazy person when I described it that way when it first came out.



And Frank is pretty solid as well.



As for Pecker, I wish I liked it more, but I seem to have a total inability to like anything Waters has done after Polyester beyond Serial Mom and Crybaby (and both of those are just pretty medium for me)

It's crazy that I still haven't seen The Room - it plays at my local arthouse cinema repeatedly, and as such I have to wonder at how much money Tommy Wiseau's film has made (Wikipedia says $4.9 million, which is still less than it's reported $6 million budget.) In any event, James Franco's take on Tommy W won me over completely in 2017 - at least as much as Tim Burtons' Ed Wood did in the mid-90s. It would make all the sense in the world to pair this with that aforementioned film using my 'honorable mention' slot, but I have to leave that for Bowfinger - a comedy that I don't see touted as much as I'd like, and one that I'm thankful for - you see, it gave me one last classic Steven Martin and Eddie Murphy performance combined. Frank Oz churned out a number of personal favourites for me, and Bowfinger always gets a laugh. I do love Ed Wood as well though. Nothing too obscure here - but I love all of these.

Okay - Belgian-Dutch film Ben X could be excessive considering it's brain-bending ending, but hell - go large or go home, and give your film a double-twist, half-pike, firm-footed and explosive "wait a minute" ending. It's why I love it so much. It's a film about a boy with Asperger's syndrome that feels like it was made by a boy with Asperger's syndrome. Get ready to sink into the world of MMORPG ArchLord, be bullied by a group of boys competing for the next 'World Championship of Bullying' (the drugs they force him to take must have cost something - these kids really put effort into terrorizing Ben) and be scared by the numerous times Ben ponders suicide in a dangerously impromptu way. Ben cannot communicate in ways we normally can, and in any event - he's a teenage boy. As he slowly gets closer to meeting his online ArchLord-playing crush, with everything in his life reaching a crescendo of frustration and drama, his story concludes in a way that exacts vengeance, shocks, surprises and ultimately gives us, the audience, a mixed sense of catharsis and sorrow. Most of all though, aside from the fact that we inevitably compare films like this to others which examine autism and coming-of-age, it's just a really pleasurable and unusual watch that I enjoy from time to time.

Onwards to my Top 50. I think Ben X is obscure enough to be granted a place of it's own without an honorable mention.

No film is as beautifully camp and silly as Flash Gordon, with the emphasis on the "Flash" as this romp just throws all the switches up to 10 and brings in Queen of all bands to squeal guitar riffs and scream in a frantic frenzy. In the meantime, to aid complete non-actor Sam J. Jones (a gloriously misguided bit of casting) some of the greatest thespians alive at the time are brought in to mix the worst with the best. Max von Sydow, Topol, Timothy Dalton, Mariangela Melato and Brian Blessed raise the average brilliance somewhat, which makes the casting of Jones even more incongruent. All the same, I love this movie. If you're going to make a Flash Gordon flick, then why not go to town like this production does - it's simply freakin' beautiful in tone, look, sound and soul. Most films like this I liked less as I got older and became more refined in taste, but Flash Gordon I liked even more, and more, and more - and that increase in affection and love is still increasing as the years pass by. To find something as silly but wonderful for an honorable mention, I came up with Hobo With a Shotgun, which belongs up here as well - a great homage that, and much loved by me as well. As I've said on Letterboxd : "When it comes to exploitation films that reference or pay homage to the most crazy and graphic of the 80s offerings, Hobo With a Shotgun is probably the best of all of them."

Soldier Blue is a tough watch, even edited down as it has been (even reading about what the original version showed is confronting) - but I applaud any filmmaker brave enough to show the general public the Sand Creek massacre as early as 1970. Hatred breeds savagery, and crimes against humanity aren't confined to Nazi Germany, Slobodan Milošević or Genghis Khan. In 1864 during the American Indian Wars the U.S. Army committed unspeakable atrocities against Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children - this film has a narrative that builds up to that event. Inspired by the war in Vietnam, it's a seminal piece of American filmmaking and I include it here as recognition of that. Overall it's a very good film that takes into account both sides of the 19th Century conflict, and I'm guessing it has a 'could hear a pin drop' effect on audiences that see it for the first time. There's only one film that can match it - 1984 TV Movie Threads, which imagines a future nuclear apocalypse in as realistic a fashion as possible - it's really something.

Beautiful film to watch. Transcendental, but also really down to earth and real, making this one movie that would make many film-lovers nostalgic. Noah Taylor, Loene Carmen, Ben Mendelsohn and Graeme Blundell all give incredible performances to compliment the wonderful story perfectly. The score is soft, and a little haunting, bringing the film's awesome visuals into a kind of timeless focus. I do believe that The Year My Voice Broke is one of the finest Australian films to come from this time period, and should have had international audiences flocking to it rather than to Crocodile Dundee. As an honorable mention I'm including the very good 2019 Australian film Babyteeth, which also features Ben Mendelsohn.

I have to admit that I'm kind of surprised Suspiria isn't in either the IMDb's nor Letterboxd's Top 250 - but their loss is my gain here. This Dario Argento horror classic plays around with a fable/fairytale kind of narrative and takes place in a witch-infested dance studio. What it does with colour, sound and cinematography transforms it into a surreal dream - which in form it really does resemble. It doesn't hurt at all that I love Jessica Harper - and in fact it was her that first drew me to the film. What else can I offer as an honorable mention but the remake, which completely reimagined everything and managed to stand on it's own as an atmospheric, haunting kind of film which I have to admit I liked? A rare remake that doesn't fall into many of the traps most others do.

While watching some movies I kind of feel like an eavesdropper, and for some reason I do when I watch this great Pedro Almodóvar film. A brilliant film in so many different ways - from the beauty and terrible ugliness captured on camera to the sickening actions we don't see, but have to contend with trying not to imagine. It has some great shots, and is a pleasure to watch (horrifying parts notwithstanding) - we're into some psychological depths here, which is a lot of what I find fascinating. As an honorable mention, a film that's equally hard to watch while being brilliant - Catherine Breillat masterly 2001 film Fat Girl, which takes us to different yet somehow similar places.

Threads is a horrifying film. I should revisit it someday.

I wouldn't describe Suspiria as obscure (it's probably the most well-known Italian horror film of all time), but though it took me a couple viewings to warm up to it, it's now one of my favorite horror films ever.

Talk to Her is also very good. It's the kind of film which is slightly creepy throughout its first act, but then the lengthy flashback in the first half puts the main character in a whole different context. I'm curious how it would fair with a rewatch.

I watched The Year My Voice Broke and Fat Girl in the Hall of Fames and liked them both, albeit with a couple reservations.

Talk to Her is great, and one of those movies that poses some uncomfortable questions.

Fat Girl, on the other hand, I did not care for. Breillat, in every film I've seen from her, feels the need to throw in elements that seem to be provocative just for the sake of being provocative, and I find that not only fake and exhausting, but I think it undercuts some genuinely good stuff she has going. She constantly goes to the well of putting two things on screen, one of which is an extreme version of the other, and nudging you like, "Get it?". After watching three movies from her and having the same reaction each time, I've taken her off my list of directors I'm interested in watching even if the reviews are good.

Right, and I resent that from my point of view,

I don't know if you've seen Anatomy of Hell, but in that one a gay man's dislike of a woman's body is used as a way of exploring misogyny. And, don't get me wrong, I think that a lot of misogyny exists in men of all different sexualities and that it's not just based in sexual desire. But I think that her habit of presenting extremes makes me think of anyone who wants to make a point about social issues, but is completely unwilling to acknowledge the nuance that comes with such heavy topics. A man not wanting to have sex with a woman and a man being, in principle, disgusted with the female body is not the same thing.