Underappreciated Gems Archive

'Complete Works' Is Here to Class Up Your Summer Binge Watching

By Vivian Kane | Posted Under TV Reviews | Comments ()

Resurrecting 'Grim Fandango' and the Fulfillment of A Childhood Dream

By Corey Atad | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

7 Mostly Terrible Things That Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr Has Been Up To Since the Lewinsky Scandal

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

The Cancellation of Bunheads: Why TV's Most Underrated Show Deserved Better

By Amanda Mae Meyncke | Posted Under TV Reviews | Comments ()

Whenever the annual terrible "Every Breath You Take" mediocre creepy roommate/stalker film gets excreted on the unexpected masses like German porn, the names of the greats are heralded: Single White Female, and Fatal Attraction, and Taxi Driver. Well, of course....

They Can't All Be Swimf@n

By Brian Prisco | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

Herk Harvey's $30,000 dollar horror film Carnival of Souls (1962) is a cult-film, a low-budget, black and white shocker that spent years on cable access and in the public domain but still elicits both scares and confused looks. Whenever I...

The Ghost Inside

By Drew Morton | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

After launching themselves to the top tier of comedic directors with their seminal Airplane! (1980) and their spy-spoof follow up, Top Secret! (1984), directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker put aside their own brand of genre lampooning temporarily...

Stupidity Tries

By Drew Morton | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

"When I say that this is the most important motion picture you will ever attend my motivation is not financial gain but a firm belief that the delicate fabric that holds all of us together will be ripped apart unless...

The Most Important Motion Picture You Will Ever Attend

By Drew Morton | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

Dwayne Johnson's career is an enigma. It's been mentioned before, most eloquently in Agent Bedhead's career assessment, but he's got all of the tools to be a Hollywood superstar. He's handsome, built like a Greek god, funny, self-effacing, and a...

Maximum Ridiculosity

By TK | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

Perhaps I'm wrong in this assumption, but I've always felt that Joel and Ethan Coen's debut film, Blood Simple (1984), has a tendency to fall under the shadow of their later neo-noir accomplishments, most notably Fargo (1996) and No Country...

Communication Breakdown

By Drew Morton | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

French film theorist André Bazin thought that cinema was unique from any other art form thanks to its ability to represent reality. In his seminal essay "The Ontology of the Photographic Image," Bazin wrote that "Photography and cinema...are discoveries that...

I Like to Watch

By Drew Morton | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

Nicholas Roeg's directorial debut Walkabout (1971) is one of those films that one could justifiably write either briefly or at great length about. The script, an adaptation of James Vance Marshall's novel, was rumored to have been between 14 and...

Two Against Nature

By Drew Morton | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

First off, a note to all the readers expecting my promised review of Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974): it simply isn't going to happen because TK reviewed it a few years back. For the most part, it has been the editorial...

Good Day Sunshine

By Drew Morton | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

A year before Old School and three years before The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Wedding Crashes really kicked off the "Bromantic" era, a largely overlooked, poorly reviewed, and underappreciated Lady Bromance flick, The Sweetest Thing came and disappeared without much notice....

Your Penis is So Handsome

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Underappreciated Gems | Comments ()

First off, to those of you expecting a review of Chinatown (1974) as promised in the hint that was contained in the Blue Velvet (1986) piece, I apologize. Chinatown will be the next film covered in the retrospective. I simply...