A-List: Underrated Movies of the 2000s, Part One
By Josh Spiegel
December 17, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Something important here to note is that this is, like my other lists, representing my opinion only, and not anywhere near an exhaustive list. I've decided to split the two lists of movies here by years; this week, we'll look at movies from 2000-2004 and movies from 2005-2009, with one movie for each year. That, of course, doesn't mean that there weren't more underrated movies in these years; the films listed here are my choices for the most criminally underrated in their years. You, of course, may disagree with some of my choices, but such is life. We've all got different opinions, so feel free to share yours, whether they're in agreement, disagreement, or some of your own underrated picks.
Though it's not officially a list of honorable mentions, I wanted to throw out the names of a few other films that would fit on a list of underrated movies. Some of these films include A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Road to Perdition, The Man Who Wasn't There, Birth, Spartan, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, The Proposition, Punch-Drunk Love, Frequency, Stardust, Idiocracy, and Moon. The list could go on, but if that were the case, this entire article might amount to just listing out various movies. Let's not waste any more time and get to my list of underrated movies for the years 2000-2004.
2000: Unbreakable
Think back, if you can, and don't hurt yourself trying to do so, to when M. Night Shyamalan was not considered a joke of a director. Now, that may seem harsh to you, but this decade has not been kind to Mr. Shyamalan. In 2004, he made The Village, which was a laughably bad mess. In 2006, there was Lady in the Water, which would have been laughably bad had it not been so arrogant (or did you forget the idea that Shymalan cast himself as a writer whose work was so important that it would change the world?). Last year, Shyamalan outdid himself with The Happening, a movie that I cannot wait to watch again, as long as I am drinking hard liquor and shouting things at my TV screen. But, before all of that, there was a trifecta of greatness: The Sixth Sense, Signs, and in between, the dark superhero drama Unbreakable.
Starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and Robin Wright Penn, Unbreakable is a fascinating meditation on what it means to be given superhuman powers, and how a normal man has to deal with these changes. The plot's simple: Willis plays a pensive and unsure father with a marriage that's barely hanging on; at the beginning of the film, the train he's on gets into a crash and only he survives. More than that, he's completely unharmed. Somehow, as he's made to realize by Jackson's always-sick mentor of sorts, he's never been sick and can withstand pretty much anything. Unbreakable was meant to be the first film in a trilogy of superhero films, as is made obvious by the film's final twist. Though it's not a perfect film (the coda, which is a very quick explanation of what happens after the film ends, should have been nixed), it's a beautiful film to look at with some brilliant performances and sequences. A quick shout-out here to the cinematography, courtesy of Eduardo Serra, who was snubbed of an Oscar for the constantly moving widescreen camerawork. Shyamalan's never been better or more understated than in this film.
2001: Ghost World
There was a time when Scarlett Johansson was a good actor. Calm down, calm down; I'm being completely serious. Nowadays, Johansson is more well-known for appearing out and about in the world, than for her quirky choices of movies, such as The Man Who Wasn't There, Lost in Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring. Now, I've never thought she was a great actress (see my comments on Lost in Translation), but she used to have a good eye for projects. The 2001 dramedy Ghost World, based on the graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, is one such movie. Johansson co-stars as Rebecca, the best friend of the main character, Enid. They've been friends for years and, as the movie begins, are graduating high school with the ambition to do pretty much nothing. Eventually, their friendship becomes more fractured, as Rebecca wants to do something with her life, while Enid is content hanging around with and harboring a small crush on Seymour, a middle-aged record collector.
Ghost World is always quirky, but the characters, especially Seymour and Enid, are so well-drawn and fully developed so you never feel like the story is too artsy for its own good. Thora Birch, as Enid, delivers a solid and charming performances; Johansson has a smaller role as the film goes on, but she's always believable, especially when she begins to drift further and further away from her old friend. Steve Buscemi is, as always, great; as Seymour, he's constantly skirting the line between being friendly and being pathetic. Ghost World never got the complete recognition it deserved. The film's director, Terry Zwigoff, got a slightly bigger hit two years later in Bad Santa; still, this movie has the heart that Bad Santa, while very funny, doesn't have. In the end, Enid doesn't get what she wants, but she's so instantly prickly yet lovable that it's hard for you not to root for her.
2002: Insomnia
Before he was capable of making pretty much any movie he wanted to, Christopher Nolan worked his way up to the Hollywood elite by delivering unique, layered, and complex pieces of entertainment. His first U.S. film was the 2000 classic Memento, which just missed my top ten of the decade by a hair. The follow-up was the 2002 crime drama from Warner Bros. called Insomnia. The film had a singular main cast: Al Pacino as a elder and weathered L.A. policeman, Hilary Swank as a bright-eyed cop in a small town in Alaska, and as the murderer being chased by these two cops, Robin Williams. Yes, Robin Williams, recently of Old Dogs and RV. Whatever else he's been in recently, though, Williams is profoundly unsettling as a savvy pulp-fiction author who kills a teenage girl he falls for after she becomes uninterested in his advances. The twist here is that Williams' character sees Pacino inadvertently kill his partner during a foggy chase scene.
What does the cop do? Well, he's got to play by the murderer's rules; if he goes to his fellow cops with the knowledge of where to find this madman, he'll go to jail for a murder he committed, but one that he really didn't mean to commit. Or did he? Though some critics still find the original film, a Norwegian film starring Stellan Skarsgard, a richer and more complex study of human nature, there should be no discounting the Americanized version, which still manages to feel completely alien to most culture in the continental United States. Pacino is not only battling his own demons and Williams, but the time of year he's chosen to go to Nightmute, Alaska; it's the time of year when the summer bring perpetual daylight. Thus, the insomnia of the title. Nolan has obviously become wildly famous due to his Batman movies, and his upcoming Inception is easily one of the most anticipated films of 2010. Still, Insomnia proved that he wasn't just a big fluke of a director.
2003: Big Fish
Nowadays, when Tim Burton makes a movie, it's a relatively predictable choice. Of course Tim Burton is going to direct a remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and of course Johnny Depp is going to star as Willy Wonka. Of course Tim Burton is directing a new version of Alice in Wonderland, and of course Johnny Depp is going to be the Mad Hatter. Of course they'll team up to do Sweeney Todd. And so on. Most people feel Burton's career has leveled off from its previous awesomeness, but in 2003, he delivered a heartfelt, emotional, yet quirky examination of a father-son relationship, with his adaptation of Big Fish. For the most part, Big Fish was not only unlike most Burton films in being brightly colored and more upbeat than previous films, but the main cast was unlike any he'd worked with. The film stars Billy Crudup, Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange, Alison Lohman, and future Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard. Sure, Helena Bonham Carter shows up here, but that's just nitpicking.
The story, which weaves in tall tales about a young man growing up in the South and meeting his true love, is ostensibly about an embittered young man whose father is slowly dying and his attempts to construct a real paternal relationship. Crudup is the young man, Finney is his father as an old man, and McGregor is his father as the young man. The cast is uniformly excellent, but it's Burton's unique talent for creating indelible images coupled with some truly moving sequences that makes Big Fish a captivating experience. Are there other movies that make you cry while showing you visuals such as a circus frozen in time, Danny DeVito as a ringleader, or conjoined Siamese twins in the Korean War? I think not, folks. Big Fish definitely deserves a second chance from most viewers.
2004: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
This may be the most inexplicable choice on my list, if only because this movie managed to be relatively successful, despite not have any sequels. Based on the famous series of books by Daniel Handler, under the pessimistic pseudonym of Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events is a quirky and extremely funny film about what happens to a trio of siblings who become orphans after their parents die in a mysterious fire. They're turned over to their closest relative (in a manner of speaking), Count Olaf (Jim Carrey, in, what I would argue, his funniest performance). Olaf is a transparently evil actor who wants the children to be under his care only so he can get the fortune their parents left behind. The kids, all gifted with unusual talents, get wise to his game and run to other, kind-hearted relatives; however, Olaf disguises himself in such a way to fool these relatives, all to get money.
Though Carrey is the star here, playing (kind of) three roles, the ensemble cast is most impressive: Meryl Streep, Billy Connolly, Cedric the Entertainer, Craig Ferguson, Jane Lynch, Jennifer Coolidge, Luis Guzman, Timothy Spall, Catherine O'Hara, and the voice of Jude Law (as Snicket). I'm not particularly sure why A Series of Unfortunate Events didn't become more successful, but its stylish production design, slick direction (by Brad Silberling, who does his best work here), memorably low-key score by Thomas Newman, and many other technical attributes all helped the movie stand out. The film was an adaptation of the first three books in the series; though there won't be any follow-ups, the movie that we were given is one of the best non-Pixar family films of the past decade. If you haven't yet seen this movie, give it a try; if you've seen it, try it again.