"For Your Consideration...Again"

Here at the palacial studios of Fat Man After Dark, we love to analyze and reanalyze the best in entertainment. I have been thinking about underrated movies, movies that perhaps were not big hits but deserve another glance. For your consideration...again, I offer the following four films:

4. Waterworld

Considering a huge bomb but the movie actually didn't do that bad on a worldwide basis. Kevin Costner is not one of my favorite actors; he isn't even in my top thousand actors. However this is not such a terrible film. Dennis Hopper as the evil Deacon is the best thing going and while the science behind the movie has holes big enough to drive a truck through and there are some cringe-worthy moments (the "kiss of life" scene), it is worth another glance.

3. Idiocracy

This one was destroyed by an internal coup. After test audiences hated it and because of its anti-big business satiric themes, Idiocracy was buried. Fortunately it has caught on more because of showings on cable television and DVD sales. The story of a future world where people are ridiculously stupid and corporations are everywhere should be in everyone's Netflix queue. It's that damn good.

2. Southland Tales

From the man behind Donnie Darko comes a story about politics, greed, armageddon, and teen horniness. Dwayne "Don't Call Me The Rock" Johnson is an actor with political ties, Sarah Michelle "Don't Call Me Buffy" Gellar is a porn star looking to break out, and Sean William "Don't Call Me Stiffler" Scott is two brothers with a very dirty secret.

This movie made less than a million dollars at the box office, got booed at the Cannes Film Festival, and was watched by BMAD and myself in a theater in Georgetown with a half-dozen people tops. Why does it deserve another look? It is a unique take on the near future with a very strange cast including several former Saturday Night Live players and the always odd Wallace Shawn. The DVD was my birthday gift to BMAD and I also own the graphic novel prequel. So yeah I feel it is worth redemption.

1. Clue

Clue has a special place among the FMAD inner circle as it's one of our favorite movies. We know it well enough to go on the road and perform it as a play if we needed to. The cast is tremendous and would take an entire article just to go into detail on them all. The script is great and includes a ton of memorable moments. But where does it stand? It was a box office bomb that hasn't gotten the proper treatment on DVD. This is an outrage, you can't keep us prisoner. I demand that Clue gets the recognition it deserves NOW.

Now would anyone care for fruit, or dessert?