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The 19 Most Underrated Movies on Netflix

Is a movie too underrated? It raises many difficult questions. What scale is used to assess the film? What scale is used to assess a film’s popularity? Both the term as well as the concept can be flawed.

But theyAreIt is convenient to support works which have inspired us but have been forgotten or neglected. This is a list of movies that may be underappreciated. I suggest the milder adjective It is often overlooked.Some films that were not popular at the time were forgotten by year-in-year-out releases. Other pictures received negative reviews but are still worth another look. And one is a largely overlooked gem, made in 2020 and released in the United States in 2021, a picture that has earned a great deal of praise from critics but still hasn’t benefited from any groundswell of popular support. As a group, these films are invitations to explore your queue for more lost gems. Cinephiles are treasure hunters at heart.
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The Disciple

Chaitanya Tamhane, writer-director, has created a beautiful, deeply moving film about Aditya Modak, an aspirant star in Indian classical music. His gifts might not be sufficient to win him the respect and acclaim that he deserves. Is it possible—or even a good idea—to live for art? The Disciple—one of the finest films of the 2021 release year—weighs both the joys and the consequences of trying to do so.

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By the Sea

This melodrama directed and written by Angelina Jolie was a hit upon its debut in 2015. But in addition to being gorgeous to look at (thanks to its French seaside setting, and cinematography by Christian Berger), this story of a complicated, unraveling marriage—starring Jolie and Brad Pitt, at a time when their own marriage had hit rocky shoals—has a dreamy, moody shape. It’s a story about people in trouble, charting their own risky way out.

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Croupier

Mike Hodges—director of the icy-great 1971 Get Carter,The gloriously crazy 1980, Flash Gordon—has been a maddeningly un-prolific director, disappearing for years, if not decades, between movies. Hodges was resurrected in 1998 almost out of thin air. Croupier,Clive Owen delivers a stellar performance as an ambitious, coolly talented writer. Owen returns to the work that he loves and hates to make his living. Remember those? The picture was a huge success in North America upon release. It’s great enough to deserve rediscovery.

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Atlantics

French director Mati Diop’s swimmy romantic dream of a movie won a Grand Prize of the Jury at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, and earned ecstatic reviews from critics. The story of Traore’s and Mame Bineta Sane in Dakar is a love story about their separation. Traore sets off to seek a better life. See if you’re not caught up in its starry net.

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Juliet’s letters

The 2010 romance comedy was a gentle, luminous and charming romantic comedy. It was directed by Gary Winick. It’s time to make a change. Amanda Seyfried (who is finally being recognized as the terrific actor she is) plays a young woman seeking the wisdom of Shakespeare’s tragic heroine in the Italian countryside. Instead, she meets an older woman—played by perhaps our finest living actress, Vanessa Redgrave—who is herself in search of a lost love. If I tell you that that erstwhile lover is played by Redgrave’s own real-life lost—and then found—love Franco Nero, and that the two are spectacular together, will you watch?

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American

In 2007, Anton Corbijn—who first made his name as a rock’n’roll photographer—gave us the superb drama Take controlThis tragic tale told of Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis. Corbijn’s second feature, American. from 2010, wasn’t nearly as acclaimed—maybe because a contemplative thriller that’s low on explosions, car chases and even dialogue seems an unlikely picture for a rock photographer to make. But the movie’s austere stylishness deserves a second chance. George Clooney is a secret agent who uses specialized skills to hide in the Italian countryside. He’s a man who, it first appears, has no center—and watching Clooney wander toward his character’s lost self is one of this movie’s great pleasures.

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Christine

Christine Chubbuck was a news reporter from Sarasota in Florida who committed suicide on air. Antonio Campos’ sensitively handled 2016 film tells the story of events leading up to that tragic incident, and Rebecca Hall is extraordinary as Chubbuck: It’s tempting for a performer who’s playing an alienated, isolated person to just put up a wall of inscrutability. But Hall’s Christine draws us closer rather than pushing us away—this performance is a quiet, multidimensional marvel.

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Don’t miss out

Chadwick Boseman, an exceptional performer, had his career come to a halt as it was just getting started. His greatness was apparent even in his early film performances, among them his turn as James Brown in Tate Taylor’s 2014 biopic Take the first step.It is an experimental movie, so not all of it is successful. But Boseman is wondrous to watch, giving us a portrait of a man whose staggering gifts—accompanied by grand show-biz braggadocio and boldness—made him a royal among American performers.

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Double Jeopardy

Do you have a lot of household chores to complete, such as ironing? Time to fire up this 1999 firecracker of a domestic thriller, directed by Bruce Beresford, in which Ashley Judd plays a woman who’s framed and imprisoned for her husband’s murder—and who hatches a revenge plan when she learns he’s still alive. Bruce Greenwood plays the sexy—but evil—spouse. Tommy Lee Jones is a by-the book parole officer and brings a lot of cragginess. There is nothing in Double Jeopardy is remotely realistic, but you’ve probably got enough realism in your life already. That pile of shirts isn’t going to iron itself.

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Crimson Peak

Guillermo del Toro may be an Academy Award winner, but that doesn’t mean every one of his films has gotten the notoriety it deserves. Crimson Peak from 2015, is a work of spectacular, lurid lunacy involving a young newlywed and novelist (Mia Wasikowska) who’s plunged into a whirl of intrigue involving a tumble-down mansion, various unsavory family secrets and some grisly, menacing ghosts. Grab a glass of Blood-Red Cranberry Cocktail and get ready to dive in.

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Stardust

In this delightful 2007 adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel, Claire Danes plays a star who falls from the sky, and she’s a valuable commodity. More than a few people want what she’s got: Charlie Cox is the lad who tries to capture her to impress the woman he thinks he loves (Sienna Miller); Michelle Pfeiffer is a witch who needs certain celestial components to recapture her youth. It’s a romantic, dreamlike fantasy that is both charming and humorous.

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The King

David Michôd’s The King from 2019, is an entertaining riff on Shakespeare’s Henriad, with everyone’s Tiger Beat crush Timothée Chalamet as the prince who will become Henry V, if only he can stop partying and carousing. But the real star of the show is Joel Edgerton’s Falstaff. Grouchy and wary and tender, he’s a sozzled hedonist seemingly out for himself—though his party-animal facade is just a mask for his bottomless generosity.

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Be Loving

Interracial marriages were only made legal in the fifty states of America in 1967. Director Jeff Nichols’ Be in loveFrom 2016, the film tells the story about the couple who brought this legislation into existence, Mildred Loving and Richard Loving. Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton play the roles brilliantly. Although Negga was nominated for an Academy Award, this stirring movie never really found the audience it deserved—and it may be even more resonant five years after its release, as a reminder that our country is hardly as progressive as we’d like to believe.

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Lingua Franca

In this 2019 film, writer-director Isabel Sandoval stars as an undocumented Filipina working as a live-in caretaker for the elderly Olga (played by the late Lynn Cohen), in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach. Olivia is also a trans woman, which adds layers of complexity to her life: To obtain a green card, she’s seeking to marry a U.S. citizen, a quest that becomes even more complicated when Olga’s roguish grandson, Alex (Eamon Farren), moves in. This is a gorgeous, delicate picture about finding your place in a setting that may not always be hospitable; in other words, it’s simply a film about living in the world.

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Rush

Director Ron Howard tells the story of the rivalry between English racecar driver James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and the Austrian-born speed demon Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) in this lively, sporty movie from 2013. Howard is the man behind glamour pictures such as Apollo 13 The Beautiful MindIt seems unlikely that someone would choose to direct a film about racing rivals with hotheaded heads, but he made his debut as a director with Grand Theft AutoRoger Corman is a shlock impresario.

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Wilderpeople: Hunt

Before New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi became part of the Marvel directors’ stable—but after he made the glorious vampire comedy The Shadows: What Do We Do?—he brought us this buoyant, expansive coming-of-age story. Twelve-year-old Ricky (Julian Dennison) seems to be a juvenile delinquent in the making, until he’s sent to live in the middle of nowhere with Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and her gruff, laconic husband Hec (Sam Neill). What follows is a wilderness adventure and a story of how mismatched personalities learn to connect with one another, all garnished with Waititi’s characteristic, oddball stamp.

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Mudbound

Adapted from Hillary Jordan’s 2008 novel of the same name, this 2017 film, beautifully directed by Dee Rees, is an intimate epic about two American farming families, one Black and one white, working the land in the Mississippi Delta in the 1940s. Mudbound It serves as both a visual reminder and a picture of American racism in the mid-century and American injustice. And the superb cast—including Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige and Carey Mulligan—ensure that every minute is deeply felt and believable.

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Bright Star

Jane Campion, director of this film, presents a fictionalized account of John Keats’ love affair with Fanny Brawne, a poet (Ben Whishaw), in this beautiful 2009 film. The duo’s relationship was relatively short but deeply passionate, largely recorded in letters that Brawne kept. Campion weaves all of this into a simple, erotic love story which never reaches for sentimentality.

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Bank job

In Roger Donaldson’s dazzling 2008 heist movie, Jason Statham plays a family man with a shady past who’s pulled back to a life of crime by an old neighborhood friend (Saffron Burrows). Based on a true-life robbery in 1971 London. The picture captures the spirit of the time and portrays a Great Britain trapped in the middle between pre-punk and post-swinging London. If you’re not careful, Bank job is lively and clever, it’s also brushed with an aura of desperation, thanks in part to Statham’s soulful performance, which proves that he’s a much better actor than many of his movies require him to be.

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