Underrated '96 - Sarah Jane

Sarah Jane has seen over 4,700 movies. She is partial to exploitation genre. She originally hails from Southern California but it currently stuck somewhere in the South West. She had lived in England and in Austin, TX for a time. Sarah Jane once studied to be a script supervisor. She generally uses a lot of curse words in her writing. She doesn’t write reviews as much asshe just writes some crap about what she’s just watched. Her ramblings can be found atwww.letterboxd.com/fookthis. Sarah Jane can also be found on Twitter at @FookThis.
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That Thing You Do! – Directed by Tom Hanks
This is one of those ‘if I come across it on television, no matter what scene it is on, I will watch it through until the end” kind of movies. My husband introduced me to this when we first met and I’ll be forever grateful to him. Everything about the film is perfect; the music, the performances, the direction… I dare you to try to be in a bad mood while watching this.

Sleepers – Directed by Barry Levinson
On all my wanderings on social media, I never encounter anyone ever mentioning this film. It’s got such a great cast; everyone from Brad Pitt and Robert De Niro to Brad Renfro and Minnie Driver. Based on the book by Lorenzo Carcaterra, this is a powerful film with rather unpleasant subject matter (the physical/sexual abuse of children in state custody) but definitely worth a watch.

Kingpin – Directed by The Farrelly Brothers
Now, I’m not usually one for ‘this’ type of humor but, I dunno, this one just makes me laugh out loud. Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid, and Bill Murray star in this movie about bowlers. Maybe it’s because I used to bowl in a league as a kid. Perhaps it is because Bill Murray’s hairstyle (or lack thereof) is just priceless. Yes, Kingpin is crude and rather rude but we all need that every once in a while, right?

Jude – Directed by Michael Winterbottom
This film, based on the novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, stars two of my favorite actors; Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet. I’ll watch pretty much anything the prolific Winterbottom makes. Eccleston plays Jude, a Victorian young man of the lower-class persuasion who longs to go to university but life gets in the way and he ends up cutting stones. He marries someone he doesn’t love (Rachel Griffiths) and then, when he does fall in love, it is with his cousin (Winslet). This film is dark and pretty harrowing. I would not recommend this as a double feature with Sleepers. You might not come out of it in one piece.

The Truth about Cats and Dogs – Directed by Michael Lehmann
Now, I am absolutely not one for “Rom-Coms” or “Chick Flicks”, really I even loath typing those two terms. Most of them really are aimed at the lowest common denominator. Does that make me a snob? Possibly, but most of the time those movies are just absolute shite. I think this manages to rise above the crap. Janeane Garofalo, Uma Thurman, and Ben Chaplin star in this little gem. Garofalo plays a veterinarian who hosts a call-in radio show about pets. Chaplin is a listener who calls in and asks Garofalo out on a date. She is insecure and instead of describing herself to him, she describes her neighbor, Thurman, instead. You can imagine the rest. A bit Cyrano de Bergerac, really. If you come across it one Saturday afternoon, give it a look.