Good filmmakers are rare to find. Great ones are rarer. But legendary filmmakers are deemed God’s gifts to mankind. A filmmaker attains the status of a legend over years of toiling and tweaking, developing a distinct style as well as always reinventing the status quo, finding and experimenting with new modes of storytelling. While we remember our favorite directors for their classics, some of their other films tend to take a back seat in the process. Here’s a look at some of the most underrated movies, from legendary directors, ranked.
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8 Lost Highway - David Lynch
October Films
David Lynch has a heartfelt propensity for everything absurd and surreal. His fondness for the darker, more mysterious side of humanity translates seamlessly into his cinema. In Lost Highway Lynch tells two parallel stories that intersect, causing acute, karmic mayhem. In the first story, a musician named Fred (Bill Pullman) is on the verge of insanity as he suspects his wife is having an affair with another man. The second story features a mechanic named Pete (Balthazar Getty), who’s been entrapped by a mysterious temptress who is cheating on her gangster boyfriend.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
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7 Days of Being Wild - Wong Kar Wai
In-Gear Pictures
Days of being Wild is directed by Wong Kar Wai, the demigod of Asia’s neon-lit cinema movement. The first part of the informal trilogy, together with his magnum opus In the Mood for Love and 2046, the film explores interpersonal relationship themes. The plot revolves around Yuddy, a Casanova, who’s known for breaking the girls hearts and the moment of truth when he realizes the woman who raised him isn’t his actual mother.
6 Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick
Warner Bros.
Stanley Kubrick’s periodic masterpiece is a glorious case study into the detailed recreation of the 18th century British Society. In Barry Lyndon, Barry, a rouge ascends to the high echelons of British society, by getting into a relationship with a rich widow and thereby assuming the identity of her dead husband. Even though the film is set in the past, Kubrick’s intuition about human characteristics and intrinsic motivations makes the film an eerily relatable watch.
5 The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo - David Fincher
Sony Pictures Releasing
Based on Stieg Larsson’s global bestselling book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a modern day Neo noir masterpiece. Directed by David Fincher, the film explores the mysterious disappearance of a business tycoon’s granddaughter, 40 years ago. The aging patriarch, Henrik Vagner, hires tainted journalist Michael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) along with his eccentric research assistant Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) to solve the mystery that’s left him befuddled for so long. As Blomkvist and Salander, get tangled in the spiders web, they soon realize there’s more than meets the eye. Set against a bleak backdrop of winter in Sweden, the film earned an Academy Award for Best Editing, while Mara received the Academy Nomination for Best Actress.
4 Charulata - Satyajit Ray
R.D. Bansal & Co.
Indians have put Satyajit Ray on a pedestal and rightly so. The auteur is single-handedly responsible for representing Indian cinema and its historical sensibilities on a global scale. While Ray’s better known for his works such as Pather Panchali and Aparajito, some of his other works like Charulata are often overlooked. Through Charulatha, Ray explores the themes of repressed feminine sexuality and loneliness.
3 Yojimbo - Akira Kurosawa
Toho
Akira Kurosawa acts as Ray’s Asian counterpart, representing the cinematic sensibilities of his time, by placing Japanese cinema on the map. Irrespective of the geopolitical location, Akira Kurosawa is often idolized as one of the most influential filmmakers to have ever lived. Kurosawa’s filmography consists of multiple award-winning films such as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Throne of Blood and Ran. With such a humongous body of work, it’s only understandable to have overlooked a few films, with Yojimbo being the most overlooked. Yojimbo revolves around a nameless Ronin (Toshiro Mifune), who orchestrates a full scale gang war between two rivals in a small village by playing for both sides in the conflict, causing insecurity and chaos to ensue.
2 The King of Comedy - Martin Scorsese
20th Century Fox
The King Of Comedy is regarded as the intellectual launchpad for Todd Phillips’s Joker. Though, on a more substantial level Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy is a much more refined and thought through film, when compared to its modern day amalgamation. In Martin Scorsese’s film, DeNiro plays the role of a delusional talk show host, who has his own talk show, which he hosts in his mother’s basement. Things take a turn for the absurd when he meets an actual talk show host and starts obsessively stalking the host in a bid to have a moment in the limelight.
1 Incendies - Dennis Villeneuve
micro_scope
Before he made sci-fi epics like Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, Villeneuve was responsible for realistic films such as Enemy and Sicario. Right before this, in 2010, Denis Villeneuve made one of his most underrated films; Incendies. A sort of scavenger hunt into the grisly realities of recent history, Villeneuve’s film revolves around a daughter’s search for her mother’s true identity and journey that leaves her exacerbated towards the end.
