In Continuum.

More often than not, you are going to hear a few reviews from your friends or read about them in the papers before watching a film yourself. It is almost impossible to run away from the fact that people are just eager to share their opinions with you in regards to the fantastic/horrible film that they just saw. We look to the critics at times, or the experts, to tell us which film to watch and which film to avoid this Friday evening while being out with your friends. While some people may proudly proclaim their sovereignty away from the influence of the critics, it is inevitable that the words that they say or the ratings that they give may hold sway to our final decisions, whether we like it or not. The truth is, they have watched more films and review more films than either you or I, and they are in way better position to judge if a film is bad or not. The choice, however, is always going to be up to us as to whether or not we want to pay for the tickets or if we just want to download it from the internet, illegally. 

I am the sort of person that is rather particular about what the reviewers say, especially when it comes to films. Of course, I do not follow just any other reviewer out there who has a thing or two to say about a certain film. After all, there are also reviewers out there with extremely bad taste, and there are also the ones who'd go against the views of the reviewer community just to be different from the rest. I have a few film reviewers that I follow religiously, and their views are also the ones that I use as a yardstick of sorts when it comes to movies. They are usually right about the films, and it has been the case for as long as I can remember. Still, even critics can be wrong about certain films at times and give them ratings that they certainly do not deserve. After all, everybody has different tastes in movies, and we'd naturally have conflicts every once in a while. The following is a couple of under-rated films which I think the critics completely overlooked for one reason or another. 

Rotten Tomatoes: 61%
People always say that Steven Spielberg cannot go wrong with his movies. You hardly need a trailer for any of his movies at times, you just need a stamp with his name on it after the MPAA notice at the beginning of every trailer to draw the crowds in. For a long time, his name has been synonymous with cinematic excellence, with the quality of his films being undoubted for a very long time. Along came The Terminal, a quirky film about an unlucky tourist from a fictional country in Eastern Europe being trapped in the New York airport because while he was flying in the plane through the air, the government of his country experienced a military coup. That also meant that his citizenship was not recognized and thus, was not allowed to check out from the airport once he arrived. 

The complaints revolving around the film has a lot to do with the ending of the film. We are presented with this lovable character who falls in love with a flight attendant, only to lose her at the very end of everything. It was the perfect anti-climatic story line to some, but that was the more realistic ending in my opinion. People argued that the film felt like a headless fly that headed nowhere for the most part of the film, which may be true to some degree. Still, this is the story of a man trapped in the airport, the whole beauty of the story is in how disorientated he is. I felt that Tom Hanks gave some of his best comedic performance in this film, something which we haven't seen a lot of since his earlier days as an actor. We saw a glimpse of it in Forrest Gump, but the role of Vicktor Navorski came a decade after. I thought he perfectly nailed the part as this friendly and lovable man from Eastern Europe, and the scene when he realized that his country was no long recognized was probably some of the most emotional stuff I have seen onscreen in a long time. This film may be way too unbelievable at times, but if you want reality, we can always turn to our evening news. 

The Science of Sleep

Rotten Tomatoes: 69%
First and foremost, 69% is by no means "rotten" in the standards of rottentomatoes.com. Still, that kind of score is not a score somebody should be excited about. If you want to use that website as a sure gauge to the kind of movie you'd enjoy, you'd want your movie to be somewhere in between 75 and 100 percent, not anything below that. While The Science of Sleep has gained quite a popular cult following, the critics were surely not very excited about it when it was released. 

The Science of Sleep is the first film by Michel Gondry after his fame as a film director skyrocketed after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Being the man behind numerous famous television advertisements and music videos, this man's experimental styles have attracted a battalion of fans behind him even before the film was released. Without the watchful eyes of Charlie Kaufman over this production this time however, this film spun wildly out of control according to most of the critics out there, and it became the beakers and the test tubes for the director to play around with. A lot of people out there complained that the film did not have a very central theme, if it had a theme at all. The film is really about how the protagonist is constantly confused about his real life and his life in the dreams at night, and he has to deal with that while falling in love with his beautiful neighbor from next door. 

Naturally, if you are watching a film about dreams, you shouldn't expect it to be, in any way, coherent. The film provided an interesting blend of reality and dreams, and the low-budget style of film making made it even more alluring. People have complained that Michel Gondry can be too self-indulgent at times, putting too much attention into experimenting rather than what the story really is all about. However, I feel that that is the beauty of his style, the way he dares to experiment - something which is lacking in a lot of films these days. This film is sweet and innocent in its own rights, no matter how you want to see it. It is intimate and personal, and it is something which not a lot of films out there can accomplish. 

Rotten Tomatoes: 49%
Amongst the list of favorite films that I have, none of them is more critically disputed than Meet Joe Black. The only reason why anybody bothered to watch this film back in 1998 was because the first teaser trailer of Star Wars Episode I was attached to the film's release. Most of the audience actually left the theater after the trailer despite paying full price for the tickets, and the rest of the audience supposedly sat through the entire three hours of the film, only to go home and pan the film from every possible angle on the internet. 

I personally never watched it in the theaters, but I had the privilege of watching this film on HBO a couple of years ago, and I must say that this is one of the most under-rated films of all time. Some people call this film a chick-flick, or a film meant for girls. Seriously, there are so many aspects of this film that is flawless that all the other films that got a higher rating should be completely ashamed of. This film is exquisite, this film is elegant. This film is everything a love story should be and more, and most of the people out there were turned off by the film simply because of its running length. The truth is, if you are going to make your film three hours long, people would like it to have epic battles, epic amount of bloodshed, or epic amount of nudity. Not a lot of people can appreciate a three hour long film with just two person falling in love, that's too long and too boring for them to endure. Scroll through the reviews online for this film, and most of them are going to say that they couldn't sit through the entire movie. Still, I must defend this film by saying that I don't think any of the three hours was wasted in this film. Everything, to me, was perfectly paced and carefully written. Every detail was taken care of, even in the scenes without any dialogues whatsoever. This film allowed the characters to breathe, allowed the story to stretch, and drew the audiences into the story without even trying very hard. 

There are some complaints about the fact that Brad Pitt's acting was wooden in this film. He played Death, what were you expecting? I thought the amount of emotions that he put forth was carefully calibrated to the right amount, and the love scenes in between him and Claire Forlani was tastefully done to say the least. We've already seen scenes that involve two lovers walking in different directions on a busy street, only to turn back to look at the other person at the wrong times. It's cliche, every film does it. But this film does it with such class that I couldn't help but smile at myself like a silly schoolboy. The writing in this film was beautifully done too, and it reminded me somewhat of the part of Martin Brest's career when he also filmed the brilliant film called Scent of a Woman. This film is totally under-rated, and it was such a blasphemous move to edit the film down to two hours just to satisfy those impatient moviegoers who cannot appreciate a slow-moving movie with heart. It's a shame, it really is.

Like I mentioned, 69% is definitely not a score that one should be ashamed of. Yet, Closer definitely deserves a score much higher than 69% over at rottentomatoes.com. This film is not my top three romantic film of all time for no reasons at all, and one shouldn't assume that it is because this film is the kind of lovey-dovey film you'd want to watch on Valentine's Day. This film is perhaps one of the best acted, best directed, and best written films I have ever watched in my entire life. A 69% rating is obviously an insult to a great film like that, and I think I may have a reason why.

When I saw this film myself, I was rather disappointed by the fact that it wasn't the kind of love story that I expected. Truth to be told, I wasn't expecting the kind of love story that involved four adults cheating on each other, a film with so much honesty and one that placed so much emphasis on sex. I remember watching it in the living room when I brought the DVD home, and I certainly didn't want my parents to be around while Julia Roberts and Clive Owen argued over the amount of orgasms she had with Jude Law in the infamous break-up scene. I was really turned off, but I knew that I needed to give that film a second shot. So I gave the film a few years to sit on my shelves, and took it off some time last year and threw it into my DVD player. Boy, have things changed.

I enjoyed this film because of how real it all felt. The truth is, relationships are not all sugar-coated, love isn't nice. Love punches you in the guts, rips you to shreds and dumps you in the nearest drain at times. This film does not censor what happens in a break up, it does not try to cover up what couples go through while they are in that state of love dilemma. It is raw, it is crude, and not a lot of people are used to that kind of love story being unfolded on the screen. People still like to watch films that puts them in an alternate universe, an universe with ex-boyfriends doing anything they can to win you back. Stuff like that don't happen in real life, and that's what Closer tells you. While doing that, it slaps you in the first a couple of times and maybe knees you in the balls too. At the end of the day, people didn't like this film because it was just, well, not their cup of tea. It does not deserve a 69% rating, and even a 96% rating is too low in my own books. 

Rotten Tomatoes: 51%
The Fountain suffered from the hype that surrounded it before it was released. After all, it is by the same director that made Requiem for a Dream, and all the fans were eager to see what he had installed when he announced that he was going to helm the project that was shelved by the studio for the longest of times. The film was initially thought to be impossible to film, and the production cost actually skyrocketed to a point when the director had to fork out his own money just to make it all happen, with the agreement from Huge Jackman and Rachel Weisz that their pay would be decreased. The end result is a film universally panned by the critics simply because of how ambitious it was - in the wrong direction, they said. Everybody's expectations for the film was way too high to meet, and the end result must have disappointed a lot of critics, especially the fans.

I gave this film a shot at the end of last year because I needed one more film at the rental to get the discount. So I randomly picked a film off the shelves and decided that I'd spend the weekend doing a movie marathon. I started with this film that night, and it blew me away completely because of how deep the film went. I think this film broke the third wall of movies in the sense that, it provided the opportunity for the viewers to come up with a dozen different interpretations in regards to the film itself. Movies have been known to be one of the least dynamic of mediums out there, simply because the film doesn't change no matter how many times you watch it. The performances are the same, the cinematography is the same, everything remains unchanged. However, with the layers being laid on top of one another in this film, it is not difficult to see this film in a different light in the second, or third time you decide to watch it. 

This is one of those movies out there that I'd understand if you tell me that you hate it with a passion. This film is clearly not for everybody out there simply because of how twisted it is. It is not straight forward, it is not linear. It does not treat the audience as a passive group of viewers, and it does so in a way that is not pretentious at all. The Fountain is a brilliant film only if you are willing to look deeper than the surface and to suspend yourself to a different level of realism. 51% is a little harsh in my opinion, I think this film is really under-rated in every way possible. I am sure that if the unedited version of the film is released now, it may garner a higher approval rating from all around. Still, this film is special in my heart, and no ratings or reviews out there are going to change that fact.