I’ll have to second, third or fourth the comments about Life Aquatic, Royal Tennenbaums and Jay and Silent Bob…three stellar movies that don’t get enough respect.
My favorite that no one really seems to have heard of, I guess you’d call it a cult classic that certainly didn’t capture the fancy of either the critics or the moviegoing public is an early ‘90s movie (I think 1991) called The Dark Backward. It stars Judd Nelson, Bill Paxton, Wayne Newton, Lara Flynn Boyle, James Caan and Rob Lowe. It is the story of Marty (Nelson), a nerdy garbageman by day who dreams of becoming a stand up commedian and practices his humorless routine at open mic night, and Marty’s accordion playing friend Gus (Paxton), his fellow garbageman who practices all manner of grotesque perversion, such as licking the breasts of a dead woman he found in the dump, or making out with three 500 pound plus ladies simultaneously. The film has the feel of a future gone horribly awry (think Robocop, where you’ve got these catchphrases for products that don’t really exist, or maybe Futurama). The whole thing is very dark and perverse, and only becomes more strange when Marty wakes up one day with a lump growing out of his back. Marty’s Dr. (Caan) is useless, putting a bandaid on the bump and telling him it’s nothing to worry about. Each day the lump gets bigger until it turns into a fully grown third arm. Gus helps Marty exploit his newfound deformity by hooking him up with a sleazy talent agent (Newton) who gets him booked on a TV show starring a local personality (Lowe). Unfortunately, as quickly as the arm appears, it disappears, leaving Marty in the lurch, until he finds the key to success as a commedian…talking about his life experience now gives him an abusridst routine to which audiences are actually surprisingly receptive. It’s a weird, weird movie, but never before have I seen someone so expertly craft such a strange and perverse atmosphere. It’s a very dark comedy and not for the faint of stomach, but well worth a viewing.