> I was reading through the "Movie-a-minute" feature, and I was happy to see that one of my nominees for Most Underrated Movie was given four and one-half stars. "Ever After" was a wonderful movie, I think, and I watch it whenever it comes on TV.

"At-A-Glance Film Reviews," right? I wouldn't be so obnoxious as to correct the error except that I was envisioning scores of readers scouring Movie-A-Minute for something of critical value.

At any rate, "Ever After" is indeed a particular favorite of mine. It's energetic when it could have been soppy, progressive when it could have been preachy, and it has exceptionally well-written dialogue for a kind of movie that so often suffices to distract from artless, functional words with lavish sets and costumes.

Intrigued by this subject (hey, I'm always up for a good movie thread) I did a search on At-A-Glance to see what movies I especially liked that have not received a commensurate amount of publicity. To keep things simple, I restricted by search to cover movies from 1980 to the present. It's rarer to find underrated movies older than that, because usually underrated movies eventually get rediscovered. (Some of the greatest movies ever made took decades to be recognized -- Citizen Kane, for example.)

The most underrated movie I could find is one in current release. "Moulin Rouge" is possibly my pick for the best movie of this year, last year, and the year before. It is great in many ways, most significantly its relentless energy and creativity.

More underrated movies:

Almost Famous (2000) - rock band comedy/pseudo-biography
The Assignment (1997) - espionage thriller
Barton Fink (1991) - everything
Beloved (1998) - Civil War era epic drama
Clockwise (1986) - John Cleese comedy
Courage Under Fire (1996) - Gulf War drama/mystery
Dark City (1998) - brilliant speculative futuristic film
Dead Again (1991) - Hitchcockian thriller
Deathtrap (1982) - double crossing con man game
Defending Your Life (1991) - Albert Brooks comedy
Do the Right Thing (1989) - critically acclaimed, commercially ignored Spike Lee film
The Dream Team (1989) - mental ward comedy
Ever After (1998) - talked about it
Frequency (2000) - time-bending mystery/thriller with a heart
Funny Bones (1995) - inexplicable
Gattaca (1997) - like Dark City, a thought-provoking speculative futuristic thing
The Gingerbread Man (1998) - Robert Altman-directed John Grisham flick
The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989) - as hilarious as the original
Head Above Water (1996) - con game, murder, revenge, wickedly dark humor
High Road To China (1983) - adventure
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) - surreal twisting of 1930s screwball comedies
The Iron Giant (1999) - unfairly overlooked animated film
Little Voice (1998) - amazing British comedy/drama
Living Out Loud (1998) - intelligent, original character drama
Lone Star (1986) - broad, sprawling, epic mystery drama
Man on the Moon (1999) - bio of Andy Kaufman
Matilda (1996) - enchanting children's film
Memento (2000) - brilliant mystery thriller
Mumford (1999) - very offbeat comedy
Murder 101 (1991) - made for TV thriller
Mute Witness (1994) - delightfully fun thriller (with one gruesome non-fun scene)
The Negotiator (1998) - action film with a brain
Noises Off (1992) - unbridled hilarity
Out of Sight (1998) - Steven Soderbergh/Elmore Leonard great
The Pirates of Penzance (1983) - best Gilbert & Sullivan production I've ever seen
The Player (1992) - Robert Altman's sardonic take on the darker side of Hollywood
Pleasantville (1998) - one of the best movies of 1998
Primary Colors (1998) - great political film, unfairly overlooked
The Prince of Egypt (1998) - sweeping animated biblical epic
Radioland Murders (1994) - madcap murder comedy
The Red Violin (1998) - another of 1998's finest
Short Cuts (1993) - Robert Altman's masterpiece
A Simple Plan (1998) - powerful film noir
That Thing You Do! (1996) - too innocently fun to be taken seriously these days
Three Kings (1999) - an actually original war film
Treasure Island (1990) - best adaptation of the book there is
Unbreakable (2000) - unfairly overlooked because it wasn't The Sixth Sense
The War of the Roses (1989) - a cutting, cunning, wicked black comedy
The Whole Nine Yards (2000) - surprisingly fun hit man comedy
Without a Clue (1988) - surprisingly fun Sherlock Holmes comedy
Zero Effect (1998) - detective flick with original characters

Most of these have reviews on At-A-Glance; some just have ratings. All I rate at least four stars, and note that there is a huge difference between four stars and five stars.

Looking back over this list, it's interesting how many truly *original* films there are on it. The great genre films, for the most part, aren't there. Great movies that are saleable -- the ones that, while great, are not original and can therefore be accurately summed up in a two minute trailer -- aren't present on the list. (Sure, there are a few, like "The Gingerbread Man" and "The Prince of Egypt," but more common are truly unique films like "Memento" and "The Red Violin.") And therefore you should probably not pay much attention to my few-word blurbs. If a two-minute trailer can't convey the essence of a movie, four words can't either. Certainly "detective flick" does not begin to suggest that which is "Zero Effect."

My personal favorites in the list? Barton Fink, Dark City, Dead Again, Ever After, Funny Bones, Gattaca, The Gods Must Be Crazy II, Memento, Mute Witness, Noises Off, Pleasantville, The Red Violin, and Short Cuts.

The irony of it all is that these are not titles unknown to movie fanatics such as me. The casual moviegoing public may be interested in these titles, because they don't get the attention they are worthy of, but I bet it's not much help to other people like me. But there ARE great titles out there with even lesser profiles. Great movies are lost in the shuffle all the time. This is the main reason I turn to critics. I don't need them to tell me if "Tomb Raider" is good mindless action or bad mindless action. But I am certainly grateful to critics for pointing me toward great films that I otherwise would never know existed.