What is your favorite underrated movie and why? What makes it underrated? How did you find it?

“October Sky” the under-rated true story about how Homer Hickam overcame his start in a coal town in W. Virginia to become a rocket scientist along with his doomed poverty-stricken friends. The haunting soundtrack will get you.

You know, there are so many.

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“I’m never going down in that mine again!”

“Mumford, why does everyone in this town like you?” “I don’t know. Why do you like me?”

“Mumford”, the story of a drug addict who cleans up and creates the identity of a psychologist in a small town where he makes many friends. It’s an incredible all star cast with all kinds of sub plots and plots twists.

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“Stir of Echoes” - this was the competition for “Sixth Sense” and came out the same time. I think it’s darker and much better than that movie and never gets credit for how good it is. It’s about and average guy and his average wife and their young son who sees dead people and how it impacts the entire nieghborhood. You don’t really see the end coming.

I can’t speak highly enough of “The Salton Sea”, the Val Kilmer black comedy that is sad, hilarious, incredibly violent and has multiple surprise twist endings.

Also, the “Station Agent” which is a perfect slice of life that could be maudlin but never panders or falls into melodrama. A tour de force.

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“Winter’s Bone” - Jennifer Lawrence’s first movie as the star and she carries the movie. This is one of my all time favorite movies about death and desperation and violence and meth.

“McDonald’s is down the street. Now get out of my restaurant!”

“The magic isn’t in what gets you together. The magic is in what keeps you together.”

When writing a novel, how can a character be developed well, but QUICKLY?

“Have you ever gotten laid by a… you know… normal sized woman?”

“A Very Good Year” with Russell Crowe and Marillon Cotillard, it’s his only comedy and she never looked sexier than in this movie. It was gentle and funny and not life changing but always worth a watch.

“Am I Danny Parker, meth freak or Tom Allen, trumpet player? What am I? Husband? Druggie? Judas Iscariot? Friend? Enemy? I don’t know anymore. Maybe you can tell me who I am, friend.”

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“Last Stop Wonderland” about a hopeless romantic seeking love through the Personals in the Boston Herald while well-meaning but hopeless plumber seeking to change his life crosses her path again and again and neigther notice. One of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s first movies.

“you gotta cut both your daddy’s hands off, child. If you only cut one off, the cops know that trick.”

“The voices told me to dig, so I’m digging!”

What would happen if the Soviet Union had simply annexed Manchuria after World War 2 or kept it independent as a puppet state allied them and separate from China as China was too weak too oppose it anyway?