I WON'T RECOMMEND THIS MOVIE I THINK YOU SHOULD WATCH

Do you know those kinds of movies, movies that you enjoy but you may be hesitant to recommend that someone watch. I'm always cautious recommending movies to people, everyone has different tastes and even when I can clearly determine if a movie is "good" or "bad" (as opposed to "I liked it" or "didn't like" it) I think it's quite arrogant to assume that just because you have a definition of good that everyone else should share it.

But all things being subjective, I will recommend films that I feel are good or that I feel may agree with a certain person's esthetic. I like action movies and while I am no fan of violence per se, I can accept fake movie violence if everything else in the film meshes; but I know some people are never comfortable with stage blood no matter how it is presented, so to those people I would never recommend The Expendables, a movie I considered a comedy but others would consider too violent.

Having said all that, there are still a few movies that I hesitate to recommend to people because, no matter how much I might like them, they're just weird.

This train of thought was set on the track by a movie I've seen in the past and recently purchased on DVD:

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU was a movie from 2004 directed by Wes Anderson and starring Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jeff Goldblum and many others.

The film is packaged as a comedy and it has its share of obvious laughs but it is a lot more than that. Or at any rate the comedy is different from what is normally shoved down our throats. Murray plays Steve Zissou, a Cousteau-like underwater film maker whose glory days are all behind him and who sets out to recapture that glory by capturing a mythical shark that killed his partner.

Murray, along with John Cleese, is one of the most hilarious men on the planet but here he is at his dead pan best and much of the film's humour is understated, or barely suggested. Much of the antics of Steve and his crew, on paper, could be described as madcap but the acting and Anderson's direction delivers it all so dryly, so matter of factly, that it comes across as just plain odd.

There are many strange touches: A character who may or not be Zissou's son depending on the reaction of other characters, a soundtrack that is comprised of David Bowie songs performed in Portugese ... there is confusion, action, subterfuge, misdirection and moments that are oddly and unexpectantly emotionally effective.

I suppose one of the reason I would hesitate to recommend this movie is that people will ask "Is it a comedy?" and I really won't know what to say. I found it hilarious, but a comedy it may not be.

THE SHOUT is a British film from 1978 and I suppose could be described as psychological drama.

It featured John Hurt, Tim Curry, Sussana York and starred one of my favorite actors at the time, Alan Bates. The film begins at a cricket match where one man assaults another man who may or may not be a mental patient and we learn that man's story through one of the men assaulted ... It is fair to say that this movie is an art house sort of film. The plot is inpenatrable, and it probably never makes sense but that hardly matters. What matters is the world that Alan Bates inhabits, or thinks he inhabits that is mixed with science, interpersonal relationships and stories learned from Australian aboriginals with whom he lived.

I have only seen this movie once, when it was released back in 1978 and what sticks in my mind are the images, the story around which the title revolves, and Bates remarkable performance.

 I do not recommend this movie for a variety of reasons: The pace of it is so slow there is barely a pace, if there is a story I don't know that it actually comes together, if I remember correctly there is a barely a score, which is interesting in an art house sort of way but not terribly entertaining.

CASTLE KEEP is a World War II movie from 1969 starring Burt Lancaster and Peter Falk.

The fact that the film was made in the 60's should give you a hint that it is far from your conventional war film. It concerns a group of American soldiers, commanded by Lancaster, protecting an ancient castle and its treasures from the oncoming Nazis. There is a plot of course and there is a supposed anti war sentiment that is eventually weakened by some Hollywood heroics.

There is a lot going on this movie, probably too much. It is narrated by a soldier, a wannabe author, a countess, a battle between old and new, good and evil, Nazis and an invulnerable VW Beetle ... which may be my favorite part of the movie. The acting varies between realistic 60's cool to old world  curtain chewing. The story is decent and there are some interesting talking points but director Syndey Pollak loses his way as the story goes on. This movie is certainly not for everyone but hey, it has a heroic VW, what can I say

HICKEY AND BOGGS is an LA private eye movie from 1972 starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby. Yes, Bill Cosby

Cosby and Culp had had great TV success as the mostly light hearted spies-undercover-as-tennis-players in I, Spy. This film, directed by Culp and written by Walter Hill (a master of the almost-recommends movies like Streets of Fire and The Warriors) is anything but lighthearted. Featuring a detective estranged from his wife (Cosby) and one verging on alcoholism (Culp) it is a noir as noir gets; everyone lies to them, everyone tries to kill them, their wives hate them and pretty much everyone dies.

Fun this movie is not. I don't think anyone in the movie ever cracks a smile and the humor is black, beyond Mr Cosby's skin tone. It has Chanderlesque plot, that is, almost impossible to unravel but the plot means very little. The joy here is watching the two most dour detectives on earth discover that said planet deserves every bit of their cynicism. There are stripper wives, murderous body builders, plane crashes, impossibly large Magnum revolvers, a machine gunner strapped to the back of a station wagon ... and it is so low key you can barely feel a pulse. I love the blankness of this movie, the almost lack of emotion. Having said that, I am leery of recommending it, especially to anyone feeling in the least bit depressed.

A BOY AND HIS DOG is a science fiction movie from 1975 starring an incredibly young Don Johnson and directed by character actor LQ Jones and based on the short story by Harlan Ellison

This a tender and moving love story between a boy and his dog and the girl of his desires ... that takes place in a post apocalyptic earth where rape, murder, theft and radioactive monsters are now the norm. And dog is telepathic and way smarter than the boy. And girl is, as one character says the "cheese" to lure the boy to another world so conformist that it makes the apocalypse look pleasant

This is one of the first movies that Collette and I ever saw together but here is the big assed caveat: THIS IS NOT A DATE MOVIE. But it is funny as hell, if your humour runs to the very black. In the words of Alfred Bester, it's the laugh with the bubble of blood at the end

This may be one of my favorite Don Johnson roles (and not just because his character is called Vic) and the voice of Tim McIntire as Blood the dog is spot on. This movie has become a cult classic but it was not a big studio release in the day, I'm not sure if it would be released at all today, even straight to DVD; not just for the sex and violence (of which there is plenty) but for the incredibly subversive world view. It's a movie that completely redefines our concept of Hero

THE LONG GOODBYE is another 70's private eye movie, starring Elliot Gould, based on the Raymond Chandler novel and directed by Robert Altman

It doesn't take a genius to see that an Altman movie from the 70's starring Elliot Gould would put a "cool" spin on Chandler's yarn; though let's face it, Phillip Marlowe is cool in any decade. What Altman actually brings here is his famous deconstructed style of film making, not an always successful approach.  There are lots of semi naked California girls, pop culture and drug references, a wide assortment of counter culture oddballs, all caught up in a typical Chandler opus about weak society and strong individual sense of honour

There are some things that really work in the movie; this is my favorite Elliot Gould performance and there is a delightfully off the chain Sterling Haydon appearance. But then you also have a scene like a long long conversation between several characters in the back of a car; we never see the characters involved, as we listen to the conversation all we see is the car driving around and around a small Mexican town. Compelling it is not

The ending is damn near perfect but it's a rather long journey to get there and I'm not sure how many people would stay on the ride

HUD may, at first glance, seem a strange movie to include on this list. Released in 1963 it was an "A" production, starring Paul Newman, Patricia O'Neal and Melvyn Douglas and directed by Martin Ritt

It is a movie with a soap operay plot that has an extremely .. patient .. pace. Beautifully filmed in black and white by James Howe, it perfectly evokes a sense of time and place, that being rural Texas in the early 1960's, a place defined by it's cattle ranching past yet informed by a time of change

What Hud really is, though, is a character study. And it is in those characters that the movie becomes something I am a bit reluctant to recommend. This movie is bleak, bleak as the arid monochromatic landscape in which it is placed, bleak as the desperate interactions of its characters and bleak as the cold cynical interior of Newman's Hud

The acting is superb and that leads to the dark emotional impact of the film; Newman and O'Neal and Douglas don't hold back. Newman in particular gives one of the bravest performances ever for a Hollywood leading man; Hud is hard and bitter and filled with barely suppressed rage. He is bleak and arid as well, and there seems no sign of emotional rain on his horizon

I could add to this list but I don't have all day .. well I do, but that beer won't drink itself. These are all good movies, a couple have the status of cult films, and a few are obscured by time. But they are not films for everyone. But I think all of them were films that stayed true to themselves, true to their vision and even if they may have never quite achieved success, I find them worth watching.

Though you may not ....