So many films with big stars in lead roles, if not ensembles full of big stars, still somehow slip under the radar. Sure, there are early roles in smaller films from people who would go on to be famous, but a surprising amount of movies made at the height of their stars’ fame haven’t left a cultural footprint.
1. Mississippi Masala (1991)
Two years after his first Oscar nomination (for Glory) and a year after his first collaboration with Spike Lee (Mo’ Better Blues), Denzel Washington starred in the unfairly overlooked Mississippi Masala. The film centers on a romance between Demetrius (Washington), a Black man, and Mina (Sarita Choudhury), an Indian woman, and the cultural clash that complicates their relationship. It’s a beautiful, deeply felt romantic film that makes the most of its stars’ incredible charisma and chemistry and deserves a larger audience.
2. One Fine Day (1996)
A romantic comedy starring George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer should be a bigger deal. One Fine Day follows the two stars as single parents who are thrown together when they both miss dropping their kids off for a field trip and have to work together to get through their hectic days while essentially co-parenting the kids. Things are made even more ridiculous when the two accidentally trade cell phones on a taxi ride. It’s a sweet and funny movie built on the star power of Clooney and Pfeiffer that’s somehow been forgotten.
3. The Peacemaker (1997)
Another early George Clooney film, The Peacemaker, sees him work alongside Nicole Kidman to save the world from a nuclear bomb. He’s a military man, and she’s a scientist, and together, they have to track down a stolen bomb before it’s used to attack a UN meeting in New York. Director Mimi Leder creates some thrilling action scenes, and both Clooney and Kidman are dialed into the film’s tone, which weaves seriousness and humor.
4. I Heart Huckabees (2004)
I Heart Huckabees boasts a cast that includes Mark Wahlberg, Jason Schwartzman, Lily Tomlin, Naomi Watts, Dustin Hoffman, and more A-list stars. Since its release twenty years ago, the philosophically minded comedy about “existential detectives” who help people understand the meaning of life hasn’t had the legacy an intelligent, funny, and emotionally resonant comedy with an all-star cast deserves.
5. Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
Drop Dead Gorgeous is a certified cult classic, yet despite its phenomenal cast (including Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams, Brittany Murphy, Denise Richards, and more big names) and incredibly sharp writing, the film isn’t the major classic it should be. The film is a silly but biting satire of American values centered on a teen pageant and the deadly lengths some parents are willing to go to for victory that remains sadly underseen.
6. Vox Lux (2018)
Vox Lux is a very different kind of satire of American values and culture than Drop Dead Gorgeous, and its critiques about fame’s relationship to violence are often painfully insightful. The film follows a young woman who becomes a pop sensation for writing a song to commemorate her fellow students who died in a school shooting she survived. The film plays out in two parts. The first section stars Raffey Cassidy as the teen, while the second sees Natalie Portman as the full-fledged adult pop star. To top things off, the film is narrated by Willem Dafoe.
7. Southland Tales (2006)
After the success of Donnie Darko, writer and director Richard Kelly created one of the strangest and most exciting sci-fi movies of the 2000s. Starring Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake, and Seann William Scott, Southland Tales tells the sprawling, often chaotic story about an actor with amnesia, an adult film star, and a cop who are all somehow connected to each other and to the impending apocalypse. It’s an incredibly divisive movie that’s Kelly’s favorite of his films.
8. Tigerland (2000)
One of Colin Farrell’s earliest and best films, Tigerland, centers on army recruits in training before being shipped out to Vietnam in 1971. It’s a moving film that’s far more interested in developing its characters than moving a plot forward, and the performances from Farrell, Shea Whigham, Clifton Collins Jr., and others bring those characters to life beautifully. It’s also one of the best films from director Joel Schumacher, who’s best known for his less-than-stellar Batman movies.
9. The Rover (2014)
The Rover is mostly a two-hander centered on Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson as their characters travel across the Australian Outback in search of a stolen car and the men who stole it after a major social collapse. It’s a bleak and often disturbing film, so it’s not exactly shocking that it didn’t become a hit. It’s also a powerful and rewarding film for fans of hard science fiction and westerns with two movie-star leads, so it deserves more attention than it got.
10. Lizzie (2018)
Like her Twilight co-star, Kristen Stewart shot up to the A-list in the late 2000s and has since appeared in many great films, some of which, like Lizzie, haven’t received a lot of praise and attention.
The film is a moody retelling of the Lizzie Borden story that imagines a romance between Lizzie (Chloë Sevigny) and the recently hired family maid Bridget (Stewart). It’s a quiet film that explodes in its final moments with the historic murders. The star power and the new take on a famous historical story should make the film a bigger deal, but it somehow seems to have slipped through the cracks.
11. The Bad Batch (2016)
Suki Waterhouse and Jason Momoa lead The Bad Batch, a strange film about a massive open-air prison in the American Southwest to which criminals are exiled in the near future. It’s got cults, cannibals, and freaky stuff that adds detail and horror to its world, all set to a fantastic soundtrack full of pop and dance songs. To make things even more interesting, Keanu Reeves plays a cult leader, and Jim Carrey plays a wandering scavenger. Somehow, the film isn’t talked about often, but it may become a cult classic over time.
12. The Believer (2001)
The Believer offered Ryan Gosling his first lead role as a young Neo-Nazi who regularly advocates violence against Jews but hides the secret that he is Jewish. Inspired by the story of Dan Burros, a white supremacist leader who was Jewish, The Believer is a rich film full of uncomfortable theological and moral conversations. It shows why Gosling quickly became a leading man. His powerhouse performance in the film has gone largely unseen even though he’s been a movie star for two decades.
13. The Midnight Meat Train (2008)
One of Bradley Cooper’s first leading roles came in the divisive horror film The Midnight Meat Train, based on the short story of the same name by renowned horror author and filmmaker Clive Barker. The film follows Cooper as a photographer who becomes obsessed with finding a mysterious serial killer who mutilates his victims. It’s a disturbing movie with an amazing finale, though its mixed initial response means it’s been left behind in conversations about Cooper’s filmography.
14. State of Grace (1990)
State of Grace might be better known if it hadn’t arrived in theaters the week before Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, another movie about organized crime in New York City. State of Grace is a more stylized neo-noir organized crime movie than Goodfellas and has an all-star cast that includes Sean Penn, Robin Wright, Ed Harris, and Gary Oldman, so it’s surprising that more than thirty years later, the film still hasn’t found a larger audience.
15. The Ten (2007)
The Ten is an anthology comedy in which each segment is based on one of the Ten Commandments and features a new set of recognizable stars. Some of those stars aren’t just recognizable; they’re big-time A-listers like Paul Rudd, Winona Ryder, and Jon Hamm. The Ten is a silly movie, and as with all anthology films, some segments are better than others. But for 2000s comedy fans, it’s a bonanza of religious satire made by some of the funniest people of the era. The film’s perhaps touchy subject matter and its anthology format may have kept it from making a bigger impact.
16. Permanent Midnight (1998)
Permanent Midnight, based on the memoir of the same name by Jerry Stahl that chronicles his struggles with substance abuse while his career as a TV writer takes off, isn’t the kind of silly comedy that many expect from Ben Stiller. However, Stiller’s performance as Stahl is remarkable, showing off the actor’s range, especially considering the film came out the same year as There’s Something About Mary. The movie also features Elizabeth Hurley and Owen Wilson, but it’s far from something someone would throw on when in the mood for “a Ben Stiller movie.”
17. The Flowers of War (2011)
The Flowers of War is about the horrific 1937 Nanjing Massacre, during which Imperial Japanese forces invaded, brutally killed, and violated the people of Nanjing, so it’s not exactly a fun subject. But director Zhang Yimou’s brilliant direction and a leading performance from Christian Bale as an American mortician living in Nanjing who masquerades as a priest and attempts to save as many children and prostitutes as possible make it a powerful film. It’s a difficult but rewarding film worth seeking out, especially for fans of history, Bale, and Yimou.
18. Velvet Goldmine (1998)
More than a decade before he starred in The Flowers of War, Christian Bale starred as a music journalist in this fictional biopic heavily inspired by the lives of David Bowie and Iggy Pop. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays the Bowie-esque Brian Slade, and Ewan McGregor plays the Iggy-inspired Curt Wild to deliver a joyous look at rock stardom in the 20th century. It’s a great movie that film curator Dennis Lim called director Todd Haynes’s “most underrated film.”
19. Virtuosity (1995)
Four years after Mississippi Masala, Denzel Washington led this delightfully unique science fiction thriller as a disgraced cop who has to hunt down SID (Russell Crowe), a virtually created amalgamation of all the worst serial killers in history that’s broken into the real world. Virtuosity is a wild movie that strains believability at almost every turn. The committed performances from the A-list leads and its big ideas make it well worth seeing.
20. Red Rock West (1993)
In the last decade and a half, Nicolas Cage has appeared in so many movies that it’s hard to keep track of them all. We’d like to draw attention to an earlier film in the always exciting actor’s filmography that doesn’t get enough love. Red Rock West is a neo-noir that follows Cage as a drifter who finds himself in the middle of a deadly game of cat and mouse between the wealthiest man in a small town and his wife. Cage’s performance perfectly matches the film’s tone, but Dennis Hopper steals the show as a peculiar hitman.
21. The Voices (2014)
We all know that Ryan Reynolds enjoys comic violence. In 2014’s The Voices, he got to dive deep into extremely violent comedy two years before the first Deadpool movie. The film sees Reynolds play a mentally ill young man who begins to hear the eponymous voices of his pet cat and dog. The cat urges him to commit violent crimes, and the dog attempts to stop. It’s an absurd movie in the best way that will hopefully find more of an audience as time goes on.
22. Marvin’s Room (1996)
It’s hard to believe that there’s a movie starring Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, and Leonardo DiCaprio with a supporting performance from Robert De Niro that almost no one has heard of, yet there’s Marvin’s Room. The film stars Streep as Lee, a woman who hasn’t spoken with her ill father or sister who cares for him in 20 years but returns to her hometown with her two sons when her sister requests a lifesaving bone marrow transplant. Marvin’s Room isn’t revolutionary, but it’s a moving drama with strong performances from the A-list cast.
23. Mystic Pizza (1988)
Devoted fans of Julia Roberts have always loved Mystic Pizza, though it’s failed to hold its place in conversations outside her career. It really should, though. Roberts is lovely in it as one of three teens working at a pizza shop in Mystic, Connecticut, but so are Lili Taylor and Vincent D’Onofrio, and it features the first movie appearance of Matt Damon. It’s a sweet coming-of-age movie with an outstanding cast that should rank among the genre’s classics.
24. Death to Smoochy (2002)
Death to Smoochy doesn’t just offer an A-list cast of actors, including Robin Williams, Jon Stewart, Catherine Keener, and Edward Norton; it’s also directed by one of its famous stars, Danny DeVito. The dark comedy follows a fired children’s show host who becomes obsessed with taking out his replacement, who plays a Barney-esque purple rhinoceros named Smoochy. It’s a hilarious movie that deserves far more attention for its excellent cast and singular premise.
25. That Thing You Do (1996)
Danny DeVito is just one of the A-list actors to sit in the director’s chair for a film that deserves more attention. Tom Hanks’s first directorial feature, That Thing You Do, is a delightful movie about a fictional band’s rise and fall in the mid-’60s. It features Hanks, Steve Zahn, Liv Tyler, and an early role for Charlize Theron. Full of color, music, and period detail, That Thing You Do is among the best films about fake bands.
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