Network

One of the greatest movies of all time and arguably the most prophetic.  For those who have seen it, Network isn't underrated at all.  It has one of the most memorable scenes in movie history and it won four major Academy Awards.  

Yet it is almost never on television and rarely talked about.  Which is pretty amazing considering it could practically be a documentary of how news networks operate today.

Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay looks back at that moment of time when reporting news stopped being about information and started being about the bottom line.  After a recent buyout, a major network manipulates the mad rants of their floundering news division's anchor into ratings gold.  Bringing the world forth into the age of corporate news.

Network was released in 1976.  With every major "free" news outlet in the western world owned by some major corporation this film should be required viewing (Time Warner owns CNN, News Corp. owns Fox, GE owns NBC, Disney owns ABC, Viacom owns CBS).

Network is one underrated flick.

Grand Master Flash and The Furious Five

I'm not going to try and pretend I am some sort of expert on rap music.  But I'm also not some potser from Iowa and I do know that Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five is more than just and awesome sounding name for a Kung-Fu movie.

Flash and Melle Mel (the main rapper of the group, Flash was the DJ) are sort of like the Jimi Hendrixes of Hip-Hop.  

Alright, the threads might not have gone the distance, but their beats are as fresh as ever!

Flash revolutionized what people thought DJs could do with a turn table and a beat.  By slowing down the beats on his tracks, he brought the lyrics to the forefront, essentially creating rap as we know it today.

Mel's lyrics actually meant something worth listening to and he was able to say them with out sounding all up on himself and preachy (what up, Kanye).

Their record "The Message" is maybe the greatest achievement ever in the genre after you consider how ground-breaking it was.  You can listen to it today and it is still a solid track, yet, you almost never hear them mentioned, anywhere.

They never duplicated their success they had with "The Message" (although, Melle Mel did have another hit with "White Lines", a track that everyone thinks was done by Flash).  Even so, I feel like the general lack of respect these guys get easily gets them the title of Underrated.

War Games: Global Thermo-nuclear War Ain't What It Used To Be.

Back in the 80s the world was a much different place.  The economy was in shambles, leg warmers were cool, the Rolling Stones were still together, the threat of WWIII was always hanging out at the corner store... okay, so things aren't that different.  But there was at least one thing:  Matthew Broderick was the shit.

Back before he put on his Broadway tap shoes and danced around FDR's wheelchair or he put us all to sleep fighting Godzilla, he was the coolest kid not in school in a little flick I like to call Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  But even before he was destroying classic cars or disrupting obscure parades, he was nearly destroying-then saving all man-kind with a simple game of tic-tac-toe.

War Games (1983) is a completely awesome flick years ahead of its time in its incorporation of video gaming into modern Americana.  Its exciting, fun, and it even has some decent social commentary (not that I care, Blow those commies to the moon!).

Yet War Games never seems to get any love, outside of an occasional showing on nerd network, G4.  So I'm taking valuable time out of my very important jobless day to let the world know: War Games, you are hella underrated!