7 Masterpieces of the '00s You've Likely Never Seen

· Zombie Honeymoon (2004)

I don't remember what ultimately convinced me to see Zombie Honeymoon in a one-off screening a few years ago at NYC's gone-but-not-forgotten Pioneer Theater, but you won't find me second-guessing. To the contrary, David Gebroe's microbudget splatter-romance is a wry little gem of irony and tone featuring a dazzling lead performance by Tracy Coogan. The Irish actress plays Denise, who sprints from her wedding to the Jersey Shore beach house where she and her groom Danny (Graham Sibley) will spend their honeymoon. At least that was the plan until a strange figure lurches out of the ocean, attacking Danny with a viscous black ooze that leaves the newlywed starved for flesh. Initially compelled to flee, Denise sticks with her husband through her rolling bouts of shock, panic, curiosity and heartache. Defying their shoestring budget, Gebroe and Coogan turned around one of the '00s most surprising and sincere movies of any genre; a cult following isn't the worst-case scenario for Honeymoon, but it deserves better.

· The Talent Given Us (2004)

At a glance, Andrew Wagner's feature debut might have "gimmick" written all over it: The director's mother, father and two sisters all play themselves in a cross-country road dramedy about visiting their son/brother Andrew in Los Angeles. The first few wobbly minutes won't disabuse you of that either. And then mom Judy forcefully confides to her husband, "Allen -- I want you to make love to me." It's the first of dozens of wincingly candid, laugh-out-loud funny, are-they-serious-or-are-they-acting moments threading Talent, which won a prize at CineVegas in 2004, landed at Sundance in '05, and finally saw the Wagners themselves promoting the film on the streets of New York and L.A. later that summer. A modest opening accelerated its route to DVD, where it, too, deserves an audience that the '10s can and should deliver. Wagner's 2007 follow-up, the Frank Langella drama Starting Out in the Evening, was better-seen if just as woefully underrated. (Tiny, unembeddable trailer available at the film's Web site.)

· Pusher III (2005)

As the son of one of Denmark's most legendary filmmakers, you probably could have foreseen at least a few of the rebellion issues plaguing Nicolas Winding Refn's first two violent, haphazard entries in his Pusher trilogy. Yet when he reached the second film's exhausting denouement in 2004, one could also sense Refn was exorcising whatever had held back his kinetic portraits of life in Copenhagen's criminal underworld (as well as his grueling English-language debut Fear X). Closing the series in 2005 with Pusher III (cheerily subtitled I'm the Angel of Death), Refn checks back in with the earlier films' drug baron Milo (Zlatko Buric). A junkie aging for the worse every day, and stuck with the added responsibility of organizing his spoiled daughter's birthday party, Milo decides against his better judgment to sell a huge load of mistakenly acquired ecstasy. That requires the intersection of some of Copenhagen's least savory gangsters, a troublesome epidemic of food poisoning, a few hundred consumed cigarettes and an unspeakably nasty final act that makes Refn's 2009 prison fable Bronson look like an afterschool special on deliquency. It also redeems the first two Pusher films, which was no small feat. (Trailer very NSFW.)

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Comments

  • troofire says:

    I saw two of the seven. Do I get anything? Ken Park is gutsy and quite remarkable. I saw it at a film festival where Clark appeared for a Q & A. The entire Pusher Trilogy is a work of genius. I can't recommend it enough. Better than anything American filmmakers turned out in the past 10 years.

  • Colander says:

    I got Ken Park off Amazon (from some Russian dealer or something--probs illegal, so I hope you don't believe I actually did this) and I've been recommending it to people ever since, although it is quite odd, and the opening scene kinda scares the crap out of me.

  • TedM says:

    I've seen 3 of the 7 films listed. Agreed that "Best of Youth" is damn near close to a masterpiece. For a while Sundance Channel was running it as it was originally seen in Italy -- as a miniseries. Watched it then and it still held up on the smaller screen.
    "Pusher III" was also a very good movie, but I would recommend seeing all three films in the trilogy back to back for the full effect.
    Have to disagree strongly with "Talent Given Us", though. I found it very painful to sit through -- something close to a vanity production. Couldn't believe the same director made "Starting Out in the Evening."

  • Dark A. Eye says:

    Maybe it's not obscure enough to make your list but my favorite film from the last decade was "The Lives of Others"

  • Michael Adams says:

    I scrape in with a measly 1/7.
    But that was for Zombie Honeymoon, which was pretty good, especially for Tracy Coogan. I do hope she makes more movies that are more widely seen.

  • My top 5 favorite zombie films in no particular order are Dawn of the Dead (1978 original), Fulci's Zombie, Revenge of the Loving Dead, Dead Snow, and Zombie Holocaust. As you can tell, I'm a fan of Italian horror. Love the classic 80s gut munchers. Day of the Dead (again, the original!) is one of my favorites too.