Undefended: The Top 5 Films Practically No One Has Seen
- byTimothy Lawrence
- 9 years ago
- 9 Comments

Undefended is posted every Friday. All Film Fisher writers are given a prompt and respond with a list of five items, none of which are explained or rationalized. This week…
…the five greatest films which practically no one has seen. What are those films which have slipped through the cracks? Those films you always want someone’s opinion about, but practically nobody has ever seen them?
Sean Johnson:
1. Coffee and Cigarettes
2. The Fall
3. Into Great Silence (documentary)
4. Synecdoche, New York
5. Belle Epoch
Joseph Gross:
1. True Stories
2. Super
3. The Fall
4. If a Tree Falls (documentary)
5. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Joshua Stevenson
1. Beeswax
2. Clifford
3. Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming
4. Attack the Block
5. Rick and Morty
Sheffield Leithart:
1. The Fall
2. Scorched
3. Senna (Documentary)
4. Castle in the Sky
5. Mud
Alison Sailer Bennett:
1. Just Add Water
2. Amelie
3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
4. The Seven Beauties
5. The Hebrew Hammer
Christian Leithart:
1. The Fall
2. Scorched
3. Monsoon Wedding
4. The World’s Fastest Indian
5. Cats Don’t Dance
Kanaan Trotter:
1. Ace in the Hole
2. God Grew Tired of Us (documentary)
3. The Devil Came On Horseback (documentary)
4. Wait Until Dark
5. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Jon Paul Pope:
1. Ace in the Hole
2. A Serious Man
3. Brief Encounter
4. Hedgehog in the Fog
5. Hands on a Hardbody
James Banks:
1.Night of the Hunter
2. Empire of the Sun
3. The Insider
4. Eastern Promises
5. Casino
Joshua Gibbs:
1. Sans Soleil
2. Stalker
3. The Staircase
4. Dark Days (Documentary, dir. Marc Singer)
5. Wages of Fear
Remy Wilkins:
1. Junebug
2. Rachel Getting Married
3. George Washington
4. Creation
5. Secrets & Lies
Thomas Banks:
1. The Horseman on the Roof
2. Belle Epoque
3. Everyone Says I Love You
4. The Spitfire Grill
5. Manon of the Spring
9 Comments
Is that Scorcese’s Casino? Because I think a lot of people have seen that.
I haven’t seen most of these. But I’ve seen The Fall. Meh.
“The Fall” looks like an eight year old playing with a box of crayons for two hours. I don’t “get” it either.
Bravo to Sean Johnson. I haven’t seen Belle Epoch, but your other 4 would definitely be on my short list.
Also, has almost nobody really seen The Fall?? I remember seeing the trailer for that movie and thinking, “This movie is going to change my life.” And lo, it did.
I’ve never heard of “The Staircase”.
Good call on “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, “Ace in the Hole”, and “Wages of Fear”!
I would challenge Banks on “The Spitfire Grill”, though.
“The Staircase” is a totally ordinary sounding documentary that hooks you, like, twelve seconds after it starts. It is also six hours long.
I’m a bit nonplussed with “The Fall” too, but I gotta give props to James and Stevenson for Eastern Promises and Attack the Block.
Evidently, The Passion of Joan of Arc belongs on this list.
it does.
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