Good Low Budget and Independent Flicks
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Tuesday, September 1, 2026 02:34
VIEWED: 28778
PAGE 5 of 30
Apparently IMDB hasn't seen it either.
Sounds like it's a football movie.
If there's one thing I enjoy less than Hollywood schlock, it's football. And that was true before SJWs ruined the sport.
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Imagine the hypocrisy of a government who will allow businesses to card people to get a job or buy groceries, but won't card people to vote in elections and gives millions of non-citizens free money from taxpayers.
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Quote:www.imdb.com/title/tt0878804
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Apparently IMDB hasn't seen it either.
Sounds like it's a football movie.
If there's one thing I enjoy less than Hollywood schlock, it's football. And that was true before SJWs ruined the sport.
I guess there is a football backstory. In the background. Anything needed to know about football is explained in the film. There ius also some basketball played by some kids, like 1-on-1. Maybe baseball, too. And cheerleading - or at least cheerleaders, in practice as well as in uniform. Maybe other exercise activities.
A lot of the football people, players, coaches, parents, are shown to be dooofuses.
Quinton Aaron played Michael Oher. His only prior credit was Be Kind Rewind, the prior year.
I just realized you probably never saw The Waterboy, which also had Kathy Bates. Same for Happy Gilmore - with Bob Barker.
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The term "low budget" is sticking in my head. The term "good" - not so much.
If you thought Blair Witch Project was low budget, then maybe The Resort should be as well. The cinematography, sound, editing, transitions, and pace/feel is similar to BWP. I'm not sure if there was a script.
I would not claim it is good.
When the credits started to roll, I did not wait to see if there was a coda - which there probably was.
Still in cinema now.
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I just watched a Japanese cartoon from 2001 called Spirited Away today.
It's not an "Anime" flick. I like a few of those that I'd seen over the years, but it's not really my thing. This art style much more closely resembles Taro the Dragon Boy from 1979 than any Anime style.
I'd never even heard of this flick until a YT video about it came in my feed about a week ago and after only about one minute into it I stopped watching that video and decided I wanted to see the movie.
I loved it.
Apparently, others did as well. It's currently got an 8.3/10 on IMDB and it won an Oscar in 2003 for Best Animated Feature when it was dubbed and released in the US.
While not exactly fitting in the "Under 15 Million" parameters for "low budget" on a budget of $19 Million, especially not back in 2001 compared to today's dollars, it's still fairly low budget for an animated feature, when you consider that award winning movies like 2009's "Up" had a budget of $175 Million.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245429/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
I'm going to have to watch Taro the Dragon Boy again.
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Give me liberty or just come shoot me in my house. I'm so over this ridiculous reality.
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Princess Mononoke might be another you might enjoy, it seems to have influences from Pagan Folklore Japan, the culture of North islands, Ainu and Jomon people, Emishi/Ainu people and Yamato I guess before Japaneseness was standardized into one modern 20th and 21st century Japan culture.
Yeah I respect the Japanese for their cartoons films made on their low budgets, they might not make stuff as big as Disney animation or Marvel and DC or the Pixar stuff but they do some pretty good hand drawn animation.
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Yeah. Thanks. I actually got that one and a few others who's names are escaping me on deck.
Mononoke is the only one I'd ever heard of before. When I get around to giving them a watch I'll let you know the names of the other ones and if they were good.
I agree about that style of artwork in the non-anime Japanese animation flicks. It's always held a special place for me since I saw Taro the Dragon Boy about a dozen times when I was a kid. Of course, I didn't have any context about the actual folklore back then and just thought they'd invented cool characters for a cartoon experience that was more "mature" than most of the things I'd been watching at that time (save for stuff like The Last Unicorn or The Littlest Mermaid... not to be confused at all with the Disney movie).
I'm actually kind of thrilled that there seems to be a pretty wide catalog of similar stuff out there from over the years, assuming I can get my hands on any of them.
BTW... the guy who made Spirited Away is the same guy who directed Princess Mononoke, isn't he?
I was kind of surprised I couldn't find any links, even in the artists category, between Spirited Away and Taro the Dragon Boy. They look so similar in art style. But I suppose that shouldn't surprise me too much since Anime is a thing and there had to have been one original cartoon that used that style of artwork long before it became the cultural phenomena that it has today.
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Give me liberty or just come shoot me in my house. I'm so over this ridiculous reality.
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Rather than going to Mononoke straight away, I went for one that looked a lot more obscure and watched Howl's Moving Castle.
I didn't like it as much as Spirited Away, but it was still pretty good. I'm sure I would have loved it when I was a kid, and if you've got kids it's probably a lot better than a lot of the US cartoons they make these days. The art style was beautiful, as always... although this one seemed a bit closer to anime than to Taro/Spirited Away. I still wouldn't call it anime though.
I knew I recognized some of the voices, and was surprised when I saw that Christian Bale, Billy Crystal and Lauren Bacall were in the cast of the US dub. I feel like I should know who Emily Mortimer is, but nothing in her filmography is jumping out at me.
It looks like this one was nominated for an Oscar, and has 8/10 ratings on the big sites, just a tad behind Sprited Away. But it only grossed a little over $5 Million in the US and Canada, so it wouldn't surprise me if it weren't a household name despite the actors voicing it.
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Give me liberty or just come shoot me in my house. I'm so over this ridiculous reality.
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I liked Princess Mononoke even less than Howl's Moving Castle.
Maybe I should switch directors. Someone who perhaps wasn't an Oscar's darling for so many years.
ETA: I should elaborate and say that it wasn't a bad movie. I enjoyed watching it, and the artwork was gorgeous as always when it comes to Studio Ghibli.
I just walked away not really caring much for the characters and at one point even had to fight off falling asleep in the last third of the movie. Where I was very invested in the story of the characters of Spirited Away and even in Howl's Moving Castle, I just didn't really care much about anybody in this movie. I think that's kind of a fatal flaw if you're putting out a movie that is over 2 hours long.
I think I'm going to go back and look at Hayao Miyazaki's earlier works. I'm particularly interested in The Castle of Cagliostro which came out in 1979, the same year as Taro the Dragon Boy. Though I was never a super-fan, I enjoyed watching Lupin the 3rd many, many years back when it was ran on Adult Swim's block along Cowboy Beebop.
I'll probably watch the movie and the entire run of that show next.
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And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.
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Interesting... there seems to be quite a few Lupin the III movies out there. I'm not sure if they're just compilations of episodes of the TV show or not. I'm pretty sure without looking it up that they're not done by Studio Ghibli.
Looks like Cowboy Bebop had a movie too. Since they only had one season, I might rewatch that and see the movie as well.
ETA: A live action Cowboy Bebop?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_Bebop_(2021_TV_series)
I'll curb my enthusiasm for now, especially since I had always hoped they'd make more of the animation after I'd watched it.
Who knows though? If it's done right, it might be something that fans of Firefly could love. I'd certainly recommend OG Cowboy Bebop to anybody who loved Firefly.
You'll even get to relive the disappointment of a single season.
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And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.
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It's easy to be critical when you have never directed a blockbuster or an arthouse film loved by all critics, and maybe you can truly criticize if you had done all this art film and global success without the backing of a huge studio, you made your story, drew it out, started filming and did it all on shoestring budgets
some like SKorean film
others enjoy French
some enjoy the Low Budget British scifi
a Dr Who spin off "Torchwood: Children of Earth"
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I liked Princess Mononoke even less than Howl's Moving Castle.
I understand why people don't like him, I think he's good but I don't obsess over his work. I look at Japan animation and Japanese film as a whole and I can take or leave Hayao Miyazaki
I guess the problem with some directors is they put themself into a typical stylized box they use the same animators, write similar stuff, same voices, same CGI fx, and they stop taking risks
However he is not as Lazy as michael bay explosions a guy who turned himself into a Walking BigBudget Hollyweirdo Meme
You could say no Alfred Hitchcock is not truly the same, Kubrick did a great job of writing new stuff, drawing out and planning new shots, tackling and making amazing movies in numerous different genres, Park Chan-wook has a different thing to show you in each movie, Ridley Scott does something new, Ang Lee will try different stuff and Chris Nolan make unique films and Guillermo del Toro does try some new but I guess there is a very 'del Toro' style about his subject matter and cinematic shots.
I find Hayao Miyazaki an odd one, I like his work but I don't love it or obsess over it and when you first watch his stuff you are kinda blown away but with artistic merit in the long run it stumbles, he repeats much like a Disney remake might repate. Or maybe he doesn't want to break new ground, maybe he's kinda a one trick pony, although his work and Japan animtion is unique in its own way maybe its animation is repating, his message I guese reminds me a little like Spielberg remaking his Spielbergy message stuff or Quentin Tarantino or James Cameron, sometimes you have a good director but because of his eye and style he keeps re-visiting the same visual style, the same buzz words and theme and message again and again. Anime and Manga is odd comapred to Hollywood and its hard sometimes for Hollywood to copy it as it doesn't really translate will into remakes for Western audiences. Paul W.S. Anderson is far less respected than Tarantino or Spielberg he is seen as a lazy hack who remakes remaking video games into movies. Anime and Manga are said to have good material, far more interesting than a video game. Sometimes people want an Anime to be made into a big hollywood movie but it doesnt happen, some are in development production remake limbo for decades before they decide to drop or green light or cancel a project, when Hollywood does finally really back a re-make of one it sometimes will have lost whatever Zen Neo-Tokyo message or lost the Japanese style it origianlly had.
Battle Royale is kind of interesting its the more modern Genre of Japanese film a lot more Dark, Nihilistic, Fatalist and Sadist than your usual Kurosawa Samuri film or Godzillia style monster movies, the Battle Royale inspired hunger Games and was made for as little as 4.5 million USD
https://battleroyale.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page
It's a morbid apocalypse kind of world where 'the students have three days to kill each other until one survives--or they all die'
Takeshi 'beat' Kitano is in the films, he is everywhere in Japan, appears on tv as an expert in everything an actor, comedian, tv presenter, author, filmmaker
I guess it marked the new horror shock era of Japan films like the Ringu is a 1998 Japanese horror film
If you wanted to stay with animated art the classic Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo is a far more interesting movie.
If you could
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