The Most Underrated Movies Of 2020 So Far

Ticket sales are good. Studios want them. Movie theaters want them. But ticket sales don't necessarily have anything to do with whether or not a movie is worth watching. Plenty of cult classics began their lives as box office bombs. Films like Office Space, The Big Lebowski, Fight Club, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and so many more were financial disappointments. But repeat lines from those flicks in just about any crowded room, and you'll get people gleefully shouting back. 

Plenty of factors go into whether or not a movie makes money. The marketing, the timing, and the production budget all have huge roles to play, and don't necessarily have anything to do with the film's worth. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 is an extreme example of this — if studios release films while people are understandably wondering whether or not it's safe to be in theaters and those movies subsequently fall flat, it's tough to lay the blame on the filmmakers. 

Whether they didn't put butts in seats because of marketing fails, timing, or because they went too hard against the grain, here are the most underrated movies of 2020 so far.

Sometimes, if you really want to appreciate a film, you need to take it as it is and forget what you want it to be. Such an animal is Guns Akimbo — a gory, action-packed black comedy with a horrifically laughable premise. 

Daniel Radcliffe has never been farther from Hogwarts — he plays Miles, an otherwise mild-mannered geek forced into a gladiator match called Skizm when guns are literally screwed into both of his hands. The ridiculous gun fights and car chases are recorded by following drones which broadcast the action to online viewers. Miles eventually joins forces with one of his opponents to take the fight directly to Skizm's head honcho Riktor (Ned Dennehy). 

With over-the-top action sequences and often juvenile humor, Guns Akimbo doesn't take itself too seriously, and you need to do the same if you want to enjoy it. While it plays with the conventions of social media, video games, and action films, there's no heavy social commentary to be found. Guns Akimbo exists for the action and the laughs and if you're looking for anything else, you're looking too hard.

The drama of love stories usually revolves around something coming between otherwise dedicated lovers, be it infidelity, jealousy, or maybe the return of an ex. The Photograph is a refreshing departure — no one gets between Michael (LaKeith Stanfield) and Mae (Issa Rae) but their own choices. 

Mae is the daughter of the famous photographer Christina Eames, who has recently died. She meets journalist Michael Block as the he works on a story about her mother. They instantly click and soon begin an intimate romance. Their love story is interspersed with flashbacks to a different but not dissimilar romance decades earlier between the late Christina (Chante Adams) and a fisherman named Isaac (Y'lan Noel). Though clearly in love with Isaac, Christina leaves him to build her career in New York City and we eventually get the feeling that, in the present, Michael and Mae are heading toward a similar decision. 

While some of the issues the characters face feel huge, The Photograph is ultimately a simple, yet powerful love story. It has the added benefit of being a rare, impressive example — as D. Watkins writes for Salon — of being a romance between two independent, successful black Americans. "[F]or most of my life," Watkins writes, "all of the films with black leads were biopics and hood stories full of tragedy... however, we do experience joy, fun, and love like every other race." 

Sometimes a powerful story is better told without booming, dramatic music or a torrent of emotional dialogue. A perfect example is the drama Ordinary Love. 

Tom (Liam Neeson) and Joan (Lesley Manville) are a couple in their '60s whose lives grow more complicated when Joan finds a lump on one of her breasts. We follow them through each agonizing step — through diagnostic procedures and surgeries — and watch as the comfort they find in one another begins to turn sour. There isn't a lot of exposition or even a lot of details revealed. For example, we never learn what either Tom or Joan does for a living. We eventually discover that they had a daughter who died, though the specifics are left unsaid. 

In particular it's a welcome departure for Neeson, who's come to be known more for his action and thriller fare. Neeson and Manville are both at the top of their form here, showing us everything we need to know about the couple's evolving love as it endures some of the worst that life has to offer.

The end of 2019 saw two big-budget war movies — November's Midway and December's 1917. So it may be that audiences were war-weary when it came time for 2020's The Last Full Measure. 

The Last Full Measure is based on the true story of Air Force medic William H. Pitsenbarger, who saved the lives of 60 American soldiers during 1966's ill-fated Operation Abilene, sacrificing his own life in the process. The movie alternates between the action in the Vietnam War and drama in 1998, following Pentagon staffer Scott Huffman (Sebastian Stan) on his assignment to review Pitsenbarger for a long-delayed Medal of Honor. At first simply taking the assignment to help his career, Huffman eventually uncovers a decades-old conspiracy that's helped to keep the fallen hero from the honor he deserves. 

Emotionally powerful and poignant, The Last Full Measure is the first great war movie of 2020. Christopher Plummer and Diane Ladd play Pistenbarger's parents and William Hurt plays the late soldier's best friend Thomas Tully. During the course of his review, Hoffman interviews veterans played by Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, and Peter Fonda. If nothing else, it's worth watching for the stellar cast. 

In VFW, Stephen Lang stars as Fred, a Vietnam vet who holds court with his buddies at the run-down VFW hall. In the meantime, the teens and tweens of Fred's town have been seduced by a deadly new drug called Hype which transforms users into punk rock mutants. When a girl calling herself Lizard (Sierra McCormick) shows up looking for protection, the assembled veterans battle the oncoming horde with everything from guns to mounted antlers to tennis balls stuffed with gun powder. 

When VFW begins — with its opposed sides of teenage mutants and social security eligible veterans — you might get the impression that what's about to unfold is some kind of anti-millennial catharsis, but really the young vs. old theme is just window-dressing. It's not meant for social commentary or to appeal to any particular political stripe. VFW is a fun, low-budget DIY gorefest that pays heavy tribute to John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 and calls back to '80s grindhouse fare. It's got exploding heads, veterans fighting mutants with sharpened pool cues, and miles of goofy machismo.

Fittingly, a lot of the great acting talent found their fame in the '80s. Along with Lang, VFW features Martin Kove (the ruthless Cobra Kai sensai of Karate Kid), Geroge Wendt (Norm from Cheers), David Patrick Kelly (Sully in Commando), Fred Williamson (a former pro football player and '70s blaxploitation star), and William Sadler (the Grim Reaper from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey). 

Apple TV+ is one of the newer streaming services, and its list of original films is still fairly short. That probably has something to do with why On the Rocks flew under a lot of viewers' radar. The film reunites Bill Murray with director Sofia Coppola, who first collaborated on 2003's Lost in Translation. 

Murray plays Felix, the charming and wealthy father of Laura (Rashida Jones), whose hectic life with Dean (Marlon Wayans) is starting to show its flaws. When Dean gets an attractive new assistant, Laura suspects he's having an affair — and her restless father does everything he can to feed his daughter's suspicions. He gets Laura, against her better judgment, to accompany him on nightly adventures, including stalking her husband like a private detective and even going so far as to secretly following him on a business trip to Mexico. You get the distinct impression Felix cares less about whether or not his son-in-law is unfaithful as he does about the excuse to spend more time with his daughter, and yet with each new crazy outing, Dean looks more and more guilty.

While On the Rocks is a comedy at heart, Murray brilliantly evokes an unspoken sadness. Apple TV+ gets high marks for its first original dramedy, which proves to be funny, tender, and breaks your heart just a little.

While the United States was the first country to put a man on the moon, it was the Soviet Union's cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin who became the first human to orbit the Earth. In the world of the Russian sci-fi horror flick Sputnik, set in 1983, the Soviet Union beats the U.S. to another space travel landmark — cosmonaut Konstantin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fedorov) becomes the first man to bring an alien visitor back to Earth, though he doesn't know it.

After the cosmonauts' space craft crashes to Earth, with only one of its two occupants surviving, psychiatrist Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina) is summoned to a secret facility where the remaining cosmonaut is held. She soon learns Konstantin carried an alien that emerges from his body every night. She's here to try to separate the man from the monster, and she uses every tool she can to do it, including digging deep into Konstantin's past and confronting him with ugly truths. 

If you judge Sputnik by its plot, you're bound to be unimpressed. There's nothing terribly new about aliens inhabiting human hosts in movies. What makes Sputnik stand apart is how the story unfolds. While it's got plenty of gore, the film is a surprisingly slow burn with a high IQ. As Tatyana's interviews of Konstantin continue, you begin to wonder who the true villain of the film is — the monster, Tatyana, or the military brass running the facility.

How do you win when the playing field isn't level — when, in fact, you're not even allowed on the field? In The Banker, Bernard Garrett (Anthony Mackie) and Joe Morris (Samuel L. Jackson) discover a unique answer. The film is based on the real-life story of two Black businessmen who not only found success in Jim Crow-era America, but thrived and did their best to open doors for other Black business owners. 

Garrett has the knowledge and the backbone to be a high-level financial player, but being a Black man in '50s America creates too many obstacles for him to reach his full potential. Garrett reluctantly links arms with the more cynical Morris, and together they recruit white handyman Matt Steiner (Nicholas Hoult) as a mask. Steiner puts a white face to Morris and Garrett's business schemes, and at first the plan is successful — including allowing the pair to purchase the most expensive office building in Los Angeles, making them landlords to the same banks who won't give them loans. Things get a lot more complicated, however, when Garrett convinces his colleagues to follow him to his home state of Texas with a plan to buy up white banks and offer loans to Black businesses with nowhere else to turn. 

The Banker is an eye-opening drama with humor, featuring a wonderful banter-rich chemistry between Mackie and Jackson. In spite of half a century passing since the events depicted, the messages it carries sadly remain relevant.

Destined to miss most audiences' notice, the indie comedy crime drama Kajillionaire is the most recent creation from writer/director Miranda July. Evan Rachel Wood of Westworld fame stars as Old Dolio, the twenty-something daughter of a pair of small-time con artists (Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins) with delusions of big-time heists. The pair regularly risk their freedom and that of their deep-voiced daughter for such petty theft as breaking into post office boxes and scamming airlines over supposedly lost baggage. 

Things are status quo for the ridiculous trio until they recruit the bubbly and relatively straight-laced Melanie (Gina Rodriguez) for their next "heist," and having the new element introduced to the family dynamic makes Old Dolio realize exactly what her eccentric parents have denied her. The film takes a more emotional turn as Old Dolio sees the validation, the tenderness, and every other form of tangible love that's been denied her since she was a child.

Advertised mainly as a quirky comedy, Kajillionaire proves to be much more. It's inventively funny, but equally heartbreaking. As Reyzando Nawara of Film Inquiry writes, "Kajillionaire is a movie full of bizarre and eccentric moments. But deep down, what July offers here is a tender and moving story about love and our needs for connection."   

Released on HBO in August 2020, Bad Education is a darkly humorous drama that can't help but feel well-timed in light of the 2019 college admissions scandal that dragged celebrities like Felicity Huffman, William H. Macy, and Lori Loughlin through the mud.

Hugh Jackman plays Dr. Frank Tassone, the superintendent of a wealthy Long Island school district that's ranked fourth in all of the United States, aiming for the coveted #1 spot. In light of the district's goals, spending $8 million on a skybridge to beautify a high school campus seems perfectly reasonable to all the parents set on sending their kids to Ivy League schools. But when student reporter Rachel (Geraldine Viswanathan) works on a puff piece about the bridge for the school paper, Frank makes the mistake of encouraging her to aim high in her reporting. Inspired by her elder's words, Rachel goes on to uncover Frank and Pam's (Allison Janey) embezzlement scheme, adding up to millions of dollars.

Witty, timely, and tragic, Bad Education is one of the year's best and most favorably reviewed films. Critics seem to agree Jackman's portrayal of Dr. Frank Tassone is a highlight of the movie, and that it's proven to be one of his best performances to date.