Image via Complex Original
As you'll know if you've ever so much as glanced at a box office report, it's not uncommon for movies that aren't very good to make ass-loads of money. For example, Transformers: Age of Extinction and Maleficent are the fourth and fifth highest-grossing movies of 2014, earning (that's not the right word) a combined total of almost $500 million in the U.S. alone despite being crimes against humanity forged in the dark recesses of hell.
On the other side of that coin are the good movies that tank. Often these are limited-release films with small marketing budgets, with nothing but glowing reviews and positive word-of-mouth to propel them. Sometimes they're VOD releases that barely even tried a theatrical run. In other cases they have limited appeal no matter how many screens they're on, destined to never be blockbusters.
If you assume that minuscule box office returns mean the movie was bad, you're missing out on some real gems. Of course, you're also avoiding some awful dreck, too. That's why we're here to separate the low-grossing wheat from the deservedly unsuccessful chaff. Here are 10 Good Movies from 2014 That Made Less Than $1,000,000.
(All figures are from Box Office Mojo)
Hide Your Smiling Faces
Director: Daniel Patrick Carbone
Stars: Ryan Jones, Nathan Varnson, Colm O'Leary, Thomas Cruz, Christina Starbuck, Chris Kies
Total box office: $3,576
Currently available to watch on: Amazon Prime, iTunes, DVD/Blu-ray
Recalling the contemplative, slice-of-life early films of David Gordon Green, this debut from Daniel Patrick Carbone follows a group of ordinary boys over the course of a typical-but-formative summer as they grapple with the aftereffects of a local tragedy. It's less about the story and more about conveying a sense of place, which Carbone does very well.
See it if you liked: George Washington, The Kings of Summer, Boyhood
Grand Piano
Director: Eugenio Mira
Stars: Elijah Wood, Kerry Bishé, John Cusack, Alex Winter, Tamsin Egerton, Allen Leech
Total box office: $22,555
Currently available to watch on: Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, DVD/Blu-ray
Elijah Wood plays a concert pianist who finds himself in a deliciously ludicrous situation: If he stops playing or hits a wrong note, a sniper will shoot him. It's Speed in a concert hall! Director Eugene Mira has an operatic, Brian De Palma-ish visual style that helps the fantastically goofy premise go down smoothly.
See it if you liked: Snake Eyes, Phone Booth
Starred Up
Director: David Mackenzie
Stars: Jack O’Connell, Ben Mendelsohn, Rupert Friend, Sam Spruell, Anthony Welsh, David Ajala
Total box office: $54,915
Currently available to watch on: Amazon, iTunes
This grimly realistic British prison drama isn't "fun," per se, though it's worth the discomfort for the gripping story. Jack O'Connell, the 24-year-old Englishman who stars in Angelina Jolie's upcoming Unbroken, plays a violent teenager who's thrown into the same adult prison as his father (Ben Mendelsohn), a hardened criminal in his own right. Father-son bonding and brutality ensue.
See it if you liked: Bronson, Midnight Express
Hellion
Director: Kat Candler
Stars: Aaron Paul, Juliette Lewis, Josh Wiggins, Deke Garner, Jonny Mars, Annalee Jefferies
Total box office: $55,708
Currently available to watch on: Amazon, iTunes, DVD/Blu-ray
Aaron Paul plays the overwhelmed widower father of a hellacious 13-year-old boy and his impressionable 10-year-old brother in this humane, well-acted drama with a positive message. It's of a type that’s very familiar to the regular film festival-goer: a low-key, naturalistic piece shot with hand-held cameras and a minimum of flair, about a fractured family struggling to regain its footing after a tragedy. It's not a game-changer, but it's definitely worth checking out.
See it if you liked: Any other Sundance Film Festival drama
Cheap Thrills
Director: E.L. Katz
Stars: Pat Healy, Ethan Embry, David Koechner, Sara Paxton, Amanda Fuller
Total box office: $59,424
Currently available to watch on: Amazon Prime, iTunes, DVD/Blu-ray
In this ultra-dark comedy, a rich loudmouth (David Koechner) and his young wife (Sara Paxton) pay a couple of down-on-their-luck guys (Pat Healy, Ethan Embry) to be their prank monkeys, leading to a drug-fueled night of dares, one-upmanship, and mayhem. If you and a group of dudes are looking for something rowdy to watch one night, Cheap Thrills will give you plenty to talk, cringe, and say "Oh, damn!" about.
See it if you liked: Fight Club, Observe and Report, Very Bad Things
Coherence
Director: James Ward Byrkit
Stars: Emily Baldoni, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon, Elizabeth Gracen, Hugo Armstrong, Alex Manugian, Lorene Scafaria, Lauren Maher
Total box office: $102,617
Currently available to watch on: Amazon, iTunes, DVD/Blu-ray
You hear "sci-fi" and assume there'll be special effects and spaceships, but this ingenious brain-twister has none of that yet delivers a satisfying story on a budget of about $12. Eight L.A. friends gather for a dinner party; a comet passes overhead; the power goes out; one house up the street still has lights...and that's all we'll tell you. It's time loops and parallel dimensions and whatnot, handled by a funny cast and a smart screenplay.
See it if you liked: Primer, Baghead, Another Earth
The Congress
Director: Ari Folman
Stars: Robin Wright, Paul Giamatti, Jon Hamm, Danny Huston, Harvey Keitel, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Sami Gayle
Total box office: $137,815
Currently available to watch on: Amazon, iTunes, DVD/Blu-ray
This melancholic, futuristic drama is a wildly original and memorable experience (half of it takes place in an animated world), the sort of movie that lodges itself in your head whether you fully understand it or not. A never-better Robin Wright plays a version of herself, an aging actress who's offered a large sum of money to be "scanned" into a computer so that future performances can be all-digital, forever, long after she's dead. In a world that's gradually tearing down our real selves and replacing them with avatars, The Congress feels prescient.
See it if you liked: Waltz with Bashir (same director), S1m0ne, Her
We Are the Best!
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Stars: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne
Total box office: $180,590
Currently available to watch on: Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, DVD/Blu-ray
That exclamation point in the title is earned by this relentlessly upbeat Swedish comedy about two 13-year-old Stockholm girls in 1982 who start a punk band on a whim, despite not being able to play any instruments. Cheerfully devoid of serious conflict, We Are the Best! captures the peripatetic energy of youth, the way kids fly at top speed from one Big Idea to the next with reckless abandon. It's difficult to imagine anyone watching this film and not having a smile on their face at the end.
See it if you liked: School of Rock, Billy Elliott
Blue Ruin
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Stars: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves, Kevin Kolack, Eve Plumb
Total box office: $258,384
Currently available to watch on: Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, DVD/Blu-ray
The "revenge thriller" is an old genre, and this new entry has no pretenses about reinventing the wheel. But it's a tightly focused and uncluttered picture that delivers a simple but gripping piece of somber entertainment, telling the story of a dogged man who feels duty-bound to settle a score with the people who destroyed his family 20 years earlier. Like all realistic revenge stories, it's tragic. Even when you win, you lose.
See it if you liked: In the Bedroom, Memento, Oldboy
Joe
Director: David Gordon Green
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Heather Kafka, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Brian Mays
Total box office: $373,375
Currently available to watch on: Amazon, iTunes, DVD/Blu-ray
The aforementioned David Gordon Green started with atmospheric tone poems, moved onto stoner farces (Your Highness), and has now arrived at this, a violent and moderately suspenseful drama about a Texas boy who finds an unorthodox father figure in the title character, a rough dude with a colorful past who's played by Nicolas Cage. Yes, Nicolas Cage, in one of his rare non-insane performances! The young Tye Sheridan, who played the kid in Mud, continues to impress in this well-acted yarn.
See it if you liked: Mud, Shane, Killer Joe