Most underappreciated movie

I could do a week of posts on this subject... actually I could do a whole blog on it, I bet. Nominate a movie that was really good, but that hardly anyone knows.

Today's nominee: Strange Days.

The whole movie springs from one single premise: the existence of a machine that can record and replay memories and experiences. It's easy to miss it in the flurry of story and breathtaking visuals and plot twists and interesting characters and suspenseful action, but squeezed into the same two hours with all that, there are explorations of not just one or two implications such a technology might have on society, but dozens of them, good and bad, individual and sociological.

It also has the virtue of having a main hero character who is not only not that heroic (let's face it, he's a coward), but who has no ability to fight or defend himself, even though he is always getting into dangerous situations. No, his one and only skill, ramped up to limit, is being ingratiatingly oily and slick -- not just when it's helpful, but all the time, because that's who he is, even when it is ruining his life.

It's just too much movie for most people.