March has suddenly offered a plethora of options for moviegoers. There’s the week-old Dune: Part Two, which is still packing crowds into multiplexes worldwide. There’s also Netflix‘s very own original movie, Damsel, a feminist fantasy with Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, Angela Bassett, Robin Wright, Nick Robinson, Ray Winstone, and a very big dragon.
Yet you might be craving some older movies that are a bit underrated. If so, Tech Reader has compiled a list of three underrated movies that are worth checking out this weekend.
Need more recommendations? Read our guides to the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, and the best movies on HBO.
All Good Things (2010)
If All Good Things had come out in 2024 instead of 2010, it would probably be a hit. The movie has a killer cast, led by Ryan Gosling (years before Barbie) and Kirsten Dunst, that includes Frank Langella, Nick Offerman, Kristen Wiig, and Phillip Baker Hall. It also has an irresistible story: a seemingly perfect young married couple, David and Katie, is torn apart by the wife’s desire to get pregnant and the husband’s unwillingness to start a family. One night, the wife disappears without a trace. Did the husband do it?
As the suspected hubby, Ryan Gosling gives one of his most underrated performances. Something isn’t quite right with David, but is it enough to believe he can murder his own wife? Fun fact: the movie is inspired by the very real criminal case involving Robert Durst, who was the subject of the outstanding 2015 HBO documentary The Jinx.
Victoria & Abdul (2017)
Costume dramas have a reputation for being stuffy, and it’s not entirely untrue that most of them can feel a bit stale. One with some life in it is Victoria & Abdul, a sequel of sorts to the acclaimed 1997 movie Mrs. Brown. Judi Dench portrayed a grieving Queen Victoria in that movie and was nominated for an Oscar. In the follow-up, she’s just as good but crankier, livelier, and more fun to watch.
Victoria & Abdul refers to the real-life friendship between Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim, a young clerk from India. Their bond is viewed with suspicion by a bigoted 19th-century English society, and Victoria’s own rule is threatened by those who wish to declare her insane for treating Abdul with respect and dignity. The movie’s central relationship is its best asset, and Dench in particular reminds you why she’s considered one of the greatest living actresses around.
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
How can a modern Christian Bale movie be called “underrated”? You can thank Netflix for that. The streamer gave The Pale Blue Eye a limited run in theaters in late 2022 before debuting it on its platform in January 2023, when it promptly got buried under episodes of Cocomelon and Is It Cake? The movie, set in snowy New York in the early 19th century, is gorgeous to look at and very appropriate viewing for a winter that’s been persistently chilly.
Not too far away from his The Dark Knight role, Bale stars as a similarly conflicted man, Augustus Landor, who is a former detective still grieving the loss of his wife. He’s an alcoholic, and his once-promising career as a policeman has faded. When a cadet at West Point is found brutally murdered, Landor reluctantly comes out of retirement to solve the mysterious death. But Landor can’t do it alone, so he turns to one of Fry’s classmates to act as his partner on the case: Cadet Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling).
Editors’ Recommendations
