Underrated Visual-Effects-Heavy Movies

It's a given that there are a lot of underrated movies out there, and I'm sure every casual movie fan has his own top ten, but it occurred to me that it doesn't really occur to that many people to consider effects-heavy films as "underrated." This is a word that, to my limited experience at least, seems reserved for more artsy fartsy fare like Merchant/Ivory flicks or something.

However, looking back over the last ten years, I feel that there are a number of commercial movies which did not quite get the attention they deserved, whether in terms of box-office take or peer recognition (i.e. Oscar nomination). Here's my list, in no particular order:

1. Casper (1995) - I realize it's nothing really new, given that ILM had already perfected the techniques used in this movie way back in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but it can't be denied that Dennis Muren and his crew had made a number of improvements over the previous melding of animation and live action.

2. The Frighteners (1996) - Okay, so the effects in this movie, while fun, were not terribly convincing, but the wizardry of WETA was already evident in the way they conjured up those specters. Way back then they were already cutting their teeth on this film in preparation for the monumental Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

3. The Fifth Element (1997) - My favorite Luc Besson film, although I've only seen three, including the disastrous Joan of Arc. The cab chase scene was incredibly slick and even holds up rather well against the oddly similar Coruscant chase scene, five years later, in Star Wars, Episode II. Although Digital Domain reaped awards and accolades that year for recapturing the sinking of the Titanic, for my money, this movie was a much better achievement. And all it got was a stinking Sound Effects Editing nomination...

4. Contact (1997) - Compared to Bob Zemeckis' more seminal films such as the Back to the Future trilogy and Forrest Gump, this movie is not one of his flashier pieces. However, other than the fact that it's a little simplistic in the way it reduces Jodie Foster's staunch empiricist to a simpering mess in the final act, this movie actually plays pretty well, thanks in large part to the impressive realization of the bizarre space travel machine which whisks Jodie Foster off to meet an alien being disguised as her father. This movie made use of three, count 'em, three major studios to bring its effects to life, namely Sony Pictures Imageworks, ILM and WETA, and Zemeckis, as far as the effects are concerned, is definitely in his element. Oscar recognition? Just a nomination for best achievement in Sound...

5. Minority Report (2002) - Okay, I would just like to say that it was absolutely criminal how this movie was overlooked for not just the visual effects oscar but for a number of technical achievements like cinematography, musical score and art direction. The funny thing is, it's not like Spielberg and Cruise need any kind of charity from anybody to call attention to their work, but I think that this movie deserved a lot more than the Sound-Effects Editing nomination it got that year from the Academy (ever notice how this seems to be some kind of "consolation nomination" for films that get shut out of the technical awards?) In fact, as a fan of the first Spider-Man movie I can say that this movie actually robbed M.R. of the nod it deserved.

Well, if anyone out there overlooked these movies the way I thought the Academy and audiences did, the DVDs are out there for the watching...