Best Overlooked Film

Whale Rider

Though we are a site dedicated to celebrating the box office champions of the year, we're not so blind as to equate earnings with quality (quite frankly, we sometimes can't believe the crap that people go see). It's for that reason that we have the award for Best Overlooked film, for movies that earned under $25 million at the box office. Many are in a foreign language or from a foreign culture or tell stories in a way people aren't used to. These are films that never got their chance for a wide release or deserved better than they got.

Our winner here is Whale Rider, a charming family tale about a Maori girl who challenges the idea that she can't be chief of her tribe. It won the Toronto Film Festival Audience Award in 2002, a highly coveted honor which more often than not leads to Academy Award nominations (it received one, but that's not nearly enough). Its final box office total was $20.8 million, but it threatens to be lost to the "Family" section of the video store. Make sure you give this one a look.

Switching places with Whale Rider in this category compared to Best Picture is City of God, a Brazilian masterpiece. Snubbed for Oscar consideration last year, it made up for that this year with four surprising nominations. This isn't backed up by box office, as it only earned just over $5 million despite not leaving theaters for over a year. If you're looking for a gripping and gritty epic, you would be hard pressed to do better than this one.

The terminally weird American Splendor finished third with $6 million. This paean to the outsiders, the freaks and the hopeless societal rejects caused us to relate maybe just a little too much. Innovating filmmaking techniques and an acerbic world view made this a favorite among our voters.

Just one point back in fourth place was In America, which has earned just $11.2 million so far. Despite a year's worth of good press, without any actors that people recognized as stars, it wasn't able to break though. Even with a title like In America, it still seemed too British. Two Academy Award nominations may heal that wound.

Geek movies played strong in this category, as the documentary Spellbound finished fifth. Following a group of competitors in the National Spelling Bee, it shone a light on this most curious of sporting events and just what motivates someone to try and memorize the dictionary for this. Earning just under $6 million, a princely sum for a documentary, this is still deserving of more exposure. It's a very interesting look into the over-achieving mentality.

It's easy to look at The Station Agent as a gimmicky movie, since its start, Peter Dinklage, is in fact a midget. It's not so much about that fact as it is about how it affects how he relates to the world because of this fact. It's made him withdraw from the world, until he's slowly dragged into a friendship with two similarly withdrawn people. Some surprising insights into this mindset make for a very satisfying experience. It's earned about $5.5 million so far.

Another documentary comes in at seventh, Capturing the Friedmans. Telling the story of the Friedman pedophilia trial on Long Island in the '70s, it combines typical interviews with startling home videos taken by the family to paint a remarkably murky picture of something that all sides are convinced they know the full truth of. It's one of the most fascinating films of the year, dealing with the slippery nature of justice. Earning just over $3 million, its Oscar nomination for Best Documentary should help, but this is a very significant film that needs to be seen.

It's rare enough to see an American movie with an all-Asian cast; rarely still where the ethnicity is simply not an issue. That's the case with the brilliant Better Luck Tomorrow (box office: $3.8 million), which deals with a group of over-achieving high school students who decide to buck the system and descend into self-destruction, basically for the hell of it. It's a disturbing condemnation of middle-class values, which put success above everything else and which take morality out of the picture. Hey, maybe these kids are ready for corporate culture after all.

The trippy Triplets of Belleville might be the most unique film of the year. The animated spectacle comes by way of Quebec and France but is largely wordless, though filled to the brim with catchy music. Filled with cyclists, mafia kidnappers, a determined grandmother, one seriously rattled dog and the titular singers, it's certainly nothing like anything else out there. It's earned just $3.5 million so far but has finally received a moderate release.

Rounding out the top ten is The Good Thief, a remake of Bob Le Flambeur with Nick Nolte in the title role. Perhaps best described as Ocean's 11 on Heroin, it has a sparking wit and flamboyancy that's missing from a lot of modern caper films. Director Neil Jordan is always reliable, and if you're looking for an antidote to flashy but artificial films like The Italian Job, this is the movie for you. (Reagen Sulewski/BOP)

Top Ten
Position	Film	Total Points
1	Whale Rider	71
2	City of God	61
3	American Splendor	53
4	In America	55
5	Spellbound	37
6	The Station Agent	32
7	Capturing the Friedmans	27
8	Better Luck Tomorrow	26
9 (tie)	The Triplets of Belleville	25
10 (tie)	The Good Thief	25