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Hollywood is a machine. Every week, every month and every year countless films are released into theatres and not every one is as successful as the studio heads would hope. Sometimes the publicity machine was askew, sometimes the movie targeted an odd demographic, sometimes the release was steamrolled by a much larger movie and occasionally the movie is flat out bad.

But Hollywood's loss is our gain. There is a veritable treasure trove of film out there that you may not have seen. I will be your guide to this veritable wilderness of unwatched film. It will be my job to steer you towards the action, adventure, drama and comedy that may have eluded you, and at the same time, steer you away from some truly unwatchable dreck.

Hopefully we'll stumble across some entertainment that may have slid under your radar. Wish us luck.

Rounders (1998)

Recently while wandering the Internet, I stumbled across the single worst promotion I had ever seen for an online poker site. Instead of offering free chips, or money or even one of the many poker strategy books available on the market, this site had elected to offer a DVD copy of Rounders after so many ‘raked' hands.

I couldn't stop laughing after I read it. I actually called up one of my poker buddies and told him about it and he started laughing so hard that I thought he might pass out. You see, Rounders is the very definition of a cult movie. It had a very limited run, had an amazing cast and has done a ridiculous amount of business in the aftermarket, primarily due to the explosion of poker in the last decade. Most (and by most, I mean all) poker players that I know not only own a copy of this film, they have memorized it down to the suits on the cards in the hands that are played.

Rounders stars Matt Damon as Mike McDermott, Edward Norton as Lester "Worm" Murphy, John Tuturro as Joey Knish, Famke Jansen as Petra and John Malkovich as Teddy KGB. That's a pretty amazing cast. If you tried to get those actors for a movie today it would probably cost you upwards of a hundred million dollars.

Rounders revolves around the life of Mike McDermott and to a lesser extent the life of his just-released-from-jail friend Lester "Worm" Murphy. Mike has actually quit playing poker just at the beginning of the film as he has been reduced to zero cash by another player in a high stakes game of poker. Worm gets out of prison a little while after this happens and drags him back in with a very crooked game in a private club wherein he and Mike essentially empty everyone's wallets.

It looks fun at first, but unfortunately Worm owes people money and that debt has been accumulating interest while he was making jail his residence. Those same people are large, muscular and violent and are not prone to calm and reasonable negotiation.

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