Now that we have all the time in the world on our hands, filling it with movies has become an organized pursuit, and helpful film lists have proliferated online. Some of these seek to cheer us up — classic comedies, vintage musicals, all from happier times, of course — or to put our despair in perspective with dystopian exercises like "12 Monkeys," "Mad Max," "The Road" and suchlike.

I want to offer something different: a list of oddball movies that were underloved at the time of their release and have remained underseen ever since. Some of these films, such as the 2009 "Jennifer's Body," have been undergoing critical reevaluation and are now seen as lovable cult movies. The rest have also developed cults, of one size or another, but are still waiting for the full-scale love they deserve.

"Jennifer's Body" (2009)

The critical indifference to this high school horror comedy was baffling. (It scored a rotten 44% on Rotten Tomatoes.) Diablo Cody's screenplay — a marvel of sexy sarcasm — was the follow-up to her debut script for the 2007 hit "Juno" (whose director, Jason Reitman, is one of the producers here). And the star, Megan Fox, of the mega-budget "Transformers" franchise, delivered a luscious parody of her own sex-puppet image. Fox plays the titular Jennifer, a snooty cheerleader who falls into the clutches of an indie band called Low Shoulder, whose members are desperate to make it big and have decided to sacrifice a virgin in order to enlist Satan as their manager. Unfortunately, since Jennifer is not a virgin in any sense of the word, the band's attempted ritual goes wildly awry, and a newly demonic Jennifer soon embarks on a bloody rampage. Amanda Seyfried effectively mutes her own movie-star looks to play Jennifer's geeky friend Needy. Chris Pratt, Amy Sedaris and J.K. Simmons are also on hand. (Now streaming on Amazon, YouTube, iTunes, etc.)

"Surveillance" (2008)

Crawling back from one of the most widely detested debuts in recent film history — the 1993 amputation oddity "Boxing Helena" — director Jennifer Lynch (daughter of David Lynch) made this seriously creepy serial-killer feature. Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond play a pair of FBI agents drawn to a slaughter site in the Nebraska hinterlands, where they interact with bent cops and druggy youths and search in vain for reliable witnesses. (There is one, but she's 11 years old, and who wants to hear what a kid has to say?) The movie has a bleak, sunbaked vibe and a most unsettling conclusion. It scored a limp 55% on Rotten Tomatoes and has yet to attract many second looks. It's never too late, though. (Now streaming on Amazon and Netflix)

"The Fountain" (2006)

Darren Aronofsky's time-tripping masterwork was seen by some — well, many — as a pretentious romance. But it's a spectacularly beautiful film that has steadily accumulated new admirers. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play Tom and Isabel, a couple whose love never dies. In 16th-century Spain, she is a queen dispatching him on a mission to the New World to find the Mayan tree of life. Five hundred years later — now — he is a research scientist searching for a cure for the cancer that is killing Isabel, who in this incarnation is his wife, and he learns of an ancient tree in Central America whose bark may be the cure he seeks. In the year 2600 A.D., we find Tom ascending through the heavens in a transparent bubble-ship containing a large tree. The glorious outer-space effects in this film are supersize blowups of microscopic chemical reactions (the work of optical-systems developer Peter Parks), and the magnificent score, by Clint Mansell, could become a permanent part of your life. (Streaming on Amazon, YouTube and Vudu)

"The Midnight Meat Train" (2008)

Critics liked this grisly horror film a bit more than audiences — possibly because Lionsgate unceremoniously dumped the picture on the market and not a lot of people got to see it. Bradley Cooper is a hustling photojournalist named Leon, who chronicles the denizens of the night in an unspecified big city (it's Los Angeles). He becomes aware of a mysterious subway train that only runs at midnight, and naturally, he wants to know more about it. This is as bad an idea as you would hope. Alarmingly awful things befall passengers on this train, all of them doled out by a mallet-swinging brute called Mahogany (the naturally terrifying Vinnie Jones). Bloody violence is not in short supply (the movie is based on a Clive Barker story), but the Japanese director, Ryuhei Kitamura, really excels at building tension and dread, and at oh-my-god editing. (Streaming on Netflix and Amazon)

"The Brothers Bloom" (2008)

This second feature by "Knives Out" director Rian Johnson is an eccentric fairy tale of overflowing charm. A pair of sibling conmen (Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo) make the mistake of trying to swindle a wacky heiress (Rachel Weisz), who numbers among her hobbies kung fu, power ping pong and chainsaw juggling (on stilts), and who would love to become a swindler herself. The picture flits all around Central Europe, but even with the brothers bringing in a daffy explosives expert called Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi), we sense that the big con they've planned, in Prague, will not be working out well. They should have sensed something amiss when their mark observed, "The trick to not being cheated is to learn how to cheat." (Streaming on Amazon and Vudu)

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

Kurt Loder is the film critic for Reason Online. To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.