Budget: $1.8M
Starring Christina Ricci, Rosanna Arquette, Vincent Gallo, and Jan-Michael Vincent and directed by Gallo, this low-budget flick isn’t afraid to emulate a B-movie. It’s a crime drama and a comedy with a rocking soundtrack that includes Yes and King Crimson. It was made for a drop in the bucket, and it about doubled its investment.
Gallo plays Billy Brown, who served his time and comes back home. He finds a girl at a club (Ricci) and takes her home to his family, so they will think he is responsibly married. Things get dicey when he falls in love with her.
Memento
Budget: $5M
Christopher Nolan’s most acclaimed film is "Memento." It’s about a guy named Leonard Shelby who wants nothing more than to avenge the horrific murder of his wife. The only problem is he suffers short-term memory loss so severely he can barely remember to do it.
The truth is she murdered herself by having him give her a fatal dose of medicine. The psychological thriller made $40 million, eight times its original budget.
Monsters
Budget: $500K
Slimy, tentacled, extraterrestrial CGI monsters inhabit this film. The beasts got to Earth after a NASA research probe crashed. The failed mission sent its sample of alien life free to roam the planet.
The British sci-fi thriller flips the usual plot of aliens abducting humans around. Humans abduct aliens in "Monsters." It earned over $4 million but, consider; it was made with barely a half-million dollars. It did plenty well to go to sequel. Monsters also earned director Gareth Edwards enough acclaim to win major Hollywood blockbusters "Godzilla" and "Rogue One."
Brick
Budget: $475K
Focus Film "Brick" is about a teen kid (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who gets embroiled in a crime ring mystery after his high school girlfriend disappears.
The neo-noir cult classic brought in $3.9 million at the box office. At Sundance, it won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision.
Another Earth
Budget: $150K
In this movie, another world is possible. Earth has a clone. It floats above Earth similarly to another moon. Even stranger, the other Earth has you on it. It’s a replica of all life.
Rhonda (Brit Marling), a young astrophysicist who was just accepted into MIT, hypothesizes that life on the other planet is behind ours, meaning she may be able to relive and repair a disastrous moment in her life. The budget movie won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It brought in almost $2 million.