sit back and relax
June 25, 2016 9:12 PM   Subscribe

 
God Help the Girl has Hannah Murray, aka Gilly from Game of Thrones. That looks interesting.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:17 PM on June 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


Except for Safe (pretty good), Cold Souls (really liked it), and Meek's Cutoff (just didn't grab me), those were indeed films I have not seen. And some seem worth checking out!
posted by Pater Aletheias at 9:30 PM on June 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was just looking at 'Horror' Movies You Actually May Not Have Seen about an hour ago. And indeed I haven't seen almost all of these, I'll be keeping them in mind next time I'm pondering what to watch. wihbe sure knows how to pitch a movie, at any rate.
posted by mstokes650 at 9:40 PM on June 25, 2016


Experimenter (2015) has Kellan Lutz (The Legend of Hercules) portraying William Shatner...
posted by dilaudid at 9:41 PM on June 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Has anyone else noticed the optical illusion when you scroll past the artwork for Moon? It's the last one on the first list.
posted by adept256 at 9:52 PM on June 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Does this list contain many horror titles? Will I click through and see anything I can't unsee?
posted by pxe2000 at 9:53 PM on June 25, 2016


:( not only have I heard of most of these, I put some of them on DVD. And I hate to say it—it's tacky and how many movies have I made anyway—but there's a reason you haven't seen them.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:56 PM on June 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


There are a few horror titles, but the photos have been well-chosen to avoid disturbing images. Probably the spookiest shot is from the non-horror film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (gorillas in the mist with glowing red eyes).
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 10:02 PM on June 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


God Help The Girl has a pretty good soundtrack. I especially love I'll Have to Dance With Cassie. But I haven't seen the movie yet.

There were a couple in there I'd seen, a couple more I'd heard of, and only a couple that made me think about seeing them. But that's OK. It was interesting looking them over.
posted by not that girl at 10:35 PM on June 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh, man, Berberian Sound Studio is AMAZING. An accurate and riveting depiction of mid-century foley sound techniques, a great ghost story, and an amazing feminist dissection of the ways giallo as a genre has been terrible to women, all rolled into one. At this point basically anything Peter Strickland does will get me into a theater, as Katalin Varga was that unheard-of thing, a rape-revenge story I hadn't seen before and that wasn't encrusted with patriarchal bullshit, and the gorgeous S&M romance The Duke of Burgundy is a blistering takedown of years of bad 'lesbian' softcore porn flicks. Strickland is very high on my personal list of great feminist filmmakers, and more people should watch his stuff.

...Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is certainly a movie that was screened in a room I was sitting in, and apart from that there is no other way to describe it.

So from that relatively limited personal experience, and knowing people who vouch for Safe and We Are The Best, this looks like a project I will definitely be using as a suggestion box. Low number of ratings on IMDB + high rating on Rotten Tomatoes = wish I'd thought of filtering that way sooner.
posted by Rush-That-Speaks at 10:38 PM on June 25, 2016 [17 favorites]


Guys, you have to see A Field in England, it is outstanding.
posted by Artw at 10:44 PM on June 25, 2016 [17 favorites]


(I really need to see We Are The Best. It probably seems like I never shut up about Berberian Sound Studio so I'll just say, yes, watch that one too.)
posted by Artw at 10:46 PM on June 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


I loved Uncle Boonmee. Syndromes and a Century, also directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is great.

I found Meek's Cutoff arresting.

Snow on the Bluff is remarkable.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 10:52 PM on June 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm pretty much assuming everyone here has seen Moon?
posted by Artw at 10:54 PM on June 25, 2016 [28 favorites]


Advantageous is the only one that I've seen, though there are several I had heard of previously and are on my list to watch. Interestingly enough, I discovered Advantageous through its FanFare post.

I've heard of Moon and, while I haven't seen it, I assumed it was pretty well known and was surprised to see it on the list.
posted by noneuclidean at 11:01 PM on June 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've only seen Moon, Series 7, Schizopolis, and Berberian Sound Studio from this list, but I liked all of those, and there are a bunch of movies on here I wanted to see, or have had recommended to me, so I'll bookmark this sucker.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 11:42 PM on June 25, 2016


I really need to see We Are The Best.



This is a true and accurate statement.


You really need to see We Are The Best.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:08 AM on June 26, 2016 [11 favorites]



Guys, you have to see A Field in England, it is outstanding.




I LOVE A Field In England, but don't necessarily recommend it to everyone. It is kind of a mess, more of a gloriously ambitious failure than a success, but it is a singular film. Wheatley has such an intriguing vision, though it was far too visceral for High Rise, which cried out for someone who could more accurately capture Ballards's dispassionate, clinical voice (and also someone who wouldn't leave out the main character.)
posted by louche mustachio at 12:20 AM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


If Wheatley's glorious ambition was to give me a headache with strobe effects, the film was a success.
posted by adept256 at 2:56 AM on June 26, 2016


Some of these you haven't seen as they are not so easy to get hold of. Not on prime or Netflix and DVD is pricey.

I would add Slow West to the list of recommendations. Fassbender laconic and I think it will chime in terms of character motivation.
posted by biffa at 3:09 AM on June 26, 2016


Seems like it's just indie movies from the last two or three years with an occasional popular arthouse movie thrown in?

Yeah, I think there are only 5 on all these lists that are more than 10 years old! A strict categorization that goes unmentioned on the lists themselves, and that lack of a mention always makes me suspect that the author hasn't seen much in the way of older films.

Someone must be editing these continuously, because several of the better known films mentioned in this thread such as Moon and Schizopolis are no longer listed.

I thought Visioneers was close to being great. I was making comparisons to Brazil in my head while I was watching it... but it makes a sharp turn into a very overdone trope. I felt so let down that it had been startlingly creative at first, then took up a significant amount of its end-of-film runtime with something so cliched.
posted by heatvision at 4:13 AM on June 26, 2016


Moon and Schizopolis are under the "load more images" cuts on pages 1 and 6, respectively.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 4:19 AM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Films You May Not Have Seen

subtitle: and will never see if Netflix is your main route to accessing film.
posted by biffa at 4:59 AM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


I actually saw Copenhagen at a film festival a year or two back. Great film.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:04 AM on June 26, 2016


We Are The Best! is the only one I've seen, and it's great.
posted by plep at 5:09 AM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


A spot check suggests that nearly all of them are available from Netflix -- on DVD. Which highlights the problem with streaming; legal streaming requires a license, and all of the licenses currently in use expire. While those physical plastic discs getting shuttled about by the USPS might seem so 20th century, the thing is if a movie makes it onto DVD at all -- and most of them do nowadays -- those little plastic discs are artifacts which exist until they are lost or broken and can be rented and resold forever, because they are physical.

So just as most movies, even obscure and crappy ones, make it onto DVD, most of them make it onto cable and by various license linkages onto streaming services. But after that first license run expires, things get dicey. Big movies generate enough interest to make renewals worthwhile, but what happens to Z list movies that have fallen into the bit bucket of history? Some of them end up in packages that get renewed regularly, some of them are taken care of by their original copyright holders, and some of them will just be forgotten and you can't watch them any more.

Except on DVD. Ironically, this is an area where even the less legal alternative services will generally let you down, because the same lack of interest that let the license lapse also probably means nobody is torrenting them either.
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:54 AM on June 26, 2016 [7 favorites]


Tons of these are on Netflix.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 5:56 AM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


So far, Moon is only one I've seen. It's fantastic, but then again, Sam Rockwell, so, obviously. Really, most of his starring role movies should be on here.

A lot of these sound really interesting, thanks for posting them!
posted by Room 641-A at 5:57 AM on June 26, 2016


I watched "We Are The Best" and "God Help The Girl" as a double feature when I had a flu some months back and actually felt better because they were that enjoyable. Full warning: if you're a person that hates Belle and Sebastian, you can probably skip the latter. But "We Are The Best" is THE BEST.
posted by thivaia at 5:59 AM on June 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


Is there anything quite as fun as making lists of movies to tick off? This post makes me feel delightfully light-headed. Now if someone can upload it to a site like List Challenges where I while away my time checking them off and tote up my score, I'd be thrilled.

/can't quantify art, my arse...
posted by Gin and Broadband at 6:31 AM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Holy cow, this is an amazing list!
Great find, tmotat! Many thanks!
posted by Thorzdad at 6:34 AM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Anything described as 'near future' is on my short list, though few are worth their salt.
posted by xtian at 6:51 AM on June 26, 2016


I watched Queen of Earth last week and don't recommend it. Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston and great actors and even Patrick Fugit isn't bad but the thing is a self-important mess of a movie.
posted by octothorpe at 7:19 AM on June 26, 2016


Tons of these are on Netflix.

Some of them are on Hoopla too, which you might have free access to via your membership in a local public library. (And Hoopla now works with Chromecast.)
posted by fuse theorem at 8:18 AM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


Cool! Here's a few other movies you may not have seen: Grabbers, Robot Overlords, Robot Stories, Dimensions. (I saw these over the past several years at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival
posted by rmd1023 at 8:21 AM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Tons of these are on Netflix.

Maybe where you live.
posted by biffa at 8:29 AM on June 26, 2016


This is great, thanks for posting it! I'd heard of so few I at first suspected they might be made up, but eventually I found some I'd actually seen: Safe is wonderful, and A Brighter Summer Day is one of the greatest movies I've ever seen—it's the movie I'm most fervently hoping Criterion gets around to. (It's long and very immersed in Taiwanese history, but trust me, it rewards the effort.)

> Yeah, I think there are only 5 on all these lists that are more than 10 years old! A strict categorization that goes unmentioned on the lists themselves, and that lack of a mention always makes me suspect that the author hasn't seen much in the way of older films.

So what?! Does everything have to cover all of history and represent total awareness of all mankind's cultural legacy or it gets dissed? This is why we can't have nice things.
posted by languagehat at 9:09 AM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Saw this in a theater several years ago. Best line in movie spoken when son who has turned into a monkey shows up to dinner one evening “Why did you grow your hair so long?”.
posted by boilermonster at 9:27 AM on June 26, 2016


My comment wasn't supposed to be some cleverly-crafted hot-take burn, it was an observation from my personal experience about the way people tend to craft and present lists. I thought it was a pretty minor point. I wouldn't have said it if I thought it would offend anyone, and I wouldn't have read through all the lists if I thought they were worthless. Sorry I misunderstood how imgur works, I don't usually use social media sites like that.

I'll just stay out of this thread. Mods, feel free to delete both my comments. Have a nice day and all the nice things you want.
posted by heatvision at 9:40 AM on June 26, 2016


I too just showed up to say that We Are The Best is the best. You should also go see Sing Street in semi-current release.
posted by GuyZero at 10:03 AM on June 26, 2016


Low number of ratings on IMDB + high rating on Rotten Tomatoes = wish I'd thought of filtering that way sooner.

A ha, thank you. I somehow missed what the criteria were and I was a little confused.

I'd kind of like to see lists of movies based on the polarity of the ratings. Like movies with a whole bunch of one and [four, five, whatever is top] ratings. Or comparing critic to audience reviews. Professional critics are usually better about distinguishing poorly done movies vs. movies they didn't like, whereas audiences sometimes don't recognize the distinction, or they're rating things to train recommendation engines like on Netflix.

Some of the best movies make some people really angry.
posted by ernielundquist at 10:05 AM on June 26, 2016


A Brighter Summer Day is one of the greatest movies I've ever seen—it's the movie I'm most fervently hoping Criterion gets around to.

Heads up: A Brighter Summer Day came out from Criterion in March. I saw it at a 35mm screening a few years ago where it was actually introduced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (whose Uncle Boonmee is also on this list), who cited it as one of the titles that had the biggest influence on his own work.

Since nobody else has, I'll put in a good word for Respire, which I thought was terrifically well directed by Mélanie Laurent.
posted by Mothlight at 10:15 AM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


> My comment wasn't supposed to be some cleverly-crafted hot-take burn, it was an observation from my personal experience about the way people tend to craft and present lists. I thought it was a pretty minor point. I wouldn't have said it if I thought it would offend anyone, and I wouldn't have read through all the lists if I thought they were worthless.

Oh, sorry, I entirely misread you! I guess I've just seen so many I'm-too-cool-for-this-list comments around here I just get trigger-happy. Come back!
posted by languagehat at 10:34 AM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


> A Brighter Summer Day came out from Criterion in March. I

Many thanks for that -- off to add it to my wish list!
posted by languagehat at 10:35 AM on June 26, 2016


I've never heard of any of these movies. Why is that?
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:53 AM on June 26, 2016


Just came in to agree that Berberian Sound Studio is incredible. I watched it in a whim because Netflix recommended it. Seriously great psych-horror film.
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:04 AM on June 26, 2016


I've never heard of any of these movies. Why is that?

I've been thinking about this lately. For me I think it's because I see more and more films at home, and at the same time, movies don't have previews any more. I used to find out about movies either from trailers watching them in theaters, or from pre-movie trailers watching them at home. Since I don't deliberately read any film review or criticism online, there's really not many venues for me to find out about new movies.

Also, all my movie watching these days is solitary, often on a computer. When I was younger it was more along the lines of "a few friends coming over to watch movies" which meant that the movies selected were more eclectic. Choosing movies for myself I tend to go straight to stuff I expect I'll like.
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:23 AM on June 26, 2016


Apart from the horror films, I've seen Moon, Berberian Sound Studio, A Field in England, and Safe. If those are representative of the lists' qualities, I'll hunt down the rest.

The horror lists are good, too.
posted by doctornemo at 11:32 AM on June 26, 2016


Also, for people who get their media the normal way, it's worth noting that many of these are actually pretty easy to torrent, despite their semi-obscurity.

God Save the Girl is basically a Belle & Sebastian album cover in movie form. Which is both the nicest thing I can say about the movie and the worst. I enjoyed it, maybe even a lot, but it's, well, very much the sort of thing it is.

One of the real puzzles of the movie is that it seems to exist in a world where no one worries about money, ever, and where everyone has as much time and support to find themselves as they want. I can't tell if that's just because the belle-and-sebastian-album-cover dreaminess can't exist in a world where money problems exist, or if it's because the NHS really is that incredible.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:38 AM on June 26, 2016


I've never heard of any of these movies. Why is that?

They're mostly released by small companies with little to no marketing budget, so you're not likely to see ads and previews. I live in the New York area so I notice some of them when they open in one of the local arthouse theaters (and until fairly recently The New York Times reviewed everything that opened in a New York theater), but I'm alerted to many more of them because of the people I follow on Film Twitter — mostly alt-weekly and website critics who are somewhat like-minded (I don't follow Devin Faraci or Film Crit Hulk or James Berardinelli; I do follow Mike D'Angelo and Scott Tobias and Glenn Kenny and Matt Zoller Seitz etc., and those guys are all about this kind of movie) and the tenor of the buzz about different titles often points to the ones that are must-sees. I learned about The Mend, for instance, only from Film Twitter, and it's definitely worth seeing.

Also, some of these were pretty big on the film festival circuit (George Washington, Uncle Boonmee) so if you follow festival news you'd be hipped to those. And the Alamo Drafthouse does a pretty good job of flogging interesting but oddball titles so if you go to that theater you'll be bombarded with previews for the likes of Borgman and The Tribe, which gives me some ideas, too. (I thought Borgman was OK but basically skipped The Tribe since Film Twitter suggested rightly or wrongly that I would find it pretty unpleasant.) But none of them really have the money behind them to crack the mainstream. But you can find a lot of them on Netflix, though some do seem to come and go quickly. Netflix is really about TV shows these days, unfortunately. :-(
posted by Mothlight at 11:45 AM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oooh, the only movies I've seen on this list are We Are The Best and Moon. Digging into God Help the Girl as we speak. Thanks for these links!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:47 AM on June 26, 2016


Maybe it was the alcohol, but when I was looking at the first couple lists last night, I was convinced at first that this was just a subtle prank- that is, someone had made up a list of plausible sounding films, and got some friends to pose for the pictures.

And then I read the comments here, and was half-convinced that everyone here was playing along. really, it wasn't until I saw "A Field in England", which I've actually heard of, that I convinced myself it was all real. Maybe.
posted by happyroach at 11:55 AM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


I really enjoyed Advantagous.
posted by pushing paper and bottoming chairs at 1:07 PM on June 26, 2016


I'd kind of like to see lists of movies based on the polarity of the ratings. Like movies with a whole bunch of one and [four, five, whatever is top] ratings.

Welp. Have fun watching the Atlas Shrugged trilogy, I guess.
posted by schmod at 1:50 PM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


I want to see the LISTS, not necessarily all of the movies on it. (I did read somebody livetweeting the first of the Atlas Shrugged movies, though. That was pretty enjoyable.)

As a rough sort, though, it'd be useful to distinguish the movies with across the board average ratings vs. the ones that some people really hate and some really love.
posted by ernielundquist at 2:01 PM on June 26, 2016


The films I inevitably drop into lists like this (and I think all of them are less-seen than Moon or A Field in England) are After Life 1, Dean Spanley 2 and Tomorrow I'll Be Scalding Myself With Tea 3
  1. Not the horror movie with Liam Neeson. (trailer)
  2. Dogs and reincarnation in Victorian England. (trailer)
  3. Time travel and Nazis in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia. With opening credits of footage of Hitler set to a disco beat. There's quite a lot there to dislike, but it's certainly unique. (whole movie - no subtitles, sorry)

posted by Grangousier at 2:34 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Can't believe no one here has commented on The Overnight. I suppose the community love for Adam Scott is outweighed by the general distaste for Jason Schwartzman.

However, if you like Schwartzman, this role was made for him. Scott is good too, as are. It's a tight, well-directed, atmospheric comedy. (I won't even add "dark," because it's really not. More "adult.")
posted by mrgrimm at 4:17 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


No, mrgrimm, I was excited to see it on the list because it just slipped my mind at the time! Thanks for the extra reminder, going to find it now.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:55 PM on June 26, 2016


However, if you like Schwartzman,...

I've missed the discussion of 7 Chinese Brothers, haven't I...:(
posted by lazycomputerkids at 6:44 PM on June 26, 2016


Visioneers is a strong choice for movie night. Same for The Overnight.
posted by Taft at 9:49 PM on June 26, 2016


Absolutely loved Meek's Cutoff when I watched it about a year ago. I think my exact quote when the credits rolled was "You see this is why I never bother making top ten end of year movie lists; 2 or 5 or 10 years later some completely unassuming, unheard of gem will just drop into my lap!"

To add a contribution to the Movies You May Not Have Heard Of list - (as in, I've never heard anyone else talk about it) - 2015's Spring
posted by mannequito at 9:50 PM on June 26, 2016


I'm assuming Moon is in there as a joke since there is an ongoing thing on r/movies about people repeatedly posting "Has anyone heard of this indie movie I've just seen called Moon, it's great" and it being in every single "Movies you may not have heard of" list.
posted by markr at 11:31 PM on June 26, 2016


Yes, some pretty good recommendations on this list (as mentioned, the high RT ratings combined with the low IMDB figures, can be a good filtering combination).

Two that I didn't see - although I only noticed at around #4 that there were more images to load, so apologies if these were actually included* - but which qualify on the low numbers of ratings on IMDB:

Skills Like This is totally charming and sweet but also fucking hilarious. Premise: You're a young playwright so bad at his job that someone collapses and almost dies at the premiere of your new play. Bonus: it's your grandfather. So, like many a young, educated, underemployed late 20/early 30something, you need to do something else. But what? Well, it turns out that larceny, and not drama, is your actual talent ...

I saw this a few years back at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and was sure that it'd get picked up for UK distribution (and for reasons beyond me it didn't). Outside of people i know who saw it at the festival, I've never met anyone else who's seen or heard of it, but it's fantastic (looks like it got US distribution in cinemas, and then on DVD, so some folk here may have seen it; if not, go watch!).


I Served The King of England, based on Bohumil Hrabal's novel of the same name.

The unctuous central character climbs the greasy pole in a high-end WWII-era hotel full of Nazis, and his older self reflects on the whole thing. A comedy (and actually a comedy), although dark with it.



*although not apologies really, because these are two great films that deserve more exposure even if they are on the list
posted by Len at 9:41 AM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


Movies You Actually May Not Have Seen, and the sequel lists:

Films You Should Watch That You Have Seen Briefly On TV, But Weren't Impressed At That Exact Moment, So You Ended Up Watching Some Syndicated Nonsense Instead

Movies That Were Playing At That House Party Last Month That You Ignored In Favor Of Talking With Mildly Interesting People

Films That Don't Actually (Yet) Exist But You Think You've Heard Of Them, But Only Because They Were Mentioned In Another Movie Or A TV Show, Like Seinfeld, Yet You Swear They're Real And You Saw Them At Blockbuster When Blockbuster Was Still A Thing

Movies You Actually Have Not Seen But Think You Have, Because You Will Mistake Them For Another Movie You Did See
posted by filthy light thief at 10:12 AM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


Movies That Cannot Be Unseen
posted by Molesome at 11:24 AM on June 27, 2016


This list made me think of Crimson Gold and Owl and the Sparrow.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 6:40 PM on June 27, 2016


Movies of a Kind You've Not SeenBefore Broadcast Late at Night Out of Pittsburgh.
posted by Artw at 6:48 PM on June 27, 2016


Trouble Every Day is the film that taught me how to hate Vincent Gallo but on the other hand has a great soundtrack by Tindersticks.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:51 PM on June 28, 2016


I saw a festival screening of "Alienated" (on prime now) and enjoyed it more than I expected. I was hesitant about potential gender dynamics but it got vert who's afraid of Virginia Wolfe with knives out and arguing about everything except what they're really fighting about.

"The Phoenix Incident" is an enjoyable found-footage sf movie, too.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:17 PM on June 28, 2016


« Older Bill Cunningham 1929-2016   |   What to do with extra apricots Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments