Good Movies That Aren't Popular But Are Must-Sees

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Pastoral : To Die in the Country (1974)

japanese movie directed by Shūji Terayama

Terayama’s second feature recapitulates some of the main themes of Throw Away Your Books in more directly personal terms: it’s a film about a film-maker’s re-examination (and attempted revision) of his own childhood. His boyhood self is an unprepossessing lad who lives with his monstrous, widowed mother, fantasises about the desirable girl-next-door, and finds the visiting circus a touchstone for his dreams of escape. With passion, wit and a genuinely engaging charm, Terayama poses the burning question: Does murdering your mother constitute a true liberation? The autobiographical stance and the circus motif have evoked countless comparisons with Fellini, but they’re very wide of the mark: the film isn’t burdened with bombast or rhetoric, but it is rich in (authentically Japanese) poetry, and its modernist approach is challenging in the best and most accessible sense.

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In A Year With 13 Moons (1978)

german movie directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

plot :

The film follows the last five days in the life of Erwin Weishaupt (Volker Spengler). In love with his former business partner Anton Saitz (Gottfried John), who was not gay, he decided to change his sex and to become Elvira, but the sex change did not bring him happiness.

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The Phantom Carriage (1921)

swedish movie directed by Victor Sjöström

plot :

On New Year's Eve, the dying Salvation Army girl Edit has one last wish: to speak with David Holm. David, an alcoholic, is sitting in a graveyard with two drinking buddies, talking about his old friend Georges who told him about Death's carriage—the legend that the last person to die each year has to work under the "strict master" Death and collect the souls of everybody who dies the following year. Georges himself died on New Year's Eve last year.

Gustafsson, a friend of Edit who is looking for David, finds him and tries to convince him to go and see her, but David refuses. When his friends too try to convince him, a fight breaks out where David is accidentally killed just before the clock strikes twelve. The carriage appears, and the driver is revealed as Georges.

As David’s soul steps out of his body, Georges reminds him of what he once had, how he once lived a happy family life with his wife Anna before ending up in bad company with Georges and the other drinkers. It is revealed how Anna left him after he was jailed for intoxication. He also reminds him how David exactly one year ago was taken care of by Edit, and while treating her badly, he gave her his promise to find her the following year so she would find out whether her prayers for him had worked or not.

Georges informs David that the promise has to be fulfilled and brings him in the carriage to Edit’s house. In another flashback it is shown how Edit once found David in a bar with his friend Gustafsson. Edit persuaded them to go to a Salvation Army meeting. At the meeting, Gustafsson submitted himself to God, but David stayed cynical. Present at the meeting was also David's wife. Edit tried to bring the couple together again. At first they were optimistic, but soon David's drinking drove them into despair. One night David became aggressive when Anna tried to protect their children from being infected by David's tuberculosis. He was locked in the kitchen, but broke through the door with an axe.

When the driver arrives in Edit's room, she begs him to let her live until she sees David again. She thinks she is the one to blame for his guilt, as she brought the couple together again. When David hears this he is moved. He kisses her hands, and when Edit sees his regret she can die in peace. Georges then takes David to Anna, who is planning to kill herself and their children. David begs Georges and God to let him interfere. Georges allows him to return to life. David and Anna embrace each other and cry.

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Dreams (1990)

japanese movie directed by Akira Kurosawa

plot :

A collection of tales based upon the actual dreams of director Akira Kurosawa.

i don't find a trailer so here one of the tales:

Crows

A brilliantly-colored vignette featuring director Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh. An art student (a character wearing Kurosawa's trademark hat who provides the POV for the rest of the film) finds himself inside the vibrant and sometimes chaotic world inside Van Gogh's artwork, where he meets the artist in a field and converses with him. The student loses track of the artist (who is missing an ear and nearing the end of his life) and travels through other works trying to find him. Van Gogh's painting Wheat Field with Crows is an important element in this dream. This Segment features Prelude No. 15 in D-flat major by Chopin.

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The Mirror (1975)

russian movie directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

plot :

In a larger context, The Mirror depicts the thoughts and emotions of Alexei (Ignat Daniltsev) and the world surrounding him. The structure of the film is discontinuous and non-chronological, without a conventional plot, and combines childhood memories with newsreel footage. The film switches between three different time frames: prewar, wartime and the postwar 1960s.

The film opens with Alexei's son Ignat (also played by Ignat Daniltsev) switching on a television set and watching the examination of a stammerer by a physician. In the next scene, set in the countryside during the prewar time sequence, Alexei's mother Maria (Margarita Terekhova) talks with a doctor who chances to be passing by (Anatoli Solonitsyn). The exterior and the interior of the house are shown, as well as a barn on fire. In a dream sequence Maria is washing her hair. Set in the postwar time frame, in the 1960s, Alexei is talking with his mother Maria on the phone while the interior of a house is shown. Switching to the prewar time frame, the mother, Maria, is shown at her work as a proofreader at a printing press. She is worrying about a mistake she may have overlooked, but is comforted by her colleague Lisa (Alla Demidova), who then reduces her to tears with withering criticism.

Back in postwar time, Alexei quarrels with his wife, Natalia (also played by Margarita Terekhova), who has divorced him and is living with his son Ignat. This is followed by scenes from the Spanish Civil War and the ascent of a balloon in the USSR. In the next scene the same apartment is shown, with a strange woman (Tamara Ogorodnikova) sitting in one room. Ignat reads a letter by Alexander Pushkin and receives a telephone call from his father Alexei. Switching to the wartime, Alexei is shown during rifle training, inter cut by newsreel footage of the Sino-Soviet border conflict and World War II. In the next scene, the reunion of the children with the father (Oleg Yankovsky) after the end of the war is shown. The film then returns to the quarrel between Alexei and his wife Natalia in the postwar 1960s. Switching to the prewar time, the house and the surrounding countryside are again shown, inter cut by a dreamlike sequence showing a levitating mother. The film then moves to the postwar time, showing Alexei on his deathbed. The final scene plays in the prewar time frame, showing a pregnant mother, Maria, inter cut by scenes showing Maria young and old (the old Maria is played by Tarkovsky's mother Maria Vishnyakova).

The Mirror draws heavily on Tarkovsky's own childhood. Childhood memories such as the evacuation from Moscow to the countryside during the war, a withdrawn father and his own mother, who actually worked as a proofreader at a printing press, feature prominently in the film.

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The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (aka Baron Prásil) (1961)

Czech movie directed by Karel Zeman

plot :

The film begins with footsteps leading to a pond. The camera continually moves upwards to show the flight of butterflies, birds, and a progression of historical aircraft ending with a rocketship travelling through space and landing on the moon.

The astronaut/cosmonaut leaves his spacecraft and sights other footsteps on the moon leading him to an old phonograph, then a crashed rocket with a plaque reading Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. Taken to a dinner table, the surprised space traveller meets the characters from Verne's book and Baron Münchhausen. Inviting him to their table, the characters believe that the cosmonaut is a man actually from the moon, and kindly treat him as a small child.

The Baron decides to take him to Earth in a fanciful airship held up by a herd of winged horses. The Baron dresses the spaceman, called "Joey" in the English dubbed version and "Tonik" in the original Czech, in 18th Century costume where they land in 18th Century Turkey. Speaking in an unintelligible voice that he calls the "language of diplomacy" the Baron presents Joey to the Sultan. However Joey's lack of knowledge of diplomatic protocol and his falling in love with Princess Bianca, a damsel in distress held prisoner by the Sultan, leads to a series of romantic and fanciful adventures that transform the modern scientific space traveller into a hero rivalling the Baron.

Among the exciting and satiric adventures are sword and sea battles with the Turks, being swallowed by a giant fish, and ending the conflict between two warring kingdoms.

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The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973)

Polish movie directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has

Plot :

Joseph (Jan Nowicki) travels through a dream-like world, taking a dilapidated train to visit his dying father, Jacob, in a sanatorium. When he arrives at the hospital, he finds the entire facility is going to ruin and no one seems to be in charge or even caring for the patients. Time appears to behave in unpredictable ways, reanimating the past in an elaborate artificial caprice.

Though Joseph is always shown as an adult, his behavior and the people around often depict him as a child. He befriends Rudoph, a young boy who owns a postage stamp album. The names of the stamps trigger in Joseph a wealth of association and adventure. Among the many occurrences in this visually potent phantasmagoria include Joseph re-entering childhood episodes with his wildly eccentric father (who lives with birds in an attic), being arrested by a mysterious unit of soldiers for having a dream that was severely criticized in high places, reflecting on a girl he fantasized about in his boyhood and commandeering a group of historic wax mannequins. Throughout his strange journey, an ominous blind train conductor reappears like a death figure.

Has also adds a series of reflections on the Holocaust that were not present in the original texts, reading Schulz's prose through the prism of the author's death during World War II and the demise of the world he described.

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Pink Narcissus (1971)

american movie directed by James Bidgood

plot :

Between visits from his keeper, or john, a handsome male prostitute (Bobby Kendall), alone in his apartment, lounges, fantasizing about worlds where he is the central character. For example, he pictures himself as a matador, a Roman slave boy and the emperor who condemns him, and the keeper of a male harem for whom another male performs a belly dance.

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Pretty Baby (1978)

american movie directed by Louis Malle

plot :

In 1917, during the last months of legal prostitution in Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans, Louisiana, Hattie is a prostitute working at an elegant brothel run by the elderly, cocaine-sniffing Madame Nell. Hattie has a 12-year-old daughter, Violet, who also lives at the house, and has just given birth to a baby boy. When photographer Ernest J. Bellocq comes by with his camera, Hattie and Violet are the only ones awake. He asks to be allowed to take photographs of the women. Madame Nell only agrees after he offers to pay.

Bellocq becomes a fixture in the brothel, taking many photographs of the prostitutes, mostly of Hattie. His activities fascinate Violet, though she believes he is falling in love with her mother, which makes her jealous. Violet is also a restless child, and frustrated by the long, precise process Bellocq must go through to pose and take his pictures.

Nell decides that Violet is old enough for her virginity to be auctioned off. After a bidding war between regulars, Violet is bought by an apparently quiet customer, but this first sexual experience is unpleasant. Hattie, meanwhile, aspires to escape prostitution. She marries one of her customers and goes to St. Louis without her daughter, whom her husband believes to be her sister. Hattie promises to return for Violet once she’s settled and broken the news to her new spouse.

Violet runs away from the brothel in a fit of temper after being punished for some hijinks, showing up on Bellocq’s doorstep. The two become lovers, although Violet still needs a great deal of attention and is frustrated by Bellocq’s devotion to his work. For his part, the (perhaps asexual) older man is entranced by Violet’s beauty, youth, and photogenic face.

Violet eventually returns to Nell’s after quarreling with Bellocq, but social reform groups are forcing the brothels of Storyville to close. Bellocq arrives to wed Violet, ostensibly to protect her from the larger world.

Immediately following the wedding, Hattie and her husband arrive from St. Louis. They claim that Violet’s marriage is illegal without their consent and plan to take her back with them. Violet would like her husband to come with her, but he lets her go, realizing a more conventional life, and schooling, will benefit her more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6OfO0ySYho

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Army of Shadows (1969)

french movie directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

plot :

France, 1942, during the occupation. Philippe Gerbier, a civil engineer, is one of the French Resistance's chiefs. Given away by a traitor, he is interned in a camp. He manages to escape, and joins his network at Marseilles, where he makes the traitor be executed... This non-spectacular movie (do not expect any Rambo or Robin Hood) shows us rigorously and austerely the everyday of the French Resistants : their solitude, their fears, their relationships, the arrests, the forwarding of orders and their carrying out...

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Dr. Caligari (1989)

american movie directed by Stephen Sayadian

plot :

Mrs. Van Houten has shown signs of losing touch with reality, and her husband discusses possible treatment with Dr. Caligari, who says Mrs. Van Houten has a disease of the libido. The staff want Dr. Caligari removed from their facility due to her controversial experiments with electroshock and hypothalamus injections. As Dr. Caligari continues experimenting with her patients, her daughter and son-in-law attempt to stop her

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Visitor Q (2001)

japanese movie directed by Takashi Miike

plot :

A troubled and perverted family find their lives intruded by a mysterious stranger who seems to help find a balance in their disturbing natures.

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Tomboy (2011)

french movie directed by Céline Sciamma

plot :

Laure (Zoé Héran) is a 10 year old girl who over the summer moves to a new home. She introduces herself to the neighborhood kids as a boy, Mickäel, and participates in the games and activities with the children as a boy. Eventually she is found out by her younger sister who keeps her secret, and by her parents who stop her from identifying as a boy. The film closes as she re-introduces herself to her new friend as Laure

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The Devils (1971)

british moie directed by Ken Russell

plot :

Cardinal Richelieu and his power-hungry entourage seek to take control of seventeenth-century France, but need to destroy Father Grandier - the priest who runs the fortified town that prevents them from exerting total control. So they seek to destroy him by setting him up as a warlock in control of a devil-possessed nunnery, the mother superior of which is sexually obsessed by him. A mad witch-hunter is brought in to gather evidence against the priest, ready for the big trial.

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About Elly (2009)

iranian movie directed by Asghar Farhadi

plot :

A group of middle-class Iranian friends travel to the shores of the Caspian Sea on a three-day vacation. They are former classmates at the Law faculty in the university. Three couples include Sepideh and her husband Amir who have a little daughter. Shohreh and her husband Peiman who have two children including their little son Arash. Nazy and her husband Manoochehr are the third family. The trip is planned by Sepideh, who brings along her daughter's kindergarten teacher Elly in order to introduce her to Ahmad, a friend who has come back from Germany to get married.

They all go to the villa that Sepideh has booked from Tehran, but the rural woman in charge tells them that the owners of the place were going to come back the next day, so they wouldn't be able stay there. The old woman suggests that they stay in a deserted villa that needs a lot of repairs. There would be no cellphone reception there and they would have to go to the old woman's house in order to make calls. Sepideh lies to the old woman about the relationship between Elly and Ahmad: she says they're married and are there for their honeymoon.

Elly is a bit shy, but she begins to feel attracted to Ahmad, who seems to feel the same. She calls her mother and lies to her saying that she's with her co-workers at the sea-side. She wishes to go back to Tehran the following day, as planned. Sepideh does not want her to leave and hides her luggage. In a twist of events, Elly goes missing after one of the mothers asks her to watch the children playing in the water. The group does not know whether Elly drowned or left for Tehran on her own.

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Time of the Gypsies (1988)

yugoslav movie director by Emir Kusturica

plot :

Perhan lives with his devoted grandmother Khaditza, his lame sister Danira and his dissolute uncle Merdzan. He wants to marry a girl named Azra, but her mother won't allow it, as Perhan is the illegitimate son of a Slovenian soldier who had an affair with Perhan's late mother. Ahmed, the "Gypsy sheik," comes to the village with his brothers. Merdzan loses his clothes playing cards with Ahmed's brothers, and comes home desperate for money so that he can repay. It is raining and not finding any money, he accuses the grandmother of hiding the money from him and lifts the frame of the house up (using a rope and a truck), so that it is suspended in mid-air as the rain comes down on Perhan, his grandmother and Danira. Very soon after, Khaditza is summoned to use her powers to save Ahmed's sick son, Roberto, which Khaditza does. For repayment, she proposes a deal with Ahmed - to pay for Danira's leg to be healed at a hospital in Ljubljana. Perhan goes with Danira, promising his grandmother not to leave her, but Ahmed asks where will he stay and convinces him to go to Milan. At first Perhan wants to make money honestly, but after being dragged through the mud, Perhan begins stealing and squirreling money away in a shack.

After being double-crossed by his brother Sadam, Ahmed appoints Perhan boss of the operation. Now relatively rich, Perhan goes home, where he is enraged to find Azra is pregnant. Perhan refuses to believe her. They marry with the condition that she sell the baby. Perhan is also disappointed to find that the house Ahmed promised to build him is not being built at all, and that Danira was not operated on, but forced to be a beggar as part of Ahmed's money operation. On their wedding night, Azra tells him the child is theirs, and was conceived when they made love on the Feast of St George. Still wearing her wedding dress, Azra dies after giving birth to a boy while levitating mid-air. Because Ahmed leaves with the baby, which we discover later is also named Perhan, he is raised by Ahmed's crew.

After four years of searching, Perhan reunites with Danira in Rome, who leads him to Perhan Jr., whom Perhan now accepts as his child. Perhan drops the children off at the train station, promising to meet up with them after buying an accordion for his son and a present (sponges) for grandmother. The boy tells him he is mad at him because he will not return, and he will not get an accordion. Perhan assures him he will, "Cross my gypsy heart," but immediately runs out of the station to settle the score with Ahmed, who is about to be married. Perhan arrives at the wedding and kills Ahmed with a fork, using his telekinetic powers. He also kills Ahmed's brothers, but he is in turn killed by Ahmed's new wife. At the funeral, the grandmother passes out drinks to everyone and Perhan Jr. goes outside the house, peers through the window at his dead father, breaks the glass and steals the coins put on his father's eyes.

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Made in Britain (1982)

british movie directed by Alan Clarke

plot :

Trevor is a 16 year old, sometimes-violent skinhead with no regard for authority, and would rather spend his time stealing cars than sitting in the detention centre to which he is sent. His social worker, Harry Parker, tries to do his best, but Trevor is only interested when there's something that he can get out of it. The authorities within the centre try to make Trevor conform to the norms of society, but he takes no notice, and would rather speak in a torrent of four-letter words and racial abuse.

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Osama (2003)

afghan movie directed by Siddiq Barmak

plot :

In Afghanistan, during the Taliban regime, women are forbidden to work and to walk on the streets without the company of a male. The teenager girl Osama cuts her hair and dresses like a boy to get a job and support her widow mother and grandmother. There is no men in her family, since her father and her brother were killed in previous Afghan wars, and the family has no means of survival. When Osama, disguised as a boy, is called by the Taliban to join the school and military training, the boy Espandi tries to help her

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRkc6BoDdKM

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Love Is the Devil Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998)

british movie directed by John Maybury

plot :

In the 1960s, British painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) surprises a burglar and invites him to share his bed. The burglar, a working class man named George Dyer, 30 years Bacon's junior, accepts. Bacon finds Dyer's amorality and innocence attractive, introducing him to his Soho pals. In their sex life, Dyer dominates, Bacon is the masochist. Dyer's bouts with depression, his drinking and pill popping, and his satanic nightmares strain the relationship, as does his pain with Bacon's casual infidelities. Bacon paints, talks with wit, and, as Dyer spins out of control, begins to find him tiresome. Could Bacon care less?