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

[Baby]

Drowning by Numbers (1988)

british movie directed by Peter Greenaway

plot :

The film's plot centers on three women — a grandmother, mother and daughter — each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses each woman successively drowns her husband. The three Cissie Colpitts are played by Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson, and Joely Richardson. Bernard Hill plays the coroner Madgett, who is cajoled into covering up the three crimes.

The structure, with similar stories repeated three times, is reminiscent of a fairy tale, more specifically the Billy Goats Gruff, since Madgett is constantly promised greater rewards as he tries his luck with each of the Cissies in turn. The link to folklore is further established by Madgett's son Smut, who recites the rules of various unusual games played by the characters as if they were ancient traditions. Many of these games are invented for the film, including:

_Bees in the Trees

_Dawn Card Castles

_Deadman's Catch

_Flights of Fancy (or Reverse Strip Jump)

_The Great Death Game

_Hangman's Cricket

_The Hare and Hounds

_Sheep and Tides

Number-counting, game rules and the plot's repetitions are devices that emphasize structure and symmetry in Drowning by Numbers. Through the course of the film the numbers 1 to 100 appear in order, sometimes seen in the background, sometimes spoken by the characters.

The film is set in and around Southwold, Suffolk, England, with key landmarks such as the Victorian water tower, Southwold Lighthouse and the River Blyth estuary clearly identifiable.

opening scene

[Baby]

Mahler (1974)

british movie directed by Ken Russell

plot :

The film begins on a train journey with Gustav Mahler (Robert Powell) and his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) confronting their failing marriage. The story is then recounted in a series of flashbacks (some of which are surrealistic and nightmarish), taking one through Mahler's childhood, his brother's suicide, his experience with anti-semitism, his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism, his marital problems, and the death of his young daughter. The film also contains a surreal fantasy sequence involving the anti-Semitic Cosima Wagner (Antonia Ellis), widow of Richard Wagner, whose objections to his taking control of the Court Opera were supposedly removed by his conversion to Catholicism. In the process, the film explores Mahler's music and its relationship to his life.

[Baby]

Thriller - A Cruel Picture (1974)

swedish movie directed by Alex Fridolinski

cult but also very unknown. should be very appreciate by all the tarantino and grindhouse fans.

plot :

The story is about a quiet girl, Frigga/Madeleine (Christina Lindberg), who is sexually assaulted during her childhood and the trauma makes her mute. When she becomes older, she accepts a ride from a man, Tony (Heinz Hopf), who makes her a heroin addict, and then becomes her pimp. At one point, she is stabbed in the eye (a scene for which the director, to much controversy, used an actual cadaver) for refusing a client. She starts saving up money to buy weapons and take classes in driving, shooting, and martial arts to finally take revenge.

The film was marketed as the first film ever to be completely banned in Sweden. It has received a cult following and was one of the inspirations behind Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, specifically the character of Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah).

here the trailer but i don't really like it.

so here the 15 first minutes. avoid to watch the whole movie on youtube because many scenes with nudity/sex had certainly been removed and they are important for the story.

[Baby]

Gummo (1997)

american movie directed by Harmony Korine

plot :

The film is set in Xenia, Ohio, a small town hit by a tornado in 1974, although it was filmed in Nashville, Tennessee. The film portrays Xenia as the home of various oddball and somewhat disturbing backwater characters. The loose narrative follows several main characters who find odd and destructive ways to pass time, interrupted by vignettes depicting other denizens of the town.

[Baby]

At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1963)

brazilian movie directed by José Mojica Marins

plot :

The film is set in an unnamed Brazilian small town. Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe), the local undertaker who disdains religion and emotion and who believes the only thing that matters is the "continuity of the blood" (specifically his own), is looking for the "perfect woman" to bear him a superior child who will be immortal. Since his wife Lenita has been found to be unable to bear children, Coffin Joe begins to make advances with Terezinha, the fiancée of Joe's friend Antonio. Terezinha scolds him by telling him that Antonio is the only man in her life. During a Catholic holiday, Joe kills his wife Lenita (because of her infertiliy) by tying her up and having a venomous spider bite her. The local authorities cannot find a clue to arrest him and he remains free to do whatever he wants.

Some days later, Coffin Joe is invited by Antonio to visit a local gypsy who will tell the fortune of Antonio's marriage with Terezinha. The gypsy reveals, however, that there is going to be a tragic disaster, and the two will never get married. Joe, in response, calls her a fraud and states that the supernatural is a hoax. She warns him not to mock the supernatural forces, lest they make him pay. That night, Joe and Antonio go to Antonio's house, where Antonio tells Joe that he really didn't believe the witch's words, and that he expects to marry Terezinha and have a happy life together. Fulfilling the witch's prophecy, Coffin Joe brutally bludgeons and then drowns Antonio in a bathtub.

[Baby]

A City of Sadness (1989)

chinese movie directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien

The film was placed at No. 5 on The Best 100 Chinese Motion Pictures by Hong Kong Film Awards 2005, and placed at No.1 on The Best 100 Chinese Motion Pictures by Golden Horse Film Festival 2011

awards

46th Venice Film Festival : Golden Lion & UNESCO Prize

1989 Golden Horse Film Festival : Best Director – Hou Hsiao-hsien & Best Leading Actor – Sung Young Chen

1989 Kinema Junpo Awards : Best Foreign Language Film – Hou Hsiao-hsien

1991 Mainichi Film Concours : Best Foreign Language Film – Hou Hsiao-hsien

1991 Political Film Society : Special Award

Synopsis

The film depicts the Lin family's experiences during the White Terror. The eldest brother Wen-heung (Sung Young Chen) is murdered by a Shanghai mafia boss, the middle brother Wen-leung (Jack Kao) suffers a traumatic brain injury in a KMT jailhouse, and the youngest brother Wen-ching (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), who is both deaf and mute, hopes to flee to the mountains with his friend to fight in the anti-KMT resistance movement. By the end of the film even the photographer Wen-ching has been arrested by the authorities, leaving only his wife to tell the story of the family's destruction.

Wen-ching's deafness began as an expedient to disguise Tony Leung's inability to speak Taiwanese (or Japanese—the language taught in Taiwan's schools during the 51-year occupation), but wound up being an effective means to demonstrate the brutal insensitivity of Chen Yi's ROC administration.

the only trailer i found...

[Baby]

Possession (1981)

cult but not really famous

german/french/polish movie directed by Andrzej Żuławski.

In 1981, Isabelle Adjani won the award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Possession and Quartet. Adjani also won the year's César Award for Best Actress for her performance in Possession.

plot :

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

[COP11]

Sin Nombre

[Rox]

Circumstance (2011)

Teenagers Atafeh, and her best friend, Shireen, are experimenting with their burgeoning sexuality amidst the subculture of Tehran's underground art scene when Atafeh's brother, Mehran, returns home from drug rehab as the prodigal son. Battling his demons, Mehran vehemently renounces his former life as a classical musician and joins the morality police. He disapproves of his sister's developing intimate relationship with Shireen and becomes obsessed with saving Shireen from Atafeh's influence. Suddenly, the two siblings, who were close confidants, are entangled in a triangle of suspense, surveillance, and betrayal as the once-liberal haven of the family home becomes a place of danger for the beautiful Atafeh.

[Baby]

The Holy Mountain (1973)

mexican movie directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

also cult but enough underground

plot/spoiler :

A man (later identified as a thief) representing The Fool, a tarot card typically depicting a young man stepping off a cliff, lies on the ground with flies covering his face like excrement. He is befriended by a footless, handless dwarf (representing the five of swords: defeat) and goes into a city to make money from tourists. The thief's resemblance to Christ inspires some to use his likeness for the crucifixes that they sell by casting an impression of his face and body. After a dispute with a priest who rejects the thief's likeness of himself, the thief eats off the face of his wax statue and sends it skyward with balloons, symbolically eating the body of Christ and offering "himself" up to heaven. Soon after, he notices a crowd gathered around a large tower, where a large hook with a bag of gold has been sent down in exchange for food. The thief, wishing to find the source of the gold, ascends the tower; finding the alchemist (played by Jodorowsky) and his silent female assistant.

After a confrontation with the alchemist, the thief defecates into a container. The excrement is transformed into gold by the alchemist who proclaims: "You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold." The thief accepts the gold, but when shown himself in a mirror he angrily smashes the mirror with the gold, and the alchemist takes the thief as an apprentice.

The thief is introduced to seven people who will accompany him on his journey; they are said to be the most powerful but mortal, like himself. They are related to planets in astrological terms and portrayed with broad-brush satire, each personifying the worst aspects of his or her planet's supposed characteristics. The seven consist of: a cosmetics manufacturer (male, Venus), a weapons manufacturer (female, Mars), a millionaire art dealer (male, Jupiter), a war toy maker (female, Saturn), a political financial adviser (male, Uranus), a police chief (male, Neptune) and an architect (male, Pluto). They are gathered together by the alchemist who instructs them to burn their money and wax images of themselves. Together with the Alchemist, the Thief and the Alchemist's assistant they form a group of ten.

After several scenes wherein the characters are led by the alchemist through several death/rebirth rituals, they carry staffs topped with their planets' symbols; the alchemist's symbol is the Sun, the thief is the Moon, and the alchemist's silent assistant is Mercury. They all journey to Lotus Island to gain the secret of immortality from nine immortal masters who live on a holy mountain. Once on Lotus Island they are sidetracked by the "Pantheon Bar", a cemetery party where people have abandoned their quest for the holy mountain and instead engage in drugs, poetry or acts of physical prowess. Leaving the bar behind, they ascend the mountain and each have personal symbolic visions representing each characters worst fears and obsessions. Near the top, the thief is sent back to his "people" along with a young prostitute and an ape who has followed him to the mountain. The rest confront the cloaked immortals who are shown to be only faceless dummies. The alchemist then breaks the fourth wall and reveals the film apparatus just outside the frame (cameras, microphone, lights and crew) and says "Zoom back camera!", instructing everyone including the audience for the film, to leave the holy mountain. "Real life awaits us," he says, and the movie ends.

the movie is far away better than the trailer

[Baby]

Lunacy (2005)

Czech movie directed by Jan Švankmajer

plot :

The film is loosely based on two short stories, "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" and "The Premature Burial", by Edgar Allan Poe. It is also partly inspired by the works of the Marquis de Sade. The film was shot between October 2004 and April 2005, on location in the village of Peruc close to Prague, and in Švankmajer's studio in the village of Knovíz

Jean Berlot, a young man subject to a nightmare of being forced into a straitjacket by two orderlies, is befriended by a marquis. At the marquis's estate, Jean witnesses a black Mass, buries someone alive, and is invited to try preventive therapy. He's willing to enter a sanatorium because he believes he can rescue a young woman from there who has told him that the real director and staff of the clinic are locked in the basement. Jean conspires with her to set them free

[Baby]

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

american movie directed by Russ Meyer

plot :

Three strippers seeking thrills encounter a young couple in the desert. After dispatching the boyfriend, they take the girl hostage and begin scheming on a crippled old man living with his two sons in the desert, reputedly hiding a tidy sum of cash. They become houseguests of the old man and try and seduce the sons in an attempt to locate the money, not realizing that the old man has a few sinister intentions of his own.

[Baby]

The Last Laugh (1924)

german silence film directed by F. W. Murnau

Plot :

Jannings' character, the doorman for a famous hotel, is demoted to washroom (bathroom) attendant, as he is considered too old and infirm to be the image of the hotel. He tries to conceal his demotion from his friends and family, but to his shame, he is discovered. His friends, thinking he has lied to them all along about his prestigious job, taunt him mercilessly while his family rejects him out of shame. The man, shocked and in incredible grief, returns to the hotel to sleep in the bathroom where he works. The only person to be kind towards him is the night watchman, who covers him with his coat as he falls asleep.

Following this comes the film's only title card, which says: "Here the story should really end, for, in real life, the forlorn old man would have little to look forward to but death. The author took pity on him and has provided a quite improbable epilogue."

At the end, the doorman reads in the newspaper that he inherited a fortune from an American millionaire named A. G. Money, a patron who died in his arms in the hotel bathroom. Jannings returns to the hotel, where he dines happily with the night watchman who showed him kindness. It is this ending that inspires the English language title.

Murnau noted that the story was absurd on the grounds that "everyone knows that a washroom attendant makes more than a doorman.

[Baby]

The Blood of a Poet (1930) really deeply love this one.

french movie directed by Jean Cocteau

plot :

The Blood of a Poet is divided into four sections. In section one, an artist sketches a face and is startled when its mouth starts moving. He rubs out the mouth, only to discover that it has transferred to the palm of his hand. After experimenting with the hand for a while and falling asleep, the artist awakens and places the mouth over the mouth of a female statue.

In section two, the statue speaks to the artist, cajoling him into passing through a mirror. The mirror links to a hotel and the artist peers through several keyholes, witnessing such people as an opium smoker and a hermaphrodite. The artist is handed a gun and a disembodied voice instructs him how to shoot himself in the head. He shoots himself but does not die. The artist cries out that he has seen enough and returns through the mirror. He smashes the statue with a mallet.

In the third section, some students are having a snowball fight. An older boy throws a snowball at a younger boy, but the snowball turns out to be a chunk of marble. The young boy dies from the impact.

In the final section, a card shark plays a game with a woman on a table set up over the body of the dead boy. A theatre party looks on. The card shark extracts an Ace of Hearts from the dead boy's breast pocket. The boy's guardian angel appears and absorbs the dead boy. He also removes the Ace of Hearts from the card shark's hand and retreats up a flight of stairs and through a door. Realizing he has lost, the card shark commits suicide as the theatre party applauds. The woman player transforms into the formerly smashed statue and walks off through the snow, leaving no footprints. In the film's final moments the statue is shown with a lyre.

Intercut through the film, oneiric images appear, including spinning wire models of a human head and rotating double-sided masks.

[Baby]

M (1931)

german movie directed by Fritz Lang

plot :

When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.

[Baby]

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011)

swedish-american documentary film directed by Göran Olsson. just for the visual this documentary worth to be watched.

plot :

Footage shot by a group of Swedish journalists documenting the Black Power Movement in the United States is edited together by a contemporary Swedish filmmaker.

extract with Angela Davis. i love her so much. she's divine.

[Baby]

Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970)

Czech movie directed by Jaromil Jires

plot :

Inspired by fairy-tales such as Alice in Wonderland and Little Red-Riding Hood, "Valerie and her Week of Wonders" is a surreal tale in which

The film starts out with 13-year-old Valerie (Schallerová) sleeping in a gazebo and a thief comes in the night and steals her earrings. When she goes to investigate, she sees a horrific man before he covers his face with a weasel mask. The next day she is swimming in a pool and is then watching the water when the thief's arms suddenly returns her earrings to her.

Valerie walks to her house and falls asleep.

She is walking on a bank watching lesbians at play in a natural waterfall. Back at her house, over breakfast, she talks to her grandmother and asks her about when the missionaries are arriving in town.

During a neighbor's wedding, Valerie sees the man from last night watching her in the crowd and her grandmother reveals that it might be a past lover. While practicing piano, Valerie receives a letter

[Baby]

El Topo (1970)

mexican movie directed by Alexandro Jodorowsky

plot :

The film takes place in two parts. The first half resembles a western; albeit a surreal one. The second is a love story of redemption and rebirth.

Part 1

The first half opens with El Topo (played by Jodorowsky himself) traveling through a desert on horseback with his naked young son. They come across a town whose inhabitants have been slaughtered, and El Topo hunts down and kills the perpetrators and their leader, a fat balding Colonel. El Topo abandons his son to the monks of the settlement's mission and rides off with a woman whom the Colonel had kept as a slave. El Topo names the woman Mara, and she convinces him to defeat four great gun masters to become the greatest gunman in the land. Each gun master represents a particular religion or philosophy, and El Topo learns from each of them before instigating a duel. El Topo is victorious each time, not through superior skill but through trickery or luck.

After the first duel, a black-clad woman with a male voice finds the couple and guides them to the remaining gun masters. As he kills each master, El Topo has increasing doubts about his mission, but Mara persuades him to continue. Having killed all four, El Topo is ridden with guilt, destroys his own gun and revisits the places where he killed those masters, finding their graves swarming with bees. The unnamed woman confronts El Topo and shoots him multiple times in the manner of stigmata. Mara then betrays him and rides off with the woman, while El Topo collapses and is carried away by a group of dwarves and mutants.

Part 2

The second half of the film takes place years later. El Topo awakes in a cave, to find that the tribe of deformed outcasts have taken care of him and set him up as a God-like figure, while he has been asleep and meditating on the gun masters' "four lessons". The outcasts dwell in a system of caves which have been blocked in - the only exit is out of their reach due to their deformities. When El Topo awakes, he is 'born again' and decides to help the outcasts escape. He is able to reach the exit and together with a dwarf girl who becomes his lover, performs for the depraved cultists of the neighbouring town, to raise money for dynamite.

A young monk arrives in the town to be the new priest, but is disgusted by the perverted form of religion the cultists practice. He also discovers that El Topo is his father, who had abandoned him to the mission. He threatens to kill El Topo, but agrees to wait until he has succeeded in freeing the outcasts.

With the help of his now pregnant girlfriend and son, El Topo creates a new exit from the cave. The outcasts come streaming out, but as they enter the town they are shot down by the cultists. El Topo helplessly witnesses his community being slaughtered and is shot himself. Ignoring his own wounds he massacres the cultists, then takes an oil lamp and immolates himself. His girlfriend gives birth at the same time as his death, and she and his son make a grave for his remains. This becomes a beehive like the gun masters' graves.

As the film ends, El Topo's son, girlfriend and baby ride off on horseback, the son now wearing his father's clothes.

this is a fact, i really don't like the trailers of Jodorowsky's movies

[Baby]

Inferno (1980)

italian movie directed by Dario Argento

the colors are so beautiful!

plot :

Rose Elliot (Miracle), a poet living alone in New York City, finds an ancient book called The Three Mothers. It tells of three evil sisters who rule the world with sorrow, tears, and darkness. The book, written by an architect named Varelli, reveals that the three dwell inside separate homes that had been built for them by the architect in Rome, Freiburg, and New York. Rose suspects that she is living in one of the buildings and writes to her brother Mark (McCloskey) in Rome, urging him to visit her. Using clues provided in the book as a guide, Rose searches the cellar of her building and discovers a hole in the floor which leads to a water-filled ballroom. She accidentally drops her keys and enters the water to find them. After reclaiming the keys, a putrid corpse suddenly rises from the depths, frightening her.

In Rome, Mark attempts to read Rose's letter during class. He is distracted by the intense gaze of a beautiful student (Ania Pieroni), who leaves suddenly; Mark follows, leaving the letter behind. His friend Sara (Eleonora Giorgi) picks up the letter, and later reads it. Horrified by the letter's contents, she takes a taxi to a library and finds a copy of The Three Mothers. Sara is attacked by a monstrous figure who recognizes the book. She throws the book to the ground and escapes. She seeks the company of a neighbor, Carlo (Gabriele Lavia) and both are stabbed to death by a gloved killer. Mark discovers the bodies and two torn fragments from Rose's letter. After the police arrive, he walks out of Sara's apartment and sees a taxi slowly driving by. In the back seat of the vehicle is the music student, staring at him intently again.

Mark telephones Rose but is unable to hear her clearly. He promises to visit just before the connection fails. Rose sees two shadowy figures preparing to enter her apartment. She leaves through a back door, but is followed. She is grabbed from behind by a clawed assailant and brutally murdered.

Ania Pieroni as the music student.

Arriving in New York, Mark meets some residents of Rose's building, including a nurse (Veronica Lazar) who cares for elderly Professor Arnold (Feodor Chaliapin, Jr.), a wheelchair-bound mute. Mark learns from sickly Countess Elise (Nicolodi) that Rose has disappeared. After the two find blood on the carpet outside Rose's room, Mark follows the stains. He becomes ill and falls unconscious. Elise sees a black-robed figure dragging Mark away, but the figure suddenly stops and gives chase to Elise. The figure stabs her to death. Mark staggers to the house's foyer where the nurse and caretaker (Valli) put him to bed.

Mark asks Kazanian (Sacha Pitoëff), the antique dealer who sold Rose The Three Mothers, about Rose. However, the man provides no information. That night, Kazanian drowns several cats in a Central Park pond and falls into the water. Hundreds of rats from a nearby drain crawl over him, gnawing his flesh. A hot dog vendor hears Kazanian's cries and rushes over. The man kills Kazanian with a knife.

Carol, the caretaker, discovers the corpse of Elise's butler (Leopoldo Mastelloni) in the Countess' apartment. Shocked, she drops a lit candle which starts a fire. Attempting to put out the flames, she becomes entangled in burning draperies and falls from a window to her death. Mark uses a clue from Rose's letter to discover that beneath each floor is a secret crawl space. He follows hidden passages to a suite of rooms where he finds Professor Arnold who reveals, via a mechanical voice generator, that he is in fact Varelli. He tries to kill Mark with a hypodermic injection. During the struggle, Varelli's neck is caught in his vocal apparatus, choking him. Mark frees him, only to be told by the dying man, "Even now you are being watched." Mark follows a shadowy figure to a lavishly furnished chamber, where he finds Varelli's nurse. Laughing maniacally, she reveals to him that she is Mater Tenebrarum. She suddenly transforms into Death Personified. However, the fire that has consumed much of the building enables Mark's escape from the witch's den. Debris crashes down on the fiend, destroying her.

edit : i just noticed it was a an extract where the dialogue has been removed. unfortunately this is one of the only good extracts on youtube, the rest have very bad visual quality so i keep this one.

[Baby]

The Night Porter (1974)

italian movie directed by Liliana Cavani

plot :

Dirk Bogarde plays Maximilian Theo Aldorfer, a former Nazi SS officer, and Charlotte Rampling plays Lucia Atherton, a concentration camp survivor who had an ambiguous relationship with Aldorfer. Flashbacks show Max tormenting Lucia, but also acting as her protector. In an iconic scene, Lucia sings a Marlene Dietrich song to the concentration camp guards while wearing pieces of an SS uniform, and Max "rewards" her with the severed head of a male inmate who had been bullying the other inmates, a reference to Salome.

Thirteen years after World War II, Lucia meets Aldorfer again; he is now the night porter at a Vienna hotel. There, they fall back into their sadomasochistic relationship.