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25 Best Movies You’ve Probably Never Seen

25 Best Movies You’ve Probably Never Seen

You’re sitting at home with nothing to stream. What do you do? What. Do. You. Do? You check out the following list of the best movies you’ve never seen, that’s what. It comes fully loaded with bona fide masterpieces from various corners of the world. Most of these titles are somewhat obscure when compared to more obvious choices, but don’t take to mean they’re even slightly second-rate. As with all buried treasure, a little extra digging can lead to great reward. (Here’s where to stream 50 great movies you’ve probably never seen.)

To determine the 25 best movies you’ve probably never seen, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data on audience rating and popularity from IMDb, an online movie and TV database owned by Amazon and Rotten Tomatoes, an online movie and TV review aggregator. Movies with a combined total of at least 10,000 and no more than 50,000 IMDb audience votes and Rotten Tomatoes audience votes and Tomatometer critics’ votes were ranked according to their Tomatometer score as of August 2021. Only films made in 1950 or later were included, and documentaries were not considered. Information on cast, director, and year of release came from IMDb.

Take the noirish “Sweet Smell of Success,” for example, which tells a dark tale of power and influence on Broadway. It’s one among a number of Old Hollywood films that’s only now catching on with critics and audiences. Then we have French gems such as Robert Bresson’s prison thriller “A Man Escaped” and the 1986 period piece “Jean de Florette.” While these movies have strong followings overseas, they tend to elude most American viewers. (These are the best foreign films of all time.)

Along similar lines is “The Twilight Samurai,” a major award-winner in Japan that doesn’t have much of an American following to speak of. Or consider Taiwanese director Edward Yang’s arthouse gangster epic “A Brighter Summer Day,” which is as gloriously executed as it is generally overlooked. And here you were thinking there was nothing to watch when you’re just a few clicks away from your next favorite film.

Source: Courtesy of United Artists

25. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
> Starring: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner
> Director: Alexander Mackendrick
> IMDb user rating: 8.0/10 (31,383 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 92% (6,981 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 98% (55 votes)

Burt Lancaster stars as Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker in this sordid blend of biting satire and noirish drama. Hoping to break up his sister’s engagement, Hunsecker enlists the help of sleazy press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis). Poorly received upon its theatrical release, the film is now considered an outright classic from Hollywood’s golden era.

Source: Courtesy of Kino Video

24. A Short Film About Love (1988)
> Starring: Grażyna Szapołowska, Olaf Lubaszenko, Stefania Iwińska, Piotr Machalica
> Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski
> IMDb user rating: 8.2/10 (22,888 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 93% (5,871 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 95% (22 votes)

A shy and voyeuristic postal worker forges a unique relationship with his promiscuous neighbor in this Polish romantic drama. It expands upon the sixth installment of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s acclaimed ten-part TV series “Dekalog.”

Source: Courtesy of Cinema 5 Distributing

23. Scenes from a Marriage (1974)
> Starring: Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Bibi Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom, Jan Malmsjö, Rossana Mariano
> Director: Ingmar Bergman
> IMDb user rating: 8.4/10 (6,676 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 95% (8,423 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 91% (22 votes)

Condensed from a six-part miniseries, this masterful Swedish drama chronicles the breakdown of a bourgeois marriage. Director Ingmar Bergman based some of the material on personal experience and cast former partner (and recurring muse) Liv Ullmann in a lead role. HBO recently aired a modern-day American remake of the original series.

Source: Courtesy of New Yorker Films

22. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
> Starring: Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin, Irm Hermann, Elma Karlowa, Anita Bucher, Gusti Kreissl, Doris Mattes
> Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
> IMDb user rating: 8.0/10 (20,940 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 91% (6,465 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (37 votes)

Fassbinder’s award-winning drama takes place in West Germany not long after Palestinian terrorists enacted the Munich massacre. At its center is the controversial romance between a lonely widow and a younger Arab man. Considered one of the director’s best efforts, it’s also heralded as a peak example of German New Wave cinema.

Source: Courtesy of Edward Harrison

21. Aparajito (1956)
> Starring: Pinaki Sengupta, Smaran Ghosal, Kamala Adhikari, Lalchand Banerjee
> Director: Satyajit Ray
> IMDb user rating: 8.3/10 (13,732 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 93% (3,196 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 95% (22 votes)

The second installment of director Satyajit Ray’s acclaimed Apu Trilogy follows its young protagonist from childhood into adolescence. “It’s a masterpiece for which terms like ‘simplicity’ and ‘profundity’ seem inadequate,” wrote critic Jonathan Rosenbaum for the Chicago Reader.

Source: Courtesy of New Yorker Films

20. Tampopo (1985)
> Starring: Ken Watanabe, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Nobuko Miyamoto, Kōji Yakusho
> Director: Juzo Itami
> IMDb user rating: 7.9/10 (18,502 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 93% (9,239 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (55 votes)

The story of a family-run noodle shop gives way to various food-themed vignettes in this eccentric Japanese comedy. Once promoted as the first “ramen western,” it uses culinary culture as a gateway to clever sociological insight.

Source: Courtesy of Times Film Corporation

19. Forbidden Games (1952)
> Starring: Georges Poujouly, Brigitte Fossey, Amédée, Laurence Badie
> Director: René Clément
> IMDb user rating: 8.0/10 (12,107 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 92% (4,007 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (17 votes)

This French dramedy chronicles the friendship between two impoverished children against the harsh backdrop of WWII. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and later took home an honorary out-of-competition award at the Oscars.

Source: Courtesy of Janus Films

18. Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
> Starring: Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand, Max von Sydow, Lars Passgård
> Director: Ingmar Bergman
> IMDb user rating: 8.0/10 (25,026 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 92% (8,195 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (27 votes)

Bergman’s Oscar-winning psychological drama is the first in an unofficial trilogy about the loss of faith. It takes place over the course of 24 hours and tells the story of a young woman (Harriet Andersson), who loses her grip on reality during a family getaway.

Source: Courtesy of Cowboy Pictures

17. The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
> Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Kyôko Kagawa, Tatsuya Mihashi
> Director: Akira Kurosawa
> IMDb user rating: 8.0/10 (12,507 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 92% (5,703 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (20 votes)

No stranger to Shakespeare, director Akira Kurosawa drew loose inspiration from “Hamlet” when crafting this Japanese noir. After positioning himself within a corrupt corporation, a man (Toshiro Mifune) enacts vengeance upon those responsible for his father’s death. It was one among a handful of Kurosawa films to pit a lone hero against evil authoritarian forces.

Source: Courtesy of Rialto Pictures

16. Army of Shadows (1969)
> Starring: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret
> Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
> IMDb user rating: 8.1/10 (23,224 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 94% (7,138 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 97% (76 votes)

This uncompromising drama takes viewers deep into France’s underground resistance during WWII. It was released at a time of great political unrest and critically lambasted over its perceived stance on controversial leader Charles de Gaulle. Later reappraised as a masterpiece, it first became available to American audiences in 2006.

Source: Courtesy of Orion Classics

15. Jean de Florette (1986)
> Starring: Yves Montand, Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil, Elisabeth Depardieu
> Director: Claude Berri
> IMDb user rating: 8.1/10 (25,595 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 95% (14,148 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 96% (23 votes)

This French period drama based on a novel by Marcel Pagnol, which takes place after WWI, weaves a tale of provincial greed and subterfuge. On the outskirts of a small village, two corrupt farmers scheme for a plot of land. It makes up the first half of a two-part saga (“Manon des Sources” is the second part) which was collectively France’s most expensive production of its time.

Source: Courtesy of Janus Films

14. Umberto D. (1952)
> Starring: Carlo Battisti, Maria Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari, Ileana Simova
> Director: Vittorio De Sica
> IMDb user rating: 8.2/10 (25,476 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 93% (6,825 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 97% (33 votes)

From the director of “Bicycle Thieves” comes this similarly-themed slice of Italian neorealism. It centers on the title character (Carlo Battisti), an elderly man who struggles to survive on his government pension.

Source: Courtesy of Shore International

13. Ivan’s Childhood (1962)
> Starring: Nikolay Burlyaev, Valentin Zubkov, Evgeniy Zharikov, Stepan Krylov
> Director: Andrei Tarkovsky, Eduard Abalov
> IMDb user rating: 8.0/10 (35,852 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 93% (5,845 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (24 votes)

Tarkovsky’s directorial feature debut culled from the scraps of a previously abandoned film project. It takes place during WWII and tells the story of an orphaned child turned Soviet spy. Writing for the Independent, critic Geoffrey Macnab noted that Tarkovsky “pays full attention to the squalor and pity of war but never loses his sense of poetry.”

Source: Courtesy of ICA

12. Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987)
> Starring: Babek Ahmed Poor, Ahmed Ahmed Poor, Khodabakhsh Defaei, Iran Outari
> Director: Abbas Kiarostami
> IMDb user rating: 8.1/10 (14,332 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 92% (2,591 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (11 votes)

Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami kicked off an unofficial trilogy with this understated drama about childhood innocence. In possession of his friend’s notebook, a young boy seeks to return it in the neighboring village.

Source: Courtesy of Warner Bros.

11. The Cranes Are Flying (1957)
> Starring: Tatyana Samoylova, Aleksey Batalov, Vasiliy Merkurev, Aleksandr Shvorin
> Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
> IMDb user rating: 8.3/10 (17,174 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 94% (4,370 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 96% (25 votes)

Youthful romance is disrupted by the horrors of WWII in this award-winning Soviet drama. It features groundbreaking handheld camerawork from cinematographer Sergey Urusevskiy, who learned the technique as a military cameraman during the actual war.

Source: Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

10. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)
> Starring: Gian Maria Volonté, Florinda Bolkan, Gianni Santuccio, Orazio Orlando
> Director: Elio Petri
> IMDb user rating: 8.0/10 (11,133 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 94% (1,696 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (15 votes)

A police inspector (Volonté) kills his mistress and then manipulates the investigation in this Italian crime satire. Time Out critic David Fear called it a “paranoid police procedural” and a “perverse parable about the corrupting elements of power” in his five-star review. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Source: Courtesy of Empire Pictures

9. The Twilight Samurai (2002)
> Starring: Hiroyuki Sanada, Rie Miyazawa, Nenji Kobayashi, Ren Ôsugi
> Director: Yôji Yamada
> IMDb user rating: 8.1/10 (23,696 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 94% (10,745 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 99% (70 votes)

This historical drama takes a non-traditional approach to the samurai sub-genre by examining the domestic life of its protagonist. It takes place during the final days of the feudal era and presents a low-ranking warrior with family issues and a budding romance. At the Japan Academy Film Prize (essentially the country’s Oscars), it won a record-breaking 12 awards.

Source: Courtesy of Cinemad Presents

8. It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
> Starring: Don Hertzfeldt, Sara Cushman
> Director: Don Hertzfeldt
> IMDb user rating: 8.2/10 (13,344 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 92% (1,451 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (32 votes)

The debut feature from animator Don Hertzfeldt combines three award-winning short films into a collective story. Delivered in a boldly experimental style, it chronicles the psychological breakdown of a young man named Bill. Hertzfeldt spent years bringing the project to life and captured everything in-camera on a vintage 35mm animation stand from the 1940s.

Source: Courtesy of Continental Distributing

7. A Man Escaped (1956)
> Starring: François Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock, Roland Monod
> Director: Robert Bresson
> IMDb user rating: 8.3/10 (21,559 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 93% (5,665 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (38 votes)

Minimalist master Robert Bresson drew from the memoir of a WWII French Resistance fighter when creating this gripping drama. Shot in the same prison where the actual event took place, it follows a POW (Francois Leterrier) as he plots to break out.

Source: Courtesy of Edward Harrison

6. The World of Apu (1959)
> Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Alok Chakravarty, Swapan Mukherjee
> Director: Satyajit Ray
> IMDb user rating: 8.5/10 (14,312 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 95% (3,907 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 96% (27 votes)

Apurba Roy is a 23-year-old adult with a meager income and artistic ambitions in the final installment of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy. “Humanist film-making at its best,” wrote critic Alan Morrison for Empire Magazine.

Source: Courtesy of The Criterion Collection

5. A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
> Starring: Chang Chen, Lisa Yang, Kuo-Chu Chang, Elaine Jin
> Director: Edward Yang
> IMDb user rating: 8.3/10 (9,853 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 94% (1,139 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (20 votes)

This sweeping crime drama takes place in the early 1960s and culls from director Edward Yang’s own experiences growing up in Taipei. While grappling with poor grades and first love, a young boy (Chang Chen) ends up in the middle of a gang war. A pillar of the Taiwanese New Wave, the film is also considered one of the most underrated masterpieces of the 1990s.

Source: Courtesy of Miramax

4. The Best of Youth (2003)
> Starring: Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessio Boni, Jasmine Trinca, Adriana Asti
> Director: Marco Tullio Giordana
> IMDb user rating: 8.5/10 (21,835 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 98% (7,762 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 94% (63 votes)

Clocking in at just over six hours, this Italian epic follows two brothers through four decades of personal and political upheaval. It was developed as a miniseries but released theatrically in two separate installments.

Source: Courtesy of Odyssey/Cinecom International

3. Time of the Gypsies (1988)
> Starring: Davor Dujmović, Bora Todorović, Ljubica Adžović, Husnija Hasimović
> Director: Emir Kusturica
> IMDb user rating: 8.1/10 (30,383 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 97% (6,935 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (07 votes)

Director Emir Kusturica injects coming-of-age themes and a touch of magical realism into this Serbian crime dramedy. It tells the story of a Romani teenager with telekinetic powers who takes up with a gang of local thieves.

Source: Courtesy of Toho Company

2. Woman in the Dunes (1964)
> Starring: Eiji Okada, Kyōko Kishida, Hiroko Itō, Kōji Mitsui
> Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
> IMDb user rating: 8.5/10 (19,582 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 93% (5,415 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (30 votes)

A traveling entomologist (Eiji Okada) is lured into a prison of sand in this Japanese New Wave masterpiece. With no means of escape, he and a young woman (Kyōko Kishida) perform hard labor on behalf of local villagers. Dream-like visuals and creative camerawork turn absurdist drama into modern myth.

Source: Courtesy of Brandon Films

1. Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
> Starring: Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyôko Kagawa, Eitarō Shindō
> Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
> IMDb user rating: 8.4/10 (16,246 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 95% (3,981 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (18 votes)

Director Kenji Mizoguchi’s tragic drama takes place in medieval Japan and spins a merciless tale of survival. Separated from their parents and sold into slavery, two children embark on a quest for reunification. “Every cut threatens to swallow a galaxy,” wrote critic Jaime N. Christley for the Village Voice.

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