Actually Useful Movie Recommendations

50 Movies. One List.

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Welcome!

Last week I ran my first Q+A. It went really well, I think! But there was one question I got more than every other question combined: “Can you recommend me an underrated/underseen movie that you love?”

So, uh, how about fifty of ‘em?

Here’s the thing: I have spent 15 years reading movie rec lists and so many of them are bad! They always follows the same rhythm: A domestic drama from the 80s, a queer-coded genre movie, some random indie from the mid-2010s, a canonical Western, Barry Lyndon, Crash, Possession, The Watermelon Woman, Eternal Sunshine, A New Leaf…you get it. The films are usually good; But if you’re looking for curated suggestions from another person, it’s disappointing to find a list that’s just the Roku algorithm.

So I took matters into my own hands, and this is the result.

How I Chose The Movies:

Last month, I wrote about my personal theory of taste:

Having good taste is not about what specifically a person likes or dislikes, or how eloquently they argue for their perspective[…]It’s about expanding and deepening your pool of references. It’s about not basing your sense of self in your criticism[…]It is a fundamentally open, curious, and unsolved communal process.

I am not building your taste for you. I am not assigning you clout picks for your Top 4. This list is not meant to be your new personality. It’s not even mine! This is a Frankenstein built from my own digging, personal recommendations from friends, boutique video releases, repertory screenings, and academic bibliographies. Every inclusion on the list is underseen, but the obscurity is not the point. There is no dominant tone, region, or ethos behind my choices. These films run the gamut, from narrative to avant-garde, from 1915 to 2021, from twelve minutes to four hours. I just wanted to get a film stuck in your craw.

I cannot promise you that you will like every movie on this list. I cannot promise you that this list will always point to a movie that is “just right” for however you’re feeling. But I can guarantee there will be at least one movie you’ve never heard of, and I can promise you that every film I put here is worth watching.

How This List Works:

Each entry will be accompanied by a short clip or still that I feel captures the general texture, as well as a brief caption from yours truly. I’m not writing 50 capsule reviews; I just want to give you a succinct reason or two as to why I chose each film.

I experimented with a few layouts for the list. Ranking the list felt counterproductive, and leaving it totally organized made me overwhelmed. Grouping by genre got messy quickly. Grouping by decade was pretty good at linking together ambient textures, but it also felt too easy to gloss over chunks of the list. Eventually, I settled for a simple, alphabetical arrangement. This is a little boring but it also means you actually might consider something else.

I made sure none of these films were needlessly difficult to track down. If you click their name, it will link to each film’s Letterboxd page, where you can add them to your watchlist and see some (but not all) places to stream or rent. A quick Google search may also help. As of writing, you should not need to torrent anything or monitor local rep screenings to catch these. A simple internet connection or library card should suffice.

You can skim through this whole thing pretty quickly. If you want, just see how many you’ve heard of, quickly add the rest to your watchlist, and be on your way. Or you can use this as a reference tool on its own, when that Notes App list or Tubi scroll bar is too overwhelming. This list will not change your life, but one of these films might.

Alright, enough pussyfooting around.

The List

The Appointment (1982, Lindsey C. Vickers)

Originally the pilot four a scrapped anthology series, this toiled in Betamax obscurity before getting a proper restoration off a rediscovered print. Less of a horror movie, more pure malevolence in distillate.

Aspen (1991, Frederick Wiseman)

The setting for this one - a mountain resort town - is a bit of an odd choice for the undisputed master of the documentary. But what starts as an ironic trifle about an irrelevant place quickly blooms into a diorama of White American Evil. Wiseman is so artistically invested in the camera as an intermediary witness; it is remarkable to see how versatile his signature wallflower style can be, no matter the subject.

Baby It’s You (1983, John Sayles)

The feature length adaptation of a Bruce Springsteen song. This movie is so perfect I could watch it every day, twice.¹

Beatrix (2021, Milena Czernovsky and Lilith Kraxner)

Top-tier ambient cinema about a girl fucking around in her house. Stunned this was not a bigger deal. I would love to live in this movie. On my best days, I do.

Betty Tells Her Story (1972, Liane Brandon)

A woman talks about her dress two times. It lasts 20 minutes in total. I have only seen this film once, almost a decade ago. I can remember every detail, every twitch of her face, in brutal detail.

The Bloodettes (2005, Jean-Pierre Bekolo)

A Cameroonian postcolonial sci-fi vampire movie about two sex workers getting fits off. At the risk of downplaying its passion and intricacy, this movie is just so fucking cool. When I finished the film, I remember being overcome with this immense gratitude, that I’d led such a life that I would get to watch something alongside my friends and peers.

The Blue Sky Maiden (1957, Yasuzō Masumura)

A breezy but furious film about the domestic strictures of post-war Japan. Ayako Wakao is one of my absolute favorite screen presences. Genuinely confused why this is not in every Intro to Film class; it should have made the past seven Sight and Sound polls.

Cane River (1982, Horace B. Jenkins)

A lovely and radical film with a perfect ending.

Confucius (1940, Fei Mu)

Though it came out a quarter century after the advent of montage, the logic with which this cuts between spaces and action feels wholly uninformed by Griffith or even Eisenstein. A movie unstuck from time.

Castle of Purity (1973, Arturo Ripstein)

I promised I would try to avoid the '“x is a better version of y” trap for as many entries as possible. But I can’t think of a more succinct, accurate description for Castle of Purity than "What if Dogtooth was good?”

Céline (1992, Jean-Claude Brisseau)

If you are looking for the next thing to make your entire personality, the next movie to define your self-perception as a woman, the next work of art that you cannot help but remake and converse with in every creative endeavor, look no further. Gorgeous enough to be worthy of obsession and strong enough to withstand any projections you throw at it.

City of Lost Souls (1983, Rosa von Praunheim)

Probably my favorite movie about how wonderful it is to be trans. A very goofy picture. It feels like hanging out with my friends.

Chain (2004, Jem Cohen)

The voiceover and plot (which follow a woman researching theme parks and a woman squatting inside a mall) point to a more didactic movie than this winds up being. It is best taken as a non-narrative survey of American sprawl and the dilapidated architecture of a dying empire. Seeing the country I knew as a child - spaces that were already vestigial by the time they took up residence in my psyche - exactly how I remember it is disorienting. I keep seeing this movie when I shut my eyes. We don’t need any more “liminal space horror” or that A24 Backrooms horror. None of that will ever compare to the real thing.

The Falls (1980, Peter Greenaway)

Everybody and their mother adores The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, but all of Greenaway’s films are terrific, and exude that same, inimitable aura. Hia voice is as recognizable, polarizing, and well-honed as a Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino; you can tell who you’re watching immediately. The Falls is awesome - an apocalyptic infodump that bombards the viewer with nonsense until, like a magic eye illusion, its satire suddenly comes into focus. The most autistic movie of all time.

Filibus (1915, Mario Roncoroni)

A glamorous dykey dominatrix air pirate flies around on her zeppelin with a bunch of service subs in between cross-dressing for her girlfriend- what’s not to love?

The Forest for the Trees (2003, Maren Ade)

An inverted mumblecore thesis film. Maren Ade writes her films precisely and unsparingly. She complicates what should be simple character beats, refusing to settle for easy pity or cringe. The result is a laugh a minute riot, a debut that does not just announce an artist with an incomparable voice, but one who emerged as a full-fledged master.

Identikit (1974, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi)

Elizabeth Taylor x Muriel Sparks in the cinematic equivalent of an abandoned indoor plaza. Extremely fashionable picture.

In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal (1986, Pierre Clémenti)

Gay underground crime movie with a blistering avant-grade sensibility. It makes being a dirty faggot feel dangerous again.

The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! (1975, Eldar Ryazanov)

This lovely and leisurely romantic comedy - where the hijinx revolves around two identical Soviet-era apartment buildings - is broadcast in Russia every New Year’s Day. A balm to the spirit.

It’s Love I’m After (1937, Archie Mayo)

This is just about the funniest film I’ve ever seen. If I had to get through minute of this movie without smiling, the gun would go off with 55 seconds on the clock.

I’ve Always Loved You (1946, Frank Borzage)

A movie of such overflowing sentimentality it is almost unbearable. It is every melodrama at once.

Jamila, the Algerian (1958, Youssef Chahine)

Totally riveting agitprop made in the heat of the Algerian War for Independence. Magda Al Sabahi plays Djamila Bouhired with ferocious righteousness. I have a particular fondness for political filmmaking that can wrangle solid rhetoric out of genre conventions like this.

Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989, Ulrike Ottinger)

Wrote about Ottinger for a retrospective in 2020, but this - a breathtaking, genre-hopping satire of colonialist anxieties - is still in dire need of broader reappraisal. There’s nothing else like it.

L. Cohen (2017, James Benning)

If you’re stoned, or half-asleep, or have an hour to spare, just go throw this on. Don’t read anything about it. If you don’t get it right away, just wait. I promise it’s worth it. Don’t skip ahead.

Macho Dancer (1988, Lino Brocka)

Amongst my friend group, Lino Brocka is an art-house icon. Macho Dancer is his most famous film, an astutely drawn tale of gay sex workers. Brocka looks at the criminalization of erotic labor and its consequences, but he also makes room to show the artistry, grace, and spectacle of the profession.

Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964, Howard Hawks)

A neo-screwball classic with Rock Hudson, it’s the dream TCM programing. A movie to show somebody who swears they don’t like old movies. Plenty of good fishing innuendos, too.

Maya Memsaab (1993, Ketan Mehta)

A devastating Madame Bovary riff. Many works of romance deconstruct the genre, few deconstruct love itself. Maya is granted strength and compassion, a martyr who never loses her humanity. Like the best grand tragedies, you believe it will end differently against all rationality.

Milla (2017, Valérie Massadian)

Comparisons to Akerman aren’t inaccurate, but I think Massadian is less academic than her obvious influences. This is not a diss; Milla is the rare art about poverty that is totally non-judgemental and refuses to turn its subjects into martyrs or metaphors. This is a mundane film whose mise-en-scene belies a subtly subjective POV. I pray I live to see this get its due.

Mirage (1987, Tsui Siu-Ming)

I have gone numb to most “craaAAzy genre madness” - coming of age in the era of Alamo Drafthouse will do that to you. But this…this is fucking wild lol

Mr. Thank You (1936, Hiroshi Shimizu)

A lovely road movie about a nice bus driver and his sad passengers. This is adapted from a short story and feels like it; every character is a neatly packaged allegory for some part of Japanese culture post-WWI, but the feature-length runtime turns cute runners and simple motifs into human gestures with room to feel alive. A pleasant movie for all occasions.

Mudhoney (1965, Russ Meyer)

Not the sexiest, weirdest, or best Russ Meyer boob-fest, but it is a sleazy Faulkner riff with video store vibes to spare. A movie with a great, accurate poster.

Muscle (1989, Hisaysau Satô)

Some classic faggot death drive cinema right here. Profoundly sentimental horror. If you are subscribed to this newsletter, you are the target audience for this.

A New Old Play (2021, Qiu Jionjiong)

Superficially, this is little more than an epic homage to every landmark Chinese film from the turn-of-the-century. It’s got a theater troupe, the collapsing of a century of national history into a more focused Brechtian reality, the show-stopping orchestration of initially disconnected narrative threads. But bravado and reverence is not the name of the game: This is a caustic, playful, genuinely one-of-a-kind movie, the global announcement of a major artist. His follow-up, Fuxi, is one of my most anticipated films of the next few years.

Nitrate Kisses (1992, Barbara Hammer)

Very powerful movie about how important it is to film gay people having sex. Made me cry a lot.

No Fear, No Die (1990, Claire Denis)

By far the most famous film on the list, an early work from a French director who is both trendy and rightly canonized. The restoration had a national run in the U.S. last year; I still think it deserves more. It belongs on a preciously small list of films where I think every moment, every creative decision, is perfect. A film worth going into blind so you can feel all of it at once.

Personal Problems (1980, Bill Gunn)

A digital soap opera, penned by Ishmael Reed, full of extraordinary performances. One of the most vivid examples I can recall of a time when watching a single film completely reshaped the medium’s possibility space for me.

Razorback (1984, Russell Mulcahy)

A gnarly Aussie B-movie about a wild boar terrorizing a town. Nutso fun, but it’s on here for the legitimately stirring cinematography. It is a disorienting and rare pleasure to watch such inventive, well-lit, well-staged camera work deployed in service of some trash with half a brain cell.

Rehearsals for Retirement (2007, Phil Solomon)

Avant-garde obituary filmed entirely in GTA San Andreas. Prescient in obvious ways, yet no critical evaluation can account for the hollow time dilation that makes these 12 minutes feel like a lifetime.

The Rose King (1986, Werner Schroeter)

I say this with absolutely zero inside knowledge: If there is one underrated director best primed for a Criterion Channel spotlight, it’s Werner Schroeter. An essential figure in New German Cinema, his filmography has it all: Isabelle Huppert as Malina from Malina, drag queen opera stars, a movie called Day of the Idiots that is the bleakest 110 minutes ever committed to celluloid. The Rose King is my favorite, though; gay guy mommy issues at their most extreme/sincere. You can smell the fog-machine through the screen.

Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel (2003, Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan)

Deserves to be placed alongside Shoah, another epic and vital document of unimaginable suffering. There are no concessions or easy documentary tricks to make this more digestible; Khleifi and Sivan paint Israel (both its inhabitants and its government) as the abhorrent apartheid state that it is. There is not a more comprehensive illustration of the depravity of the modern world than this. Galvanizing work.

Shakedown (2018, Leilah Weinraub)

A worthy elegy for the titular black lesbian strip club in LA. A remarkable space and community, and a testament to the power of film as historical record.

Simone Barbès or Virtue (1980, Marie-Claude Treilhou)

Ultimate hangout cinema. I too long to be a slacker lesbian who works at a porn theater.

Star Spangled to Death (2004, Ken Jacobs)

Whether or not you also find Adam Curtis’ collage films the work of a stupid prick, this four-hour culmination of Ken Jacobs’ erratic archival is similarly angry, puerile, and arresting. The difference is that this movie is good.

Summer Vacation 1999 (1988, Shusuke Kaneko)

Is this yaoi or yuri? Who can say. If you need material for a “2025 summer” moodboard, though, you can’t do better than this. Luxuriate in a dreamy Gothic utopia (like real Gothic, not Hot Topic gothic) where gay teen boys spend the summer wandering a secluded boarding school. This movie did not scare me but by the end I was shivering like a dog anyway.

Suzanne, Suzanne (1982, Camille Bilops and James Hatch)

As has become something a theme for the shorts featured, their compressed runtime runs counter to their outsized impact. This 30-minute documentary is uniquely clear-eyed, rattling work about cycles of abuse. Its most formally audacious moments underline the filmmaker’s canny ability to be present with these women. It takes a lot of wisdom and craftsmanship to see the core of a person.

Terminal USA (1993, Jon Moritsugu)

A lot of times people call something “campy” when they mean it’s “bad on purpose” or “annoying”. Moritsugu’s bacchanalia of artifice and bad taste is the real deal; a kaleidoscope of suburban paranoia and youthful rage, all rendered in such exaggerated glory that he makes it worthy of enthusiastic, affirming reclamation.

Vampir Cuadecuc (1993, Pere Portabella)

Assembled from 16mm behind the scenes footage of Jess Franco and Chrisopher Lee’s Count Dracula, it is both an essay on the parasitic lust of filmmaking and also a dizzying alternate take (recut? remake? parallel version?) of Franco’s film itself. A nifty 3AM curio.

Vengeance is Mine (1984, Michael Roemer)

Originally an episode of PBS American Playhouse, the late Michael Roemer (an unsung luminary of American motion pictures) stuffs the secrets of the universe into a tiny story about mothers and daughters and mothers’ mothers and daughters’ daughters. I keep bringing it up in therapy.

Walker (1987, Alex Cox)

A post-modern satire of colonialism with the silhouette of a cowboy biopic. It’s easy to make it sound awesome (a 19th century period piece with Zippo lighters and Diet Coke cans, Ed Harris’ batshit performance, the “Fuck Reagan” coda) and that’s because it is awesome.

We Won’t Grow Old Together (1972, Maurice Pialat)

On paper, “French film about a director fighting with his younger lover” sounds like a nightmare to me. In actuality, it’s even scarier. This is so mean, so unrelentingly unpleasant, written to compound its claustrophobic suffering at every turn. Unlike similar diatribes on heterosexuality, this one is pretty impossible to romanticize. Maybe that’s why it really works for me.

Hope you nabbed something neat :)

love ya lots,

helmet girl xx

1. This is a real photo taken after I rewatched Baby It’s You on Saturday night and cried into my partner’s lap for 30 minutes