20 Awesome Movies You've Probably Never Seen

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're prepared to look at this list and go

Josh, who do you think I am? Don't you presume to know what I have and have not seen

With the following picks, I really have tried to dish out gems that the majority definitely wouldn't have seen

I mean, hell, there's one on here that made $6,000 at the box office

So, with that in mind, I'm Josh. I'm Ewan. And I'm Ellie with What Culture

These are awesome films you've probably never seen. Bug. Like a lot of the biggest directors of the 1970s, William Friedkin's more recent work has kind of fallen under the radar

That's a shame though, as the Exorcist director has continued to deliver button-pushing work that's kept up with the times

Case in point, Bug, a hugely underrated and totally unhinged psychological thriller from the late 2000s

Dripping with anxious intensity, Bug follows the meeting and subsequent infatuation of two lost souls played by Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon

Judd's character Agnes takes to Shannon's Peter, as the two form a close bond

The thing is, Peter himself is a little bit, let's say, traumatized

Convinced that the army is following him and trying to capture him and take him back to experiment on

He says he's infested with bugs, something the audience nor Agnes initially ever see

As the pair fall into this delusion together though, the mania starts as the paranoia threatens to consume everything

The two leads are incredibly committed to the material, and manage to elevate the somewhat

goofy premise into something genuinely unsettling. It's great stuff. Regeneration Adapted from Pat Barker's brilliant novel the same name, Regeneration is a very different

but no less harrowing kind of war movie, focusing on the mental toll of the conflict for those

involved. Also, a great play, the more you know. The plot centres on several British Army officers

brought together at Craig Lockhart War Hospital where soldiers were treated for shell shock

and other traumas linked to their experiences on the front lines of the Western Front

Blending fact with fiction, the psychiatric facility is home to real-life patients and

famous poets like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as several other characters created

as part of the story. The always brilliant Jonathan Price takes center stage as the real-life

Captain William Rivers, the doctor and psychiatrist tasked with rehabilitating these poor young men

James Wilby shines as soon, while Johnny Lee Miller delivers an impressive early performance

in a supporting role. Escaping indictment of the war and the treatment of countless young men who

fought in it, Regeneration isn't always an easy watch, but it remains a compelling and emotive

one that serves as a reminder of the power of poetry and the futility of conflict

The likes of Best In Show and Bring It On may have parodied the tropes of sports competition movies

but that doesn't mean that 2000 wasn't capable of bringing us a gripping, serious drama about fighting

and overcoming obstacles both in and out of the boxing ring. While it follows the classic boxing movie story of the sport allowing an avenue for a troubled and violent young person

to find a productive outlet for their desire to lash out and punch things, Karan Kusama's girl fight shakes things up by making its boxing hero a teenage girl

giving her a load of additional hurdles and expectations to overcome. Kusama's secret weapon is her leading lady

With the director insistent on casting a Latina actress as the troubled Brooklynite at the heart of Girlfight

and finding professional actors too pampered and polished, Kusama turned to Michelle Rodriguez

who had no real experience in either acting or boxing. Rodriguez's performance is sensational

and the real reason for seeing this film. She is magnetic, seething with aggression, determination and dynamism

The role made Rodriguez Hollywood's go-to tough girl, immediately landing her apart in The Fast and the Furious, but she has still never been better than she was here

Machete Kills Robert Rodriguez writes, scores, edits, and shoots his own films, so you're always seeing one man's vision as opposed to a film made by committee

You might care for that, or you might not, but if you don't, at least have the courtesy to not give him grief for it in a world where Transformers' Age of Extinction exists

This sequel to 2010's Machete has the same mission as every Rodriguez film

It just wants to give you a good time. Alas, the simple act of enjoying Danny Trejo indulge in a spot of murder

didn't resonate with audiences at the time, and as a result, Machete Kills has one of the worst theatrical openings ever

Which is a shame, because there's a ton of crazy stuff to enjoy here

You've got machine-gun bras, you've got a hitman who disguises himself as Walton Goggins, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, and more

and it's more fun than Robert Rodriguez's Sin City sequel, so check it out

Johnny Got His Gun Written and directed by James Dalton Trumbo, the screenwriter behind Spartacus

who was blacklisted in Hollywood after refusing to testify to the House of Un-American Activities Committee

during the McCarthy-era communist witch hunts in the 1940s and 50s, Johnny Got His Gun is a film you've probably seen in bits without even realizing it

as it featured heavily in the video to the classic Metallica track, One

which is a banger. As powerful and unflinching an anti-war film as you are ever likely to find

Johnny Got His Gun told the story of Joe, played by Timothy Bottoms, a soldier who

after being hit by an artillery shell in World War I, wakes to find himself a quadruple amputee

who has lost his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. Trapped inside his body with only the memories

of his former life for company, Joe forms a bond with a sympathetic nurse who he hopes will end

his living nightmare. Johnny Got His Gun is ultimately a grim, unrelenting warning of the

dangers of war, and it's also notable for featuring an appearance from Donald Sutherland as Jesus

so it has that going for it too. Joint Security Area This 2000 mystery thriller was the breakthrough movie for one of the new Korean cinema movement's

most distinctive voices Vengeance Trilogy Helmer Park Chan A whodunit set in one of the most politically volatile spots on Earth Joint security Area sees Lee Young Park lady vengeance as the neutral Swiss investigator having to make sense of the divergent stories on different sides

when a North Korean border guard is shot within a demilitarised zone

between North and South Korea. Compared to the wild genre-bending of the director's later work

Joint Security Area is a fairly conventional mystery-solving exercise, but one that is expertly directed with real suspense

and the feeling that the slightest misstep doesn't just mean failing to solve the puzzle

but also causing a major international incident. Joint Security Area was the biggest film ever at the Korean box office at the time

It deserves to be seen just as much by audiences in the rest of the world as well

Blue Jay We all have that one person from our past that we just occasionally think about, don't we

Whether it was a high school sweetheart we never quite got over, or that friendship that was a little more than a friendship

though never quite blossomed into a fuller relationship for whatever reason, there's always

somewhat. Blue Jay is a movie about that connection, and what happens when two people reconnect years

later, all grown up and more world-weary. Headed up by the always brilliant Sarah Paulson and Mark

Duplass, Blue Jay is a low-key movie focused mostly on one night shared between these former

lovers. The specific pains of reconnection are all brilliantly captured here though. The wistfulness

of trying to relive your youth combined with the reality that that kind of living just isn't

sustainable after years of being ground down by real life. The drama is tender, the chemistry is

great, and if you're a fan of Mumblecock-esque romantic dramas, then you absolutely need to give

Blue Jay a chance. And at the time of recording, you can find it on Netflix

Tigerland. People who only know Joel Schumacher as the man who ruined Batman are really missing out

Not only on the hyper-stylised 80s movies that made his name, but also on a brief post-Batman

and Robin career renaissance as a director of relatively restrained dramatic movies

Tigerland was the last stopping point for US infantrymen before shipping out to Vietnam

a training camp in Louisiana whose humid climate was supposed to replicate the environmental

conditions of Southeast Asia. In Tigerland the movie, Colin Farrell plays a rebellious drafted

soldier newly arrived at the camp and desperate to do what he can to get kicked out. Unfortunately

his ability to think for himself sees him flagged up as a potential leader instead

The movie doesn't break any particular new ground as a story of the dehumanizing process

that turns individuals into soldiers, but Schumacher brought a gritty, grainy documentary

feel a million miles from his high camp Batman, which makes for a well-crafted movie

Meanwhile, the then-unknown Farrell marked himself out as one to watch with a performance

that is charismatic, intense and engaging. It may have been a massive box office bomb

losing virtually all of its $10 million budget, but Tigerland deserves to be rediscovered today

The Trench This little gem of a British war film is well worth a watch

not least for the fact it features a whole lot of what were then up-and-coming stars

At the heart of the action is a fresh-faced Daniel Craig as the battle-hardened Sergeant

Winter, the leader of a platoon of fresh-faced young soldiers ill-equipped for fighting in the

trenches. Set on the eve of a massive battle, much of the focus on the film rests on Paul

Nichols' character Billy McFarlane, a patriotic volunteer torn between fear, restlessness, and a creeping sense of panic at what lies ahead. Killeen Murphy, Ben Whishaw, and Danny

Dyer all feature on The Recruits, facing almost insurmountable odds too. Ultimately, The Trench

is an emotional portrait of young men facing an unimaginable fate, and serves as a stark reminder

of the cruel senselessness that underpinned so much of the First World War

Cockneys vs. Zombies Moving swiftly from one genre to another, if Shaun of the Dead was a quaint British film that just happened to feature walking cadavers

Cockneys vs. Zombies is its east end cousin. The ruder, cruder and decidedly lewdere relative

that's more interested in exploding heads than romantic subplots. When the dead start to rise, Andy and Terry immediately fear for the safety of Ray

The grandfather that raised them after their hippie parents unwisely took on police marksmen with assault rifles. So with the end of the world finally here

they decide to set off on a rescue mission, little realising that Rey is safely enclosed

inside of a retirement home with a cache of assault rifles and some hard-as-nails OAPs

This is The Walking Dead by way of, like, a BBC comedy, and your enjoyment will of course depend

upon watching British TV veterans portraying octogenarian zombie killers with walking frames

and AK-47s. Gone are Shaun of the Dead's crick-a-bats and genre-savvy satire

and in come big, bold decapitations, loud humour, plus samurai sword-wielding locksmiths

because why not, I guess? It ain't subtle, but it certainly is a good time

Before Night Falls Most people really became aware of the talents of Javier Bardem with his chilling performance

as the monstrous Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men

Years earlier, however, he had become the first Spaniard ever nominated for a Best Actor Oscar

with his first English-language role. If it's remembered today, then it's mostly as the movie with Johnny Depp in drag

but Before Night Falls has a real great deal more to offer than the A-listers' attention-grabbing supporting role

Painter-turned-director Julian Schnabel has made a career out of innovative and artfully shot true-life stories of other artists and writers

and here turned that approach to an impressionistic biopic of gay Cuban poet Ronaldo Arenas

The fragmentary narrative leaping back and forth between the poet's youth, his years in and out of prison for his sexuality, and dying of AIDS in the

US, is held together by Bardem's poignant, romantic, soulful, central performance. Despite the Oscar nod

it would take a few more years for Bardem to become a star in English-language film

but here his whole incredible acting range is on show. Joyeux Noël. Four years before Inglourious

s, co-star Diane Kruger and Daniel Brühl teamed up for an altogether different kind of war

movie Joyeux No might have come off as corny or overly sentimental in the wrong hands but French director Christian Carrion does a dev job of imbuing a well story with poignancy It a quietly powerful watching

experience, celebrating an extraordinary moment in history and humankind when numerous sections

of the Western Front called an informal and unauthorized truce to mark Christmas

Soldiers from the French, British, and German armies came together in no man's land for a

December 25th was a difference. A rare moment of peace and goodwill to contrast the fighting

that came before and after, it's a sensitively rendered experience that offers a fascinating

dramatised glimpse of what unfolded over those magical hours. On one level, Joyeux Noël is a

Christmas film, but that fails to do justice to the movie's wider themes around the celebration

of human resilience and the common traits that exist between people of all nations

Sing Street. I'm always a little bit trepidatious when people recommend a modern musical. It's not

that I hate the genre or anything. I mean, I've loved stuff like La La Land and by all accounts

West Side Story's remake absolutely bangs, but there's just so much guff in there that the odds

of finding a gem aren't always in your favour. So with that in mind, please trust me when I say

that Sing Street, an overlooked gem set in Dublin, is absolutely worth your time. With a great coming

of age story and charming infectious tunes. It's the kind of feel-good hidden film that you'll be

telling everyone about after you see it. The premise is simple. It's 1985 and Connor has been forced to

move school and to offset his home life falling apart. He decides to start a band in order to get

closer to the girl he fancies and hopefully prove himself to be more cool in the eyes of his new

classmates. Where the true charm comes from though is Connor's band figuring out what kind of music

they actually want to make. We've all had phases in our lives where we discover a new band or genre

and then that just becomes our life. And that's reflected great in the music here

as Connor attempts to imitate his heroes, often to hilarious results. As a coming-of-age tale, it's full of personality

and as a musical, it'll have your toe-tapping. Package it up in a nostalgic throwback that cycles through genres

and even successfully parodies them, and Sing Street is far more memorable than may initially appear

Gangster Number One With the likes of Snatch and Sexy Beast, 2000 was very much the peak of the post-Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels era of British gangster film

This punchy retro example of the genre may have only made a matter of tens of thousands in the box office

but is deserving of mention in the same breath as those bigger hitters

Adapted from a play by Sexy Beast writers Louis Mellis and David Sinto

Gangster No. 1 is the story of the rise of a gangster in swinging 60s London

framed by a present-day narrative of the gangster learning of his former mentor-turned-rivals released from prison

Former photographer Paul McGuigan, these days best known for his work as director on TV shows like Sherlock

makes this a slick, visually stylish and brutally violent genre exercise. But the movie is chiefly worth revisiting

for the twin central performances as the titular gangster across the movie's two time periods

As the ageing crime lord version, Malcolm McDowell is in full clockwork orange unhinged psycho mode but it is Paul Bettany as

his younger self who really steals the show a chillingly vicious cold-hearted ambitious sociopath

Bettany's gangster is every bit as compellingly monstrous as any of the gangster movie greats

see you up there arguably one of the most underrated or at least underseen world war one

movies ever made. See You Up There earned rave reviews upon its release in 2017, and it's not

difficult to see why, with filmmaker Albert Dupontel delivering a film of searing originality

and bold inventiveness. Set in the final days of the Great War and over the two years that followed

the film opens with a blistering wartime action scene. Sent off on one final futile charge on the

enemy lines against a harrowing backdrop of bombs, blood, guts, and artillery fire, a pair of French

soldiers find their lives intrinsically linked after one saves the other from certain death

only to then suffer a life-altering disfigurement in the process. Bound together by fate and assumed

dead by their loved ones, the pair decide to take revenge on a society they believe has more sympathy

of its war dead than its war living. They hit upon a scam to sell monuments to invented war heroes

across every city and village in France, only to then pocket the commission without delivering

a single statue or plinth. Based on Pierre Lemaitre's novel The Great Swindle, See You Up

There delivers a stunningly realistic portrait of the war's final days as part of a film that pulls

no punches, blending dark themes with jet black humour for an effective end result

Have you ever been sat down and thought, you know what, I really wouldn't mind right now

seeing Vince Vaughn just kick someone's head in? Well, buddy, have I got the movie for you

Brought to you by the director responsible for the brutal, incredible Bone Tomahawk

Brawl in Cell Block 99 completely transformed the aforementioned Vaughn's image. While already

having a few dramatic roles under his belt, similar to, say, Adam Sandler, Vaughn is decidedly

known more for his comedic work. So to see him bald and beefed up in this, absolutely smoking

fools in some of the most grossly violent action scenes in recent memory, sure is a shock

Fortunately, the movie itself is more than this gimmick, following Vaughn's Bradley Thomas

a crook who finds himself inside a jail cell with some very angry and very dangerous people

breathing down his neck. It's brainless ultraviolence in a lot of ways, but hey

Sometimes that's all you need. In the Mood for Love. Once declared by the BBC the second greatest film of the entire 21st century

Wong Kar-wai's 1960s set Hong Kong romantic drama certainly isn't underrated in terms of its reputation amongst professional film critics

but it remains underseen when it comes to wider movie audiences. The story of neighbours who begin to suspect that their spouses are having an affair with each other and so form a connection of their own In the Mood for Love is a heartbreaking story of love yearning regret and missed opportunity Beautifully shot in saturated reds deep shadows and wisps of noirish cigarette smoke

In the Mood for Love has a classical old-school elegance. Like many of the best tragically unfulfilled romances

this is a story as much about the things unsaid than what actually occurs with the cheating spouses

never seen but casting a huge shadow over everything that happens. Perhaps if more people saw it, then they too would consider In the Mood for Love as one of the defining classics of our current century

Ace is high. Five years on from A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell delivered another brilliant turn in this intelligent reworking of R.C. Sheriff's classic World War I play, Journey's End

Filmmaker Jack Gold transfers the action from the play's original setting in the trenches

to the skies over the ensuing conflict and for what remains a meditation on the horrors of war

and the humanity lost as a result. Ace of High sees McDowell's star as Major Gresham

a Daredevil fighter pilot overseeing a squadron of young recruits, facing the insurmountable odds those involved in aerial conflict faced at the time

Gresham's situation is soon changed, however, when former acquaintance Lieutenant Croft, Peter Firth joins his ranks. The connection between the two is that Croft attended Eton a

few years below Gresham and idolized him as something of a hero. But that image is soon

changed when he witnesses first hand the changes brought about in Gresham's behaviour as a result

of his death defying antics in the skies. Eater's High is one of the most underrated war films of

the 1970s, unique for being both an exhilarating all action film as well as a heartfelt and harrowing

drama. It also boasts a stellar cast that includes, amongst its ranks, Christopher Plummer. So yeah

definitely watch this one. It's really good. Rogue. Rogue is Greg McLean's follow-up to Wolf Creek

and if you've never heard of it, don't worry. That's because Dimension Films released the movie

in only 10 cinemas before burying it on DVD. It's hard to fathom their lack of faith in the

film though, because not only is there a solid cast of up-and-coming Australian actors

including Sam Worthington, Radha Mitchell and Mia Wasikowska, but it's also a decent creature feature in its own right

There's the usual group of tourists stranded on an island with the tide rising and darkness creeping in

but the arrival of an enormous crocodile rules out swimming to safety

Perhaps Dimension were mindful of the asylum's cheap creature features and figured that people might not pay to see something that they could just watch on television for free

but whatever their reasoning, they definitely passed on a good movie. Amores Peros

Visionary Mexican director Alejandro González Inaritu may have won a pair of back-to-back

Best Director Oscars in recent years, but he has rarely been better than the vibrant

violent world of his breakthrough debut feature. The movie is a Pulp Fiction-style triptych of different stories cutting across class divides

in Mexico City. A young man is in love with his brother's wife and tries to make the money to run away

with her through dogfighting. A model loses her own dog beneath the floorboards and destroys her leg and thus her career

rescuing it. A vagrant hitman cares for mongrel dogs and tries to reconnect with his daughter

All of these threads come literally crashing together in a car accident that is the movie's

centerpiece. Everything is filled with an intense vibrancy, savage violence and emotional intensity

Inaritu would use the same multi-strounded story structure for his more meditative follow-up 21

Grams, his English language debut, but rarely again would he make anything with this raw energy. Tyrell

Tyrell is a movie that my friends and colleagues are absolutely sick to death of hearing me recommend to them

I'll bring this movie up every single opportunity I get without fail

to the point where the likes of poor old Adam Nicholas are probably never going to even watch it, just out of mere spite

So, now I come to all you, the endless audience of YouTube, to say

please, please watch this movie. Now, I should probably explain what it's about so I can sell you on it

and well, it's ostensibly about a man called Tyler, who's on a trip as a plus one with his

best friend to see his best friend's best friends, people that he hasn't met before

He's the only black man meeting this all-white group of people, which feeds into the already

awkward dynamic of being a friend of a friend and having to spend a weekend surrounded by idiots

Overall, it's a great portrait of male friendships, long weekends that overstay their welcome

and just how piss-frightening the band R.E.M. can be. It's low-key, and you could argue that not much happens

but its acute depiction of social anxieties and how dynamics change when interacting with old friends

and the person you used to be is pitch perfect. Jason Mitchell is awesome in the lead role

while a solid supporting cast of the best character actor freaks today

like Caleb Landry-Jones and Christopher Abbott, make this one a must-watch. Shadow of the Vampire

Purporting to show the true behind-the-scenes story of quite what made F.W. Murnau's silent vampire horror Nosferatu

such a classic, and it's ersatz Dracula Count Orlok such a disturbing monster, this bizarre

metafictional horror comedy is that rare film which actually provides a fresh take on the

endlessly adapted Dracula character. Shadow of the Vampire proposes that the ultra-demanding

Murnau recruited an actual vampire to play Orlok, and willingly put the rest of his cast

in harm's way to get the most convincing vampire film possible. Directed by experimental

arthouse horror director and frequent Marilyn Manson collaborator E. Elias Merridge, Shadow of

the Vampire is an odd tonal melange that encompasses behind-the-scenes satire, silent movie pastiche

and genuine scares, all helped by some perfect casting. John Malkovich is enjoyably full-on as

the dictatorial Murnau, but it is Willem Dafoe who is the real star of the piece, combining a perfect

facsimile of Max Schreck's original performance with something eccentric, disturbing, but also

full of pathos. There has never been a more engagingly weird movie about the filmmaking

process and the lengths that some hauteurs will go to for their art