Suggest a film you love that no-one else knows

[CormoranStrike]

I’m just finishing Hear My Song in Amazon Prime, starring a very young Adrian Dunbar, Tara Fitzgerald and James Nesbit among others.

If you can get through the rousing final five minutes without your toes tapping and your hands clapping you are better than me!

It’s nonsensical, whimsical nostalgia and twee Irish, but marvellous.

Thanks for this thread and for all of the great ideas!

Here are two more, probably not very well known:

Vitus around a child pianist prodigy, the conflict between his talents and his childhood, and different family members’ perspectives on what would be best for him;

Catch a Fire based on a dramatic true story under the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Two films that are better-known, but still fantastic, are Blood Diamond (de Caprio should have won his Oscar for that one) and Amistad

Thank You For Smoking with Aaron Eckhart – satire about a tobacco company PR exec.

Farewell My Concubine by Chen Kaige (in Mandarin) – set in Beijing in 1924.

Raise the Red Lantern, by Zhang Yimou (also in Mandarin) – a young woman becomes the fourth wife of a lord. IIRC, you see next to nothing of the husband's face. He's just a cypher: the film is all about the women and the tensions in the household.

Actually anything by Zhang. His films are visually stunning.

Neria, about a woman in Zimbabwe who has to manage within a misogynist system when her husband dies. Largely in English, IIRC. Fabulous soundtrack by Mtukudzi.

And I think I've seen some love on MN before for one of my favourite Japanese films, Tampopo – a noodle Western. Wonderful feelgood film; you won't regret it. (In Japanese, of course.)

Talking of great soundtracks, Bowie's "Heroes" is the backdrop to Christiane F., aka Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. 1980s (anti-)heroin chic that pre-dates Trainspotting.

Absolutely not a cosy film, but excellent.

@TressiliansStone

Talking of great soundtracks, Bowie's "Heroes" is the backdrop to Christiane F., aka Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. 1980s (anti-)heroin chic that pre-dates Trainspotting.

Absolutely not a cosy film, but excellent.

OMG I used to love that film, and the soundtrack. Was thinking about it just the other day.

I the Mood for Love by Wong Kar Wai - ravishingly beautiful and melancholy.

*In

I’ve just thought of another one (not rtft so don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it): “Flirting” with a young thandie Newton and Nicole Kidman. It’s an Aussie film from 1991 - They are schoolgirls at a boarding school - it’s a bit of a coming of age type film.
This thread got me thinking about it and I watched it last night. It’s as good as I remembered.

The Sweet Hereafter
Take this Waltz
As High as the Sky

@TressiliansStone

Thank You For Smoking with Aaron Eckhart – satire about a tobacco company PR exec.

Farewell My Concubine by Chen Kaige (in Mandarin) – set in Beijing in 1924.

Raise the Red Lantern, by Zhang Yimou (also in Mandarin) – a young woman becomes the fourth wife of a lord. IIRC, you see next to nothing of the husband's face. He's just a cypher: the film is all about the women and the tensions in the household.

Actually anything by Zhang. His films are visually stunning.

Raise The Red Lantern is my dad's favourite film of all time. The relationships are fascinating. Plus there is so much FOOD featured. We left the cinema and went straight to a Chinese restaurant (and the next day dad booked us a trip to Beijing!).

Good memories.

@tiramisualwaystiramisu

Mystery Men - slightly rubbish superheroes come together to fight crime. It came out just before all the Marvel films and it makes fun of it all. I discovered it working in a video shop (so it's quite old) and my whole family love it but no one else ever seems to have heard of it

I love Mystery Men, I'm always amazed it's not better known seeing as there's a few "names" in it. I have it on dvd and I think I'm going to and watch it

Also can I thank the poster who recommended the 1945 film of “Blithe Spirit” - I watched it yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. I laughed a lot - my favourite line was:
Elvira: “I’m so tired of sitting here every evening whilst Ruth sews that hideous table centre..”
Charles: “don’t be spiteful - anyway Ruth is perfectly aware the table centre is hideous, it’s a birthday gift for her mother!”

Delicatessen
MicMacs

Mine would be

I married a witch - old black & white movie from the forties with Veronica Lake saw it on BBC2 (back in the days of only 4 channels) as a teen one lazy Sunday afternoon & loved it ever since

The boy who could fly - with a young Fred Savage & Fred Gwynne (Herman Munster) not a single person I know has ever seen it except my kids who were forced to watch

Lantana - Australian film. Can’t find it any platform and I’ve lost the DVD 😳

Ah indeed, AmazingCoffee, the food! Which now reminds me of two more Mandarin classics (Taiwanese this time):
Eat Drink Man Woman by Ang Lee, which some people will have heard of, and
The Wedding Banquet, also Ang Lee, much less well known but brilliant.

An oldie:

Green for Danger (1946) with Trevor Howard is a mystery set in a wartime hospital. Also features Megs Jenkins, whose work I really like.

@AmazingCoffee Ha! Raise the Red Lantern would not have me racing to China!

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman was followed by a Chinese blow-out, though.

Parapluies de Cherbourg.
Anything with Jacques Tati

My dad was truly obsessed for a while with China. His 50th spent at The Great Wall. He even went to Harbin after discovering some of his grandmother's Russian relatives settled there after the revolution. :)

I was in my late teens and have an enormous soft spot for that period in our life. It was such an amazing time.

Dead Again - Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. I loved it when it came out but can never find it to stream / buy on dvd. I think I had it on VHS!

Oh I came on to recommend raise the red lantern even though I only saw it once as a teenager, must watch again
Also I remember enjoying no man's land a drama about the Balkan war
monsoon wedding was beautiful.
I am not sure in Bruges is niche enough but it's one of my favourite movies. Every time someone says "there's a view up there" we say "a view of what?" In an Irish accent.
The other movie we watch all the time also not sure it's niche enough is chalet girl. It's shit but it makes us laugh, and yes it's incongruous next to my other recommendations.

The Mirror Has Two Faces...Barbra Streisand and Jeff Bridges play a pair of university lecturers who marry for 'courtly love' but end up falling for each other after many slips ups along the way. Pierce Bosnian plays her old flame who ended up choosing her beautiful sister, and Lauren Bacall her insensitive mother.

Bull Durham - Susan Sarandon plays a late 30 something baseball groupie and part time English teacher who hooks up with a player from her favourite team each season. This year the choice is between almost-legend Crash Davies (Costner) or star newcomer 'Nuke' (Tim Robbins, who she subsequently married in RL). When Crash reluctantly rebuffs her advances, she spend the season with Nuke but the sexual tension is still simmering away with predicatble results.

Sarafina from the early 90s. A musical set in apartheid South Africa. Whoopi Goldberg is in it but not May people have seen it I don’t think.

Something Wild with Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels and Ray Liotta as the pyscho ex.