Highly-rated yet little-known movies

agoodmovietowatch suggests excellent movies (and recently shows) that you might not know about.

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agoodmovietowatch
genreComedy

Comedy
New This Month

The true story of a grandma who gets diagnosed with a fatal disease and her family who keeps that information from her. They organize a fake wedding in China where she lives to say goodbye (hence the title).Rapper Awkwafina is incredible as the granddaughter at the center of the story. Living in New York and having a complicated relationship with China, she embodies the cultural question at the center of the story: is it OK not to tell the grandma? But also: can a wedding that's really a funeral to everyone but one person be held without that person's suspicion? The best thing about The Farewell, and it’s mostly thanks to Awkwafina’s performance, is that it’s never melodramatic. It’s technically a comedy, it's often funny, and when it’s sad, it’s heartfelt.

9.1
BF

Comedy
New This Month
3

The Young Offenders is a comedy about two Irish teenagers who go on a 160km bicycle trip to salvage 7 million euros worth of lost cocaine.As they sit on a hill overlooking their city, they imagine what they would do with that money. The answer is building a house that has lava lamps, “big gold walls”, Spanish girls, and an English butler to wake them up every morning with the phrase “what’s happenin’?”.You get the vibe. It’s is a silly movie, although the premise is actually based on a real-life event where cocaine from a capsized smuggling boat washed up on the Irish coast.The Young Offenders wears its heart on its sleeve. It’s a sweet funny movie, half slapstick and half plot, which sports an infinity of highly quotable one-liners.

8.0

Comedy
New This Month

The 1980s were not a great time to be of Pakistani descent in the UK. Hate crimes are at an all-time high and the economy is suffering. Plus, there is really no good era to be a misunderstood teenager. Javed is both those things in this coming-of-age comedy based on a true story. Javed finds solace in the music of one Bruce Springsteen, relating to his themes of small-city blues and the dreams of escaping them.All of this makes Blinded By The Light a charming movie about a lot of unpleasantness, and while it tries to be too many things (a commentary on race, a musical, a coming of age story, etc), it succeeds where it matters: to treat the story with care and intelligence.

7.1

Comedy
New This Month
1

Watch this if you like weird movies. And don't be fooled by the first half, which serves just to set Jesse Eisenberg's character and the monotone life he leads. It's the calm before the storm, during which that character is attacked by a violent gang and decides to take self-defense classes in an unusual club. This is a movie about modern manhood and how it can lead to some pretty strange situations. Great performance from Eisenberg as usual.

7.0

Comedy

A calm choir leader lives a secret life as eco-warrior in this visually stunning and intelligent story about our complex times. If you're familiar with Icelandic movies, this one has just the right amount of that Icelandic quirkiness - making it a proper feel-good movie with a message. This is added to the superb acting and an off-beat musical score. Not to be missed.

8.2

Comedy
1

Produced by Eminem, Bodied is like if the rap battles of 8 Miles lasted a whole movie, and that movie was a comedy. Adam is a white poetry major who studies battle rap and believes they represent the most modern form of poetry. His fascination leads him to participate and win in a battle and subsequently enter that world. But this is anything but an underdog story - Bodied is more of a satire of what Adam represents and how his college entourage reacts to his offensive lyrics. This is a funny movie and an interesting commentary on what it means to be offensive nowadays.

7.6

Comedy

Thunder Road is both a single-shot 13 minute short and a 91-minute feature-film expanding the story. Both are excellent and award-winning, but I really recommend the full experience!Jim Cummings (above) is the director, writer, and main actor of this dark comedy. He plays a police officer having the worst day of his life as he tries to sing Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road at his mother’s funeral.This sight is funny, and so is most of the story. But it’s also cringe-inducing, and because the main character is so sincere in his decline, will make you feel guilty about laughing so much.

7.4

Comedy
1

A razor-sharp script and beautiful scenery make this one of the best road movies in recent memory.When their cynical best friend dies, Seph and Alex embark on a journey to scatter his ashes over four spots he wants to go back to. Tupperware of ashes in the glove-box, they start their big adventure.Burn Burn Burn, an expression their friend quotes from Kerouac, is a chance for the two friends to escape their hectic city life and to discover themselves. It’s a beautiful movie.

8.0

Comedy

This is a slightly weird and not so slightly quirky movie to be avoided by anyone with a low tolerance to the weird or quirky. Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, Frances Ha) and Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, also Frances Ha) write the story, while Gerwig plays a lead role. Two girls, one a New Yorker and the other having just arrived in New York for a writing program, get in touch because their parents will marry. The writer is fascinated by the personality of the New Yorker and follows her everywhere to understand her more, and eventually write about her. Mistress America is their journey through friendship and through New York. Stick around the first 40 minutes or so, because the second half of this 82-minute movie is hilarious.

7.0

Comedy

This is a hilarious political comedy starring the ever-great Steve Buscemi. Set in the last days before Stalin's death and the chaos that followed, it portrays the lack of trust and the random assassinations that characterized the Stalinist Soviet Union. Think of it as Veep meets Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator. Although to be fair, its dark comedy props are very different from the comedy that comes out today: where there are jokes they're really smart, but what's actually funny is the atmosphere and absurd situations that end up developing.

8.1

Comedy
4

If you liked Superbad, you will love Booksmart. It's a funny coming-of-age movie about two best friends who embark on one last crazy night before their high-school ends. Sounds like something you've seen before? Don't worry, it's not. This movie might be for fans of smart coming-of-age comedies, but it's very different from them. It's current, creating situations and premises for jokes that haven't been explored before, ranging from taking a Lyft and finding out the driver is their school principal; to mistakenly connecting to his car's sound system while trying to get educated on how two women have sex. The girls in Booksmart are overachieving, fiercely supportive of each other, and yet in the right context, ready to let go and have fun. In short, their endearing attitude makes this movie not only funny but extremely likely to charm your socks off.

9.0
BF
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