Highly-rated yet little-known movies

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

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Comedy

Olivia Colman stars in this crazy comedy about an unusual family of intellectuals living in the English countryside.Colman plays Deborah Flowers, the mother of the family and a music teacher. She’s struggling in her marriage to her miserable and unfaithful husband Maurice (played so well by Julian Barratt). Together they live with a Japanese butler who barely speaks English and their adult twin children who are always on the verge of killing each other.Broken families have always been a premise for jokes on TV, but if you think about it or if you watch Flowers, you’ll be reminded that broken families are also a serious and dreadful affair.

8.3

Crime
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Unbelievable is one of the best Netflix productions in a while and definitely the best detective-centric show since the first season of True Detective.After a rape victim is not believed by the detectives who are assigned to her case, details of a similar incident surface elsewhere.Two detectives played masterfully by Toni Collette and Merritt Wever, embark on a relentless journey to catch the perpetrator in this thrilling and insanely bingeable true-crime show.

8.8

Unknown
Drama

This TV show is an award-sweeper in Australia where it’s from but remains little-known elsewhere. Suburban families live in a fragile but quiet environment - marital affairs are rampant but hidden, custody battles that were once fierce have quieted down, etc. However, when the black sheep of the community returns after a ten-year absence, everything comes back to the surface - starting with the discovery of a dead body. Ben Mendelsohn (Bloodline) is excellent here, and he’s supported by an amazing cast. Tangle is like a toned-down Big Little Lies, or a more cynical Parenthood.

7.2

Crime

Three kids from a poor neighborhood win scholarships to the best high-school in Spain and later find themselves at the center of a murder. There is a lot that comes to the surface from the working-class kids clashing with the wealthy. Themes of money, power, religion, and even sexuality make this show so compelling that I never felt like I needed a murder to keep watching.

7.4

Action

The Boys is the Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Superbad, Pineapple Express) take on the superhero genre. As creators of the show, they add their signature humor to a solid comic book story of the same name.The show takes place in a world where superheroes, or Supes, start abusing their powers for commercial gain. Their organization, Vought, is profit-driven and run with a mindset of increasing Instagram likes and selling Supe paraphernalia.This comes at an expense, as Supes start abusing their powers and focus more on their image than their duties. When their abuse results in a violent incident involving the show’s main character, he joins an anti-Supe unit called The Boys.The Boys are lead by Butcher (pictured above), by far the best and funniest character in the show; and includes Frenchie, a hilarious and romantic French bomb expert. Expect excellent character development and a witty script.

8.2

Crime
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Bosch returned recently for a fifth season, with a sixth one confirmed. It’s a sleeper hit that you may not have heard of, but with time should get the coverage it deserves.Titus Welliver (Lost, Sons of Anarchy, Argo) plays an L.A.P.D. homicide detective who is on trial for using questionable methods during a fatal shootout. At the same time, he is trying to solve an open murder case.Bosch is carried by almost entirely by Welliver, who delivers such a good multi-layered performance that it’s hard to think anyone else could have played this character.

8.0

Mystery

Here is a TV show where the performances are so good that it's hard to give any credit to the story. Patricia Arquette as a prison employee, and Benicio Del Toro and Paul Dano as inmates are an unbelievable trio. They all shine in their own right in this true story of escape from a prison in Upstate New York. Arquette is almost unrecognizable in the role of a frustrated middle-aged woman who gets romantically involved with the inmates. Dano plays the young one, a smart but easily excited guy. Del Toro plays an experienced, shrewd, and boss-type prisoner. Together they take an already exceptional story and create one of the most realistic mysteries in recent memory. Because of this, the pacing might be slow for some - but remember, it's not like the cast is difficult to follow.

9.3

Comedy
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Patriot is about a secret agent who is assigned meddling with the Iranian elections to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Sounds serious? It is and it is not. What Patriot is really about are the bureaucratic pitfalls that involve such work. The secret agent’s team parks on the wrong street and he ends up killing the wrong guy. The bag of money he wants to use to meddle with the elections gets stolen by an airport worker in Luxembourg. Etc, etc. For all of this, Patriot is a funny and clever show. the best part is that the secret agent in question is also a folk singer - and sometimes sings awfully honest and descriptive songs of his missions in open mics. Patriot is a mix between real-life thrills and real-life laughs, and it's a near-perfect TV show.

9.0

Action
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Hanna the movie was the perfect mix between a coming-of-age story and a Bourne-Trilogy-type thriller. It was suspenseful, edgy, and so original.How to make these attributes stick when the movie is stretched to a TV show? As it turns out, more of the same does the trick.The majority of events have been imagined especially for the show, and it doesn’t stop there. The series is packed with great new talent who bring their uniqueness to the story. Hanna herself is played masterfully by British actress Esme Creed-Miles. Her father - much more present in the show than the movie - is also amazingly played by Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman (you may recognize him from House of Cards or The Killing).High production value and incredible suspense make Hanna an enjoyable and prolonged thrill ride. It’s even more fun if you’ve never watched the movie, as all plot developments will be new to you.

7.8

Action
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An eccentric billionaire. A freakishly strong character who is ashamed of his strength. A Captain America-esque leader. An old mentor in the form of a wise talking monkey. You guessed it; The Umbrella Academy is about superheroes.One fateful day in 1989 many women across the globe give birth at the same time, but at the start of that day, none of them were pregnant. The eccentric billionaire adopts a number of these children to form The Umbrella Academy, a collective similar to X-Men or The Avengers. Except, because they are all kind of related, this show is about their family dynamic as much as it is about their superpowers.The Umbrella Academy is an entertaining story of superheroes that is rarely original but always enjoyable. Ellen Page plays one of the kids (the black sheep of the family who has no superpowers), and she’s a joy to watch.And substantial bonus: Mary J. Blige (!) plays a hitman.

7.8
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