Every year there are movies everyone hears about. Those are your Marvel films and your Oscar players. But what about the films that fly under the radar? The foreign favorites that never crack the mainstream? The studio releases that get written off? The indies that don’t take over the box office? When you’re looking for something that maybe hasn’t been overly hyped, we’ve got you covered. We’ll be updating this list throughout the year.
Want even more movies? Read our list of the Best Movies of 2020.
Bacurau
Release date: March 6
Cast: Sônia Braga, Udo Keir, Bárbara Colen, Thomas Aquino
Directors: Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho
Why it’s worth seeing: “What’s going on in Bacurau?” holds dual meaning when discussing the new film by Brazilian directors Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho. The mystery as to just who or what is besieging the tiny isolated town is the driving force behind the movie’s narrative, but the question posed above also applies to the experience of watching Bacurau. You sit, hypnotized by the film while at the same time you wonder: What the hell is even happening? Is something supernatural or alien occurring? What about the hallucinogens that characters keep taking? Or is this just reality spun on its head? The quasi-western seems to exist in a world that is not quite our own, even as it offers an allegory for messy present-day Brazilian politics. To say too much about what is actually going on in Bacurau would ruin the experience of watching it. Dornelles and Mendonça Filho give the film a fuzzy B-movie feel that’s only enhanced by the presence of B-movie hero Udo Kier as a threatening military figure. Bacurau holds its cards close to its chest, all building to an exuberantly bloody finale that’s angry and hysterical.
Where to watch: In select theaters (Watch the trailer.) – Esther Zuckerman
Birds of Prey
Release date: February 7
Cast: Margot Robbie, Rosie Perez, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Ella Jay Basco
Director: Cathy Yan
Why it’s worth seeing: We’ve had a string of pretty great DC Comics movies in the past few years — Wonder Woman and Aquaman both breathed new life in what looked like a dead franchise — but Birds of Prey, the Harley Quinn-centric girl gang team-up movie full of glitter and exploding sandbags, is the first one that seems to remember its characters’ poppy, colorful origins. Oh, right, this movie seems to say, this is a comic book! It’s a neon-lit zap in the pants, exactly the kind of thing we need in the dead of February with summer blockbuster season only a whisper on the horizon. Margot Robbie plays her motormouthed Quinn with even more manic panache than in the awful Suicide Squad; the new additions to the universe, including Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, and Ella Jay Basco, provide endless fun; and the villainous duo of Ewan McGregor and bleach-blond Chris Messina are appropriately, unexpectedly terrifying. Plus, it also does everything it can to erase Suicide Squad from memory, which is something that we all wish we could do. If only more people went to see it.
Where to watch: In theaters (Watch the trailer.) – Emma Stefansky
Color Out of Space
Release date: January 24
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, Tommy Chong
Director: Richard Stanley
Why it’s worth seeing: It’s hard to know what Nicolas Cage movies are worth seeking out these days. The eye-bulging, voice-modulating thespian has a tendency to select projects that are either surprisingly compelling (like 2018’s brutal genre hybrid Mandy) or disappointingly lame (most of his other recent work). Luckily, Color Out of Space, a psychedelic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story from 1927, is one of the good recent Cage movies, mixing science-fiction intrigue and bursts horror movie excess to great effect. Cage’s Nathan, a chatty farmer with a loving wife (Joely Richardson) and a pair of mildly rebellious kids, must contend with a meteoroid that crashes in his front yard, shooting purple light all over his property and infecting the local water supply. Inexplicably, alpacas are involved. Somehow, Cage makes it all work.
Where to watch: Rent on YouTube, Amazon, Google Play, or iTunes (Watch the trailer.) – Dan Jackson
Horse Girl
Release date: February 7
Cast: Alison Brie, Molly Shannon, John Reynolds, Dylan Gelula
Director: Jeff Baena
Why it’s worth seeing: The Netflix movie co-written by star Alison Brie defies the twee expectations set out by its title. Yes, Brie’s protagonist is a woman who loves horses. No, she’s not about to embark on some cutesy rom com and teach a man the meaning of life or whatever. Inspired by Brie’s own family history of mental illness, Horse Girl is a surprising, surreal take on a woman’s breakdown. Brie is excellent as Sarah, who works in a craft store and spends her nights watching a TV procedural and making lanyards. She’s a lonely, solitary figure, who has a tenuous support system. But that all starts to slip away when her strange dreams intensify and she starts to believe she might have been abducted by aliens. There are certainly debates to be had as to just how well Horse Girl handles the balance between reality and fantasy with which it toys, but it’s an engaging and disorienting ride nonetheless, anchored by some great acting.
Where to watch: On Netflix (Watch the trailer.) – EZ
The Photograph
Release date: February 14
Cast: Issa Rae, Lakeith Stanfield, Y’lan Noel, Rob Morgan, Chanté Adams
Director: Stella Meghie
Why it’s worth seeing: The Photograph, writer and director Stella Meghie’s time-shifting romance starring Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield, is the type of movie that smolders like an old Al Green song for its entire runtime. Whenever its plot, which follows the daughter of a famous photographer named Mae (Rae) falling in love with a commitment-phobic journalist (Stanfield), threatens to intensify or boil over, the movie finds a way to dial back the conflict. Occasionally, particularly in the flashback sections about Mae’s mother, that skittishness towards melodrama can be frustrating. But in the scenes between Rae and Stanfield, who share a low-key chemistry, the film achieves a sweet balance between indie-movie naturalism and rom com sweetness that’s all too rare on screen these days.
Where to watch: In theaters (Watch the trailer.) – DJ
Ride Your Wave
Release date: February 19
Cast: Ryota Katayose, Rina Kawaei, Kentaro Ito, Honoka Matsumoto
Director: Masaaki Yuasa
Why it’s great: Masaaki Yuasa has been a prolific force of trippy anime since the late ’90s, with series like Tatami Galaxy, Ping Pong: The Animation, and Devilman Crybaby. But 2020 has the potential to be the director’s breakout year in the United States with a huge slate of projects coming out, starting with the series Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! in the winter anime season and followed by Ride Your Wave, a saccharine seaside love story that will break and rebuild your heart. Surfer Hinako Mukaimizu and firefighter Minato Hinageshi have a meet-cute on the roof of Hinako’s burning apartment building, and after developing a deep, resonating affection for each other over the course of a year, Minato suddenly and tragically drowns in an accident. Hinako, left behind in shock, realizes that she can conjure Minato in water by singing a song (recorded by voice actor Ryota Katayose’s band, Generations from Exile Tribe) they both loved. Of course, everyone thinks she’s insane for talking to a water bottle and carrying around a water-filled blow-up finless porpoise, but Hinako holds firm until her hallucinations are validated in the quite literally explosive end. Yuasa’s dramatic perspective-shifting animation style is beautiful in this water world, and the narrative seeds planted at the beginning come shooting up for an emotionally devastating end.
Where to watch: In select theaters (Watch the trailer.) – Leanne Butkovic
Swallow
Release date: March 6
Cast: Haley Bennett, Austin Stowell, Elizabeth Marvel, Denis O’Hare
Director: Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Why it’s worth seeing: Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ directorial debut will easily go down as one of the queasiest films of the year, but it’s far more than its most upsetting moments. Swallow stars Haley Bennett as Hunter, a housewife tasked with maintaining a perfectly manicured life for her businessman husband. But Hunter suffers from pica, a rare condition which means she consumes items that are not food. When she learns she’s pregnant, her eating disorder intensifies, and she starts putting everything from marbles to push pins in her mouth. Mirabella-Davis never shies away from the the gruesome reality of the effect Hunter’s actions have on her body, but he pairs it with gorgeous visuals that look like something out of a 1950s Vogue editorial. It’s a deeply unsettling marriage, enhanced by Bennett’s astounding performance, and just when you think that Swallow might veer into more horror chaos, it swerves to a realistic, tender zone.
Where to watch: In select theaters and VOD (Watch the trailer.) – EZ
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