Hidden gems: 10 excellent movies nobody recommended to you

Platform algorithms push new releases and big titles. The result: excellent movies stay invisible, buried in the catalogs. Here are 10 gems worth discovering.

Clever thrillers

• Coherence (2013): shot in a few days on a tiny budget, this single-location sci-fi movie is a model of ingenuity.
• The Guilty (2018): the original Danish film, far more intense than its American remake.
• Prisoners (2013): before Dune, Denis Villeneuve made this dark thriller with Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. Well known, but still not seen enough.

Feel-good comedies

• The Nice Guys (2016): Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as bumbling detectives in 1970s Los Angeles. A box-office miss, a cult comedy today.
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016): before making Marvel movies, Taika Waititi made this funny, touching New Zealand adventure.
• Palm Springs (2020): a time-loop romantic comedy, smarter than it looks.

Movies that stay with you

• Paterson (2016): a week in the life of a bus-driver poet. Nothing happens, and yet everything does.
• Columbus (2017): an encounter between two people and buildings. Soothing and beautiful.
• The Wolf's Call (Le Chant du loup, 2019): a tense, spectacular French submarine thriller.
• Wind River (2017): an icy thriller on a Native American reservation in Wyoming, from the screenwriter of Sicario.

Why these movies go unnoticed

Often they had little promotion, a quiet release or an unappealing title. The best movies aren't always the ones on the poster. That's why a human selection is sometimes worth more than an algorithm.