Film bro bootcamp (kinda niche movie recs)
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Horror
House 1977
Original title: Hausu
In an effort to avoid spending time with her father and his creepy new lover, young Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) resolves to visit her aunt's remote mansion. With six of her closest friends in tow, including the musically inclined Melody (Eriko Tanaka) and the geeky Prof (Ai Matsubara), Gorgeous arrives at the estate, where supernatural events occur almost immediately. A severed head takes flight, household appliances come to life and a portrait of a cat seems to contain an evil spirit.
Ginger Snaps
John Fawcett · 2001
The story of two outcast sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, in the mindless suburban town of Bailey Downs. On the night of Ginger's first period, she is savagely attacked by a wild creature. Ginger's wounds miraculously heal but something is not quite right. Now Brigitte must save her sister and save herself.
Vamp
Richard Wenk · 1986
Two fraternity pledges go to a sleazy bar in search of a stripper for their college friends, unaware it is occupied by vampires.
Possibly in Michigan
Cecelia Condit · 1983
A musical horror story about two young women who are stalked through a shopping mall by a cannibal. He follows them home, and here the victims become the aggressors.
Creep
Patrick Brice · 2014
Looking for work, Aaron comes across a cryptic online ad: “$1,000 for the day. Filming service. Discretion is appreciated.” Low on cash and full of naiveté, he decides to go for it. He drives to a cabin in a remote mountain town where he meets Josef, his cinematic subject for the day. Josef is sincere and the project seems heartfelt, so Aaron begins to film. But as the day goes on, it becomes clear that Josef is not who he says, and his intentions are not at all pure.
Moon Garden
Ryan Stevens Harris · 2023
A comatose five-year-old girl journeys through a dark industrial dreamscape, following her mother's voice on a transistor radio to find her way back to consciousness.
Drama
Diary of a Mad Housewife
Frank Perry · 1970
Tina Balser is a bored New York housewife-mother married to Jonathan, a pompous, social-climbing lawyer who ridicules her in front of their children, criticizing everything she does or wears. She begins an affair with George Prager, a dashing, successful, and blatantly sadistic writer.
Caravaggio
Derek Jarman · 1986
A retelling of the life of the celebrated 17th-century Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio through his brilliant, nearly blasphemous paintings and his flirtations with the underworld.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
David Lynch · 1992
In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the more cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Laura Palmer hangs with lowlifes and seems destined for a grisly fate.
World of Glory
Roy Andersson · 1991
The narrative portrays a plain man who guides the viewer through his life in a bleakly stylised world.
Party Monster
Fenton Bailey · 2003
The New York club scene of the 80s and 90s was a world like no other. Into this candy-colored, mirror ball playground stepped Michael Alig, a wannabe from nowhere special. Under the watchful eye of veteran club kid James St. James, Alig quickly rose to the top... and there was no place to go but down.
As You Are
Miles Joris-Peyrafitte · 2016
Jack es un estudiante de instituto que vive con su madre soltera, Karen, en una ciudad anodina. Considerado un marginado social y un solitario, Jack no tiene amigos hasta que el nuevo novio de Karen, Tom, se muda a vivir con ellos e introduce en sus vidas a su hijo Mark. Los dos outsiders no tardan en hacerse buenos amigos y, tras un encuentro casual en un restaurante, incluyen a su compañera Sarah en el grupo. Los tres encuentran su salvación en el grupo, hasta que ciertos cambios en las relaciones y la aparición de algunos secretos les obligan a pararse a pensar y ver hasta dónde están dispuestos a llegar para vivir las vidas que han elegido. (FILMAFFINITY)
Breakfast on Pluto
Neil Jordan · 2005
In the 1970s, a young transgender woman called “Kitten” leaves her small Irish town for London in search of love, acceptance, and her long-lost mother.
Blue Jasmine
Woody Allen · 2013
After experiencing a traumatic misfortune, Jasmine French, a wealthy woman from New York, moves to San Francisco to live with her foster sister Ginger and the firm purpose of getting a new life, but she will be haunted by anxiety and memories of the past.
SLC Punk
James Merendino · 1998
Funeral Parade of Roses
Toshio Matsumoto · 1969
In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.
Yoji, What's Wrong With You?
Mako Idemitsu · 1987
The psychosexual drama Yoji, What's Wrong With You? examines the identity of women as mothers in Japanese culture, through an Oedipal narrative of a skewed "family romance." When Yoji announces to his mother that he wants her to meet a new girlfriend, the mother's jealousy destroys the relationship. Idemitsu's signature device of using a television monitor within the domestic space works as a powerful metaphor for the ubiquity of the mother in Yoji's psychological life. Idemitsu's melodramas always articulate a double-edged irony: With no identity outside of her maternal role, Yoji's mother fastens onto her son, ultimately destroying him. Yoji himself is seen as emotionally stunted, unable to leave his mother or experience love for any other woman.
Alma's Rainbow
Ayoka Chenzira · 1994
The teenage daughter of a Brooklyn beauty-parlor owner blossoms under the influence of her recently-returned show-biz aunt.
Pink Wall
Tom Cullen · 2019
Six scenes. Six years. Six moments that shaped the relationship of Jenna and Leon. Pink Wall examines what defines us, the pressures of gender expectations, and our perpetual struggle between life and ambition.
Personal Problems
Bill Gunn · 1980
An “experimental soap opera” centered on a Harlem nurse, her husband, her father-in-law, and her lover.
It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books
Richard Linklater · 1988
A nameless young man travels the country by bus and train, visiting friends and making new ones, having banal conversations, and dedicating his existence to mundane activities.
Identikit
Giuseppe Patroni Griffi · 1974
Lise, a mentally disturbed spinster, experiences a series of bizarre encounters in Rome as she searches for someone she feels she'll know--when she finds him.
Babylon
Franco Rosso · 1980
Drama telling the story of Blue, a young man of Jamaican descent living in Brixton in 1980, as he hangs out with his friends, fronts a dub sound system, loses his job, struggles with family problems and has his friendships tested by racism.
My Life as a Dog
Lasse Hallström · 1985
A boy, obsessed with comparing himself with those less fortunate, experiences a different life at the home of his aunt and uncle in 1959 Sweden.
Comedy
Die, Mommie, Die!
Mark Rucker · 2003
Angela Arden is a washed up, has-been singing star who is trapped in a hateful marriage to film producer Sol Sussman. In an attempt to escape her marriage so that she can be with a hunky layabout, she poisons her husband. However, Angela's manipulative daughter, gay son and alcoholic maid are not going to make it easy for her.
Psycho Beach Party
Robert Lee King · 2000
Chicklet is a sixteen-year old tomboy who's desperate to be part of the in-crowd of Malibu beach surfers. She's the typical American girl - except for one little problem: her personality is split into more slices than a pepperoni pizza.
Hairspray
John Waters · 1988
'Pleasantly plump' teenager Tracy Turnblad achieves her dream of becoming a regular on the Corny Collins Dance Show. Now a teen hero, she starts using her fame to speak out for the causes she believes in, most of all integration. In doing so, she earns the wrath of the show's former star, Amber Von Tussle, as well as Amber's manipulative, pro-segregation parents. The rivalry comes to a head as Amber and Tracy vie for the title of Miss Auto Show 1963.
Female Trouble
John Waters · 1974
Dawn Davenport progresses from a teenage nightmare hell-bent on getting cha-cha heels for Christmas to a fame monster whose egomaniacal impulses land her in the electric chair.
Frankenhooker
Frank Henenlotter · 1990
A medical school dropout loses his fiancée in a tragic lawnmower incident and decides to bring her back to life. Unfortunately, he was only able to save her head, so he goes to the red light district in the city and lures prostitutes into a hotel room so he can collect body parts to reassemble her.
Serial Mom
John Waters · 1994
Beverly is the perfect happy homemaker, along with her doting husband and two children, but this nuclear family just might explode when her fascination with serial killers collides with her ever-so-proper code of ethics.
Party Girl
1995
Elvira: Mistress of the Dark
James Signorelli · 1988
Elvira, una presentadora de televisión de un programa de terror, viaja a Massachussets para recibir la herencia de su fallecida tía Morgana: una casa ruinosa, un perro y un libro de recetas. Poco después, encuentra una misteriosa carta...
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Wes Anderson · 2004
Renowned oceanographer Steve Zissou has sworn vengeance upon the rare shark that devoured a member of his crew. In addition to his regular team, he is joined on his boat by Ned, a man who believes Zissou to be his father, and Jane, a journalist pregnant by a married man. They travel the sea, all too often running into pirates and, perhaps more traumatically, various figures from Zissou's past, including his estranged wife, Eleanor.
Zombie and the Ghost Train
Mika Kaurismäki · 1991
Antti "Zombie" Autiomaa does two things well: play the bass guitar and drink. After several months' sleeping on the streets of Istanbul, he returns to Helsinki where he's called into the army but discharged on mental health grounds after adding turpentine to the officers' soup. Zombie lives bleary-eyed in an apartment off his parents' house where his lonely, unemployed father suffers from heart disease. His girl-friend Marjo has taken up with a hairdresser but comes back to Zombie. His friend Harri hires him as a roadie for his band "Harry and the Mulefukkers" then gives him a chance as a bass player. He has his girl and he has a gig, but can Zombie put the bottle down?
Butch Camp
Alessandro De Gaetano · 1996
A mild-mannered gay man, tired of being pushed around by straights, enrolls in "Butch Camp," a program designed to turn wimpy gay men into assertive, confident gay men.
Blood & Donuts
Holly Dale · 1995
In 1994, in Toronto, the vampire Boya awakens from his twenty-five years of sleep in a basement hit by a golf ball. He takes a cab to the local cemetery, retrieves his belongings from a grave and lodges in a low budget hotel nearby an all-night donut shop. Boya does not drink human blood anymore but rats and pigeons blood instead. While in the donut shop, Boya befriends and protects the taxi driver Earl, who is having trouble with two criminals, and falls in love for the waitress Molly. Meanwhile, his former passion of 1969, Rita, who misses her lost youth, is trying to locate him.
The Smiling Lieutenant
Ernst Lubitsch · 1931
An amorous lieutenant is forced to marry a socially awkward princess, though he tries to keep his violin-playing girlfriend on the side.
Supermarket Woman
Jūzō Itami · 1996
A struggling Japanese neighborhood supermarket manager chances upon an old classmate, who has plenty of ideas for revitalizing his business.
Polyester
John Waters · 1981
Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine Fishpaw turns to the bottle as her life falls apart -- until deliverance appears in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow.
Saved!
Brian Dannelly · 2004
Mary is a good Christian girl who goes to a good Christian high school where she has good Christian friends and a perfect Christian boyfriend. Her life seems perfect, until the day that she finds out that her boyfriend may be gay — and that she’s pregnant.
Crime
High School Confidential!
Jack Arnold · 1958
A tough kid comes to a new high school and begins muscling his way into the drug scene. This is a typical morality play of the era, filled with a naive view of drugs, nihilistic beat poetry, and some incredible '50s slang.
Rope
Alfred Hitchcock · 1948
A casa de dos estudiantes van llegando los invitados a una especie de fiesta de fin de curso. El invitado que más temen es su tutor y profesor, un astuto criminólogo que sostiene que el crimen perfecto no existe, aunque ellos se han propuesto demostrar lo contrario. En efecto, con su llegada crece cada vez más la tensión y el nerviosismo de los jóvenes. Y no es para menos, porque tienen un cadáver encerrado en el arcón que sirve de mesa para la cena. Cuando, al final de la fiesta, profesor y alumnos se quedan solos, los errores y contradicciones en que éstos incurren son tales que el profesor empieza a comprender que han asesinado al joven invitado que han estado esperando en vano toda la noche.
Little Fish
Rowan Woods · 2005
Set in the Little Saigon district outside of Sydney, a woman trying to escape her past becomes embroiled in a drug deal.
Multiple Maniacs
John Waters · 1970
The Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling freak show, acts as a front for Divine, who is out for blood after discovering her lover's affair.
Diabolique
Henri-Georges Clouzot · 1955
The cruel and abusive headmaster of a boarding school, Michel Delassalle, is murdered by an unlikely duo -- his meek wife and the mistress he brazenly flaunts. The women become increasingly unhinged by a series of odd occurrences after Delassalle's corpse mysteriously disappears.
Romance
A Woman Like Eve
Nouchka van Brakel · 1979
A devoted yet stressed out housewife takes a holiday to relax, and falls in love with another woman: a guitar-playing hippie who lives in a commune.
Little Ashes
Paul Morrison · 2008
About the young life and loves of artist Salvador Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico García Lorca.
The Lady Eve
Preston Sturges · 1941
It's no accident when wealthy Charles falls for Jean. Jean is a con artist with her sights set on Charles' fortune. Matters complicate when Jean starts falling for her mark. When Charles suspects Jean is a gold digger, he dumps her. Jean, fixated on revenge and still pining for the millionaire, devises a plan to get back in Charles' life. With love and payback on her mind, she re-introduces herself to Charles, this time as an aristocrat named Lady Eve Sidwich.
Your Name Engraved Herein
Liu Kuang-Hui · 2020
In 1987, as martial law ends in Taiwan, Jia-han and Birdy fall in love amid family pressure, homophobia and social stigma.
Water Lilies
Céline Sciamma · 2007
Set during a sultry summer in a French suburb, Marie is desperate to join the local pool's synchronized swimming team, but is her interest solely for the sake of sport or for a chance to get close to Floriane, the bad girl of the team? Sciamma, and the two leads, capture the uncertainty of teenage sexuality with a sympathetic eye in this delicate drama of the angst of coming-of-age.
Maurice
James Ivory · 1987
After his lover rejects him, Maurice attempts to come to terms with his sexuality within the restrictiveness of Edwardian society.
The Piano Teacher
Michael Haneke · 2001
Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.
Tipping the Velvet
Andrew Davies · 2002
A tempestuous tale of love and life as a naïve girl discovers both romance and pain in the hidden, decadent world of bohemian London in the 1890s. Nan Astley embarks on a voyage of emotional and sexual discovery with Kitty Butler, a music hall male impersonator.
Big Eden
Thomas Bezucha · 2000
Henry Hart is a young gay artist living in New York City. When his grandfather has a stroke, Henry puts his career on hold and returns home to the small town of Big Eden, Montana, to care for him. While there, Henry hopes to strike up a romance with Dean Stewart, his high-school best friend for whom he still has feelings. But he's surprised when he finds that Pike, a quiet Native American who owns the local general store, may have a crush on him.
Wild Reeds
André Téchiné · 1994
As the Algerian War draws to a close, a teenager with a girlfriend starts feeling homosexual urges for two of his classmates: a country boy, and a French-Algerian intellectual.
Fantasy
Pink Narcissus
James Bidgood · 1971
An outrageous erotic poem focusing on the daydreams of a beautiful boy prostitute who, from the seclusion of his ultra-kitsch apartment, conceives a series of interlinked narcissistic fantasies populated by matadors, dancing boys, slaves, and leather-clad bikers.
The Little Shop of Horrors
Roger Corman · 1960
Seymour works in a skid row florist shop and is in love with his beautiful co-worker, Audrey. He creates a new plant that not only talks but cannot survive without human flesh and blood.
Un Chien Andalou
Luis Buñuel · 1929
Un Chien Andalou is an European avant-garde surrealist film, a collaboration between director Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali.
Rabbit's Moon
Kenneth Anger · 1971
A Japanese fairy tale meets commedia dell'Arte. All in white, the naïf Pierrot lies in a wood. Doo-wop music plays as he rises, stares about, and reaches for the moon. Although music abounds and the children of the wood are there at play, Pierrot is melancholy and alone. Harlequin appears, brimming with confidence and energy. He conjures the lovely Colombina. Pierrot is dazzled. But can the course of true love run smooth?
Donkey Skin
Jacques Demy · 1970
A fairy godmother helps a princess disguise herself so she won't have to marry her father.
Cremaster 3
Matthew Barney · 2002
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...
Satyricon
Federico Fellini · 1969
After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.
Science Fiction
Night of the Comet
Thom Eberhardt · 1984
After a comet wipes out most of life on Earth, two Valley Girls find themselves fighting against cannibal zombies and a sinister group of scientists.
The Thing from Another World
Christian Nyby · 1951
Scientists and US Air Force officials fend off a blood-thirsty alien organism while investigating at a remote arctic outpost.
O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization
Piotr Szulkin · 1985
The world has been ravaged by nuclear war. The planet is frozen and radiation kills anyone or anything that ventures outside of 'The Dome'. Soft is a shepherd for the last remnants of humanity who have gathered together as they await rescue from a mysterious craft known only as 'The Ark.' He wanders among the masses, performing his regular daily tasks; keeping morale from plummeting, wooing prostitutes, squashing rebellions, and sometimes feeding the hungry. But as the true and sinister nature of 'The Dome' comes to light, Soft must ask himself if humanity is worth saving...
Mars Attacks!
Tim Burton · 1996
A fleet of Martian spacecraft surrounds the world's major cities and all of humanity waits to see if the extraterrestrial visitors have, as they claim, "come in peace." U.S. President James Dale receives assurance from science professor Donald Kessler that the Martians' mission is a friendly one. But when a peaceful exchange ends in the total annihilation of the U.S. Congress, military men call for a full-scale nuclear retaliation.
Thriller
Titane
Julia Ducournau · 2021
Un joven con la cara magullada es descubierto en un aeropuerto. Dice llamarse Adrien Legrand, un niño que desapareció hace 10 años. Para su padre, Vincent, esto supone el final de una larga pesadilla y lo lleva a casa. Simultáneamente, se suceden una serie de horribles asesinatos en la región.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Robert Aldrich · 1962
A former child star torments her paraplegic sister in their decaying Hollywood mansion.
Inland Empire
David Lynch · 2006
An actress’s perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.
Crash
David Cronenberg · 1996
After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims, and he begins to use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.
Action
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Russ Meyer · 1965
A trio of thrill-seeking go-go dancers kidnap a young girl and attempt to seduce an old rancher and his two sons out of their small fortune, but their scheme doesn't play out as intended.
Music
Repo! The Genetic Opera
Darren Lynn Bousman · 2008
By the year 2056, an epidemic of organ failures has devastated the planet. The megacorporation GeneCo provides organ transplants on a payment plan - and those who can’t fulfill their plans have their organs repossessed. In the midst of this, a sickly teenager discovers a shocking secret about herself, her father, and their connection to GeneCo.
I'm Not There
Todd Haynes · 2007
Six actors portray six personas of music legend Bob Dylan in scenes depicting various stages of his life, chronicling his rise from unknown folksinger to international icon and revealing how Dylan constantly reinvented himself.
Documentary
Paris Is Burning
Jennie Livingston · 1991
Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.
Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus
Eva Aridjis · 2025
A feature documentary about the life and music of singer-songwriter Diane Luckey, also known as Q Lazzarus. Q sang the hit song 'Goodbye Horses', which appeared in the Jonathan Demme films Married to the Mob and Silence of the Lambs, and had a brief moment of fame in the late 1980s/early 1990s before mysteriously disappearing for 25 years.
Songs
Eduardo Coutinho · 2011
Simple, emotionally compelling documentary that delves into the songs that hold meaning in people's lives. It is composed of 18 sessions where the director engages his subjects in conversation about the song they picked. The end product is deeply personal stories about music and its intimate connection to memory, love, loss, self-discovery, regret, death, and life.
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Adam Curtis · 2011
We have been colonised by the machines we have built. Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers.
Black Is… Black Ain’t
Marlon Riggs · 1994
African-American documentary filmmaker Marlon Riggs was working on this final film as he died from AIDS-related complications in 1994; he addresses the camera from his hospital bed in several scenes. The film directly addresses sexism and homophobia within the black community, with snippets of misogynistic and anti-gay slurs from popular hip-hop songs juxtaposed with interviews with African-American intellectuals and political theorists, including Cornel West, bell hooks and Angela Davis.
My Winnipeg
Guy Maddin · 2008
The geographical dead center of North America and the beloved birthplace of Guy Maddin, Winnipeg, is the frosty and mysterious star of Maddin’s film. Fact, fantasy and memory are woven seamlessly together in this work, conjuring a city as delightful as it is fearsome.
