What is the definition of a hidden gem?
In cinematic terms, it might be a film that came and went at the time without much troubling the box office, or that did OK commercially but has since been widely overlooked.
Here are 20 movies, that for all sorts of reasons I think deserve to be much better-known and can all be found on streaming platforms.
Half of them were made since 2000 and the other half date from the last century. Eight of them are British.
They are all wonderful. I hope you’ll love them as much as I do.
In Dragongfly, a downbeat yet engrossing film about a pair of neighbours in suburban bungalows, Brenda Blethyn and Andrea Riseborough (pictured) give performances of a lifetime
CHARLEY VARRICK (1973)
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Most of us are used to seeing Walter Matthau in comedies such as all-time great The Odd Couple (1968).
But in Charley Varrick, as a crop-dusting pilot who supplements his income by robbing banks, he plays it straight, superbly.
Director Don Siegel wanted to cast Clint Eastwood, with whom he’d had such a success with Dirty Harry (1971).
Matthau was an improbable alternative, but he rises gloriously to the challenge. This is a terrific film that has stood the test of time.
DRAGONFLY (2025)
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In this downbeat yet engrossing film about a pair of neighbours in suburban bungalows, Brenda Blethyn and Andrea Riseborough give two performances that could be shown to drama students for the rest of time.
Riseborough is astonishingly good as Colleen, an unhappy woman on benefits, who befriends elderly Elsie (Blethyn) next door.
Written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams, it’s redolent of the best of Mike Leigh until, in the last 15 minutes, it morphs into something more like Tales Of The Unexpected.
FIRST COW (2019)
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A quiet masterpiece that tempts me to reach for bovine puns, but I wouldn’t want to devalue it by calling it an udder joy – although it is.
Director and co-writer Kelly Reichardt likes to make films in which not much happens; here, in the old West, a pair of unlikely entrepreneurs keep milking a cow that isn’t theirs (it belongs to a pompous Englishman played by Toby Jones), which doesn’t sound like the basis for an exquisite meditation on male camaraderie, and yet it’s just that.
IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH (2007)
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Although it has a first-rate cast – Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon, Josh Brolin – Paul Haggis’s film rather fizzled out at the box office and nobody’s talked much about it since. That’s a shame.
It’s a cracking crime drama based on the true story of an Iraq War veteran who was murdered shortly after getting back to the US.
Jones was Oscar-nominated for his performance as the soldier’s father.
When Jawbone came out, I wrote that I had to go all the way back to Raging Bull in 1980 to find a boxing film I admired as much (pictured: Johnny Harris, left, and Michael Smiley)
IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY (1947)
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Robert Hamer’s 1949 masterpiece Kind Hearts And Coronets is the greatest Ealing Comedy, in my view, and one of the best British films of all time.
But two years earlier Hamer made It Always Rains On Sunday, which in its way is just as beautifully crafted.
It’s a smart, absorbing thriller involving an escaped convict that unfolds over the course of one day, but I cherish it even more for the way it chronicles working-class life in London’s East End just after the war.
JAWBONE (2017)
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When this came out, I wrote that I had to go all the way back to Raging Bull in 1980 to find a boxing film I admired as much.
I stick to that, yet Jawbone has never had anything like the recognition it deserves.
Johnny Harris, who also wrote the screenplay, plays a washed-up British fighter desperate for a comeback.
With Ray Winstone and Ian McShane in support, and a score by Paul Weller, it’s as British, and as good, as it gets.
MISSISSIPPI GRIND (2015)
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This exquisitely observed character study of a pair of compulsive gamblers is another that came and went without much fanfare, but what a wonderful film it is, offering a slice of Americana that we don’t often see in the movies: shabby, a little sleazy, but mostly honest, about people who exude a kind of jaded optimism. Ben Mendelsohn is fantastic as down-at-heel real-estate broker Gerry, a feckless loser but impossible not to like. Ryan Reynolds co-stars.
MUSIC OF THE HEART (1999)
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There aren’t many Meryl Streep films that are as little-remembered as this one, and it’s not as if it passed entirely unnoticed at the time; it bagged her a 12th Academy Award nomination, which tied her with Katharine Hepburn for the most ever (and she’s had nine more since).
Anyway, it’s a schmaltzy but tremendously satisfying (true) story of an inspirational violin teacher, directed, oddly enough, by horror specialist Wes Craven.
OH, MR PORTER! (1937)
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Anyone who loves the timeless BBC sitcom Dad’s Army really ought to see this venerable Will Hay comedy about a hapless station master – partly because it was loosely based on The Ghost Train, the 1923 play by Arnold Ridley who much later went on to play sweet old Private Godfrey, but also because the Dad’s Army co-writer Jimmy Perry always claimed that Oh, Mr Porter! inspired him and David Croft to create characters such as Captain Mainwaring and Corporal Jones. Predictably, it’s delightful.
While Groundhog Day (1993) will surely always be the ultimate time-loop comedy, Palm Springs runs it close (pictured: Cristin Milioti, left, and Andy Samberg)
PALM SPRINGS (2020)
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While Groundhog Day (1993) will surely always be the ultimate time-loop comedy, Palm Springs runs it close.
It’s an intelligent, effervescent romcom that came out during the pandemic, when we all felt as though we were living the same day over and over, albeit not nearly as entertainingly as Nyles (Andy Samberg) and Sarah (Cristin Milioti), guests who meet at a wedding in the California desert.
PLEASANTVILLE (1998)
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The Truman Show was released a few months earlier and made a much bigger impact, but Pleasantville (the directing debut of Gary Ross, who later made The Hunger Games) has a similar premise: a gently satirical fantasy with hard edges.
The young Reese Witherspoon and Tobey Maguire play 1990s siblings who find themselves trapped in a black-and-white Eisenhower-era TV sitcom, with colourful consequences to say the least.
It’s hard to understand why it was a box-office bomb; it’s witty and ingenious.
REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT (1962)
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Anthony Quinn plays Mountain Rivera, not so loosely modelled on the mighty Italian heavyweight champ Primo Carnera, in a hard-hitting drama that qualifies as a hidden gem mainly because there are too many boxing fans entirely unaware of it.
I know; I’ve asked. Yet it’s a full-blooded classic, which even features a young fighter then known as Cassius Clay. I have two boxing films on this list, but both transcend sport. They’re about humanity.
SOMETHING WILD (1986)
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A 92 per cent rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and a slew of awards at the time, yet Jonathan Demme’s joyously quirky comedy thriller has been widely forgotten.
It’s a delight, about an uptight banker (Jeff Daniels) whisked off on an unlikely road trip by an effervescent free spirit (Melanie Griffith), with the then-unknown Ray Liotta as her dangerous ex-husband. A funny, sexy film, and altogether captivating.
THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970)
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There are distinct echoes of Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window in Dario Argento’s pulsating thriller about an American writer (Tony Musante) staying in Rome, whose life changes after he witnesses a brutal stabbing.
He starts his own investigation, but he and his girlfriend (played by the lovely British actress Suzy Kendall) soon become potential victims themselves of a creepy killer.
It’s very classy, a great example of the Italian ‘giallo’ genre of violent murder mysteries. And it has a fantastic Ennio Morricone score.
THE HIT (1984)
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This Stephen Frears movie was a commercial flop but is nevertheless a bracing crime thriller with a fine cast led by Terence Stamp and John Hurt, not to mention Tim Roth, duly anointed Most Promising Newcomer in the Evening Standard Film Awards.
Stamp plays an East End gangster hiding in Spain after ratting on members of his gang, who is abducted by contract killers (Hurt and Roth).
The film focuses on the road trip as they take him to Paris for execution.
The excellence of You Can Count On Me – plus an Oscar nominations for Laura Linney – have not elevated it to where it ought to be in the pantheon of piercing family dramas
THE SKELETON TWINS (2014)
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There’s one unforgettably funny and touching scene in The Skeleton Twins, and anyone who’s seen it will know what it is; let’s just say that for its potency it relies entirely on the comic timing of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader.
No film that begins with a pair of estranged siblings both trying to commit suicide is likely to be a barrel of laughs, but the dark subject matter intensifies the bursts of humour in a story that will stay with you.
WILD TALES (2014)
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Most of these hidden gems are English-language films, but here’s a wittily subversive, frequently hilarious Argentinian picture co-produced by the great Spanish director Pedro Almodovar.
Wild Tales is actually six separate stories, united by the theme of vengeance. Sometimes the desire for revenge turns wildly murderous if not downright deranged, but it’s never to be taken too seriously. In fact it’s a hoot from beginning to end.
YOU CAN COUNT ON ME (2000)
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The excellence of this poignant movie – plus Oscar nominations for Laura Linney and writer-director Kenneth Lonergan – have not elevated it to where it ought to be in the pantheon of piercing family dramas.
Set in a small town in the Catskills, it’s the story of a troubled brother-sister relationship, smartly written by Lonergan (Manchester By The Sea) and impeccably acted by Linney and Mark Ruffalo.
DIVORCING JACK (1998)
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A romcom, a thriller and a chase caper rolled into one, at times very dark but also very funny, Divorcing Jack bowls along with tremendous energy, anchored by a typically charismatic David Thewlis. It’s set in a Northern Ireland riven by sectarian violence, with Thewlis playing a hard-drinking journalist on the run for a murder he didn’t commit. Robert Lindsay, Jason Isaacs and Rachel Griffiths also star.
DEAD MAN’S SHOES (2004)
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A soldier returns to his home town seeking to avenge the wrongs done to him and his family.
That premise, compounded by the title, suggests an old-fashioned Western complete with taciturn sheriff and rowdy saloon, maybe set in New Mexico or Wyoming.
But the gritty, violent, unsettling but brilliant Dead Man’s Shoes, directed by Shane Meadows and starring Paddy Considine, unfolds in and around Matlock, Derbyshire.
