Where to Stream 50 Great Movies You’ve Probably Never Seen

Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory co-wrote and co-starred in this film about two friends who meet for dinner and discover their differences over issues.

Filmed as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, this Stanley Kramer-directed cinematic metaphor for race relations is about two escaped prisoners, one white and one Black, chained together, who must forge a bond to survive. Co-star Sidney Poitier was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role – the first black to gain that recognition.

“On Golden Pond” was Henry Fonda’s final full-length film before he died in 1982. It dealt with people from various generations looking to reconcile before senior members of the family pass away. The film is graced not only by Fonda but also by his fellow Academy Award winners Katharine Hepburn and (his daughter) Jane Fonda.

The Japanese animated film focuses on a young, asthmatic Japanese girl sent to stay with relatives of her guardian in the countryside, where she befriends an enigmatic blonde girl named Marnie. The movie is based on a novel by Joan G. Robinson.

Based on the Raymond Chandler novel of the same name, “The Long Goodbye” starred Elliott Gould as private investigator Philip Marlowe, who helps a friend in a fix and gets into his own jam when his friend’s wife is found dead.

Angela Bassett played singer Tina Turner in this biopic about her rise to stardom and the ordeal of being married to an abusive husband. Bassett and Laurence Fishburne received Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively.

Matt Dillon played drug addict Bob Hughes, who runs a “family” of addicts that rob drug stores across the country. A tragedy in the group causes Hughes to try and break free of his addiction. Independent filmmaker Gus Van Sant (“My Own Private Idaho”) directed the film.

Woody Allen’s whimsical tale of a poor Depression-era waitress (Mia Farrow) whose life becomes complicated when an actor playing an archeologist in a movie she’s watching steps out of the screen into her life.

“Maria Full of Grace” is about a poor, pregnant Colombian teenager who loses her job and becomes a drug mule to make money to support herself and her large family. Catalina Sandino Moreno was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar in 2005, the first actress ever to be nominated for a role spoken only in Spanish.

This Japanese action film with a slight comic twist is about a policeman and a gangster who unite to try and stop a serial killer.

“Pickup on South Street” is a hard-boiled noir with a Cold War theme. It starred Richard Widmark as a pickpocket who unknowingly lifts a wallet carrying classified secrets sought by the communists.

Shia LaBeouf wrote and starred in this well-received film about a boy whose abusive father returns to his life just as his television career is taking off. The movie tracks their combative relationship over the next 10 years and explores themes such as reconciliation and understanding.

The downbeat movie filmed in black and white and directed and written by indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch is about two men framed for a crime who escape with the help of an imprisoned murderer. The cast includes singer Tom Waits and Italian actor Roberto Benigni.

A musical group of Egyptian police head to an Israeli town to help launch an Arab arts center and end up in the wrong place. The film was lauded for showing Arabs and Israelis surmounting ethnic barriers.

Independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch garnered critical acclaim for the motion picture about a New Yorker whose life is disrupted when his cousin from Budapest visits him.

“The Swimmer” is not one of Burt Lancaster’s best-known films, but it is no less interesting. He plays an ad executive obsessed with swimming in pools in his friend’s suburban neighborhood, though each pool he swims in triggers memories of his past failures.

Ang Lee’s comedy of manners that harks back to the screwball comedies of the 1930s. “The Wedding Banquet” is about a gay Taiwanese man who accedes to his parents’ wishes of having a traditional wedding by marrying a young artist who needs the nuptials to get a green card to stay in the U.S.

This is an animated drama from Japan about an office worker in her 20s who reminisces about her youth in Tokyo and what might have been.

“Little Big Man” is a sometimes satirical Western about a 121-year-old man (Dustin Hoffman) who in the telling of his life story to an oral historian, and claims to be the lone white survivor of the Little Bighorn Massacre. The film was hailed as a new look at the culture clash between white settlers and Native Americans.

This is the original “Cape Fear,” starring Robert Mitchum as a menacing criminal out to exact revenge on the attorney (Gregory Peck) who put him in jail and his family. The movie was remade in 1991 with Robert De Niro in Mitchum’s role.

Considered an allegory for communist fear-mongering, this classic sci-fi-horror flick starred Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter confronting aliens that replicate human beings. It was remade in 1978 to critical acclaim.

Burt Lancaster was reunited with director John Frankenheimer (they had earlier collaborated on “Birdman of Alcatraz”) in “The Train.” Lancaster plays a French Resistance fighter who tries to stop the Nazis from transporting works of art out of Paris ahead of the Allied advance. A strong cast of international actors included Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau, and Wolfgang Preiss.

“The Quiet Man” is John Ford’s Valentine to his ancestral home of Ireland, which does little to debunk Irish stereotypes. The story is about an Irish-American boxer (John Wayne) who returns to Ireland hoping to reclaim his family’s home and falls in love with a high-spirited redhead (Maureen O’Hara).

Paul Schrader’s critically acclaimed film is a fictionalized telling of the life of controversial author-militarist Yukio Mishima.

Renowned filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (“The Seven Samurai”) made a triumphant return to the samurai theme with “Kagemusha,” about a petty thief who impersonates a warlord and must take over when the real warlord dies.

A strong-willed young Saudi girl (Waad Mohammed) joins a competition to recite passages from the Koran to win enough money to purchase a bicycle. The film was directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour, a prominent female Saudi filmmaker.

Scriptwriter Pаddy Chayefsky’s insightful look at working-class New Yorkers starred Ernest Borgnine as a big-hearted Italian-American butcher. The movie won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Delbert Mann), Best Actor (Borgnine), and Best Screenplay (Chayefsky).

Helmed by the Oscar-winning Alfonso Cuarón (“Gravity,” “Roma”), “A Little Princess” tells the story of a young girl sent to boarding school by her father during World War I who uses her imagination to entertain friends in the face of adversity.

This is an animated story about a schoolboy who runs away from his remote island to Tokyo, has financial difficulties, and encounters a girl who can apparently alter the weather.

Criminals weave a web of deceit and greed after their jewelry heist goes wrong and one of their gang dies from a gunshot wound. John Huston directed the noir thriller, which also featured an early film appearance by Marilyn Monroe.

Warmly received by critics, “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh,” the animated film based on A.A. Milne’s timeless characters featured the voices of Sebastian Cabot, Sterling Holloway, and John Fieldler.

John Cassavetes wrote and directed his wife Gena Rowlands in this drama about a woman’s mental illness and the strain it puts on her marriage. The film was one of several critically acclaimed movies made by the independent filmmaker Cassavetes.

“Fail Safe” is a grim Cold War thriller about a system malfunction that sends American bombers on a mission to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union, and the frantic attempt to recall the planes. In an interesting coincidence, that same year a send-up of the same theme, ‘Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” was released. “Fail Safe” was remade in 2000 with George Clooney and Richard Dreyfuss.

The original “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” reprised by John Travolta and Denzel Washington in 1998, is a minute-by-minute, white-knuckle thriller about a New York gang that hijacks a subway car and demands $1 million in cash or they will start killing the passengers. The taut drama was a window into the crime-ridden streets of New York in the 1970s. It starred Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, and Martin Balsam.

The Scopes Monkey Trial from 1925 came to the big screen in 1960, with Spencer Tracy portraying defense attorney Henry Drummond (based on Clarence Darrow) and Frederic March playing prosecutor Matthew Harrison Brady (a stand-in for William Jennings Bryan).

The pitfalls of instant fame were put under the microscope by director Elia Kazan in this film about a country singer who becomes a star through the efforts of an ambitious female radio producer (Patricia Neal)l. Andy Griffith, who would later gain television immortality, was the singer.

Gregory Peck starred as Jimmy Ringo, whose gunslinging fame brings on challengers when all he wants to do is settle down with his wife.

Arthur Penn directed this story about Helen Keller, born deaf and and blind, who learns to communicate because of the untiring efforts of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Oscars went to Anne Bancroft (Best Actress) and Patty Duke (Best Supporting Actress).

The 1950s were a golden era for director Billy WIlder, and with “Ace in the Hole,” he was at his cynical best. Kirk Douglas played an ambitious reporter working for a newspaper in New Mexico who exploits a mine-shaft tragedy for his own unscrupulous ends.

Independent filmmaker John Cassavetes directed this movie about an alcoholic fraught with anxiety about aging as the opening night of her play nears. Her world is further complicated when one of her fans is killed chasing her limousine, causing her to question why incidents like that happen.

Woody Allen’s send-up of Russian literature finds America’s favorite neurotic comedian in 19th-century Russia involved in a plot to assassinate Napoleon. Diane Keaton appears as Allen’s cousin and another conspirator.

Internet Movie Database described “In a Lonely Place” as a “classic example of both film noir and existential, heartbreaking romance.” The film starred Humphrey Bogart as a volatile screenwriter accused of murder helped by a woman who is beginning to have her doubts about his innocence. It was an early effort by director Nicholas Ray, who went on to helm such classics as “Johnny Guitar” and “Rebel Without a Cause.”

“Togo” starred Willem Dafoe in this film based on a true story about a dog sled trainer and his lead sled dog, Togo, who in 1925 transported diphtheria medicine across the snowy landscape to a small Alaskan town. (The same story was told in “Balto,” a live-action/animated film from 1995.)

Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick portrayed husband and wife alcoholics whose marriage falls apart and whose lives descend into disaster.

Charlie Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, and starred in the film about a once-famous stage clown who saves a distraught dancer from committing suiсide and in the process regains his self-esteem. “Limelight” is considered one of the greatest triumphs in Chaplin’s storied career.

Tatum O’Neal and her father Ryan played an unlikely pair of con artists, swindling people out of money in the Depression-era Midwest. At age 10, Tatum O’Neal was the youngest actress to win an Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress) in a competitive category.

The film “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tennessee Williams focusing on a dysfunctional Southern family. The star-studded cast is led by Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, and Burl Ives. It was nominated for six Oscars, but did not win any.

“The Court Jester” is known for its lampooning of medieval swashbuckler films as well as for a tongue-twisting segment made famous by the multi-talented Danny Kaye. The comedy-musical also features Basil Rathbone, Glynis Johns, and Angela Lansbury. The romp was co-written, co-produced, and co-directed by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama

Alexander Mackendrick’s “Sweet Smell of Success” oozes with cynicism. Tony Curtis played an amoral public relations man hired by a powerful syndicated columnist (Burt Lancaster) to break up a romance between his sister and a musician.

“The Tale of The Princess Kaguya” is a Japanese animated film about a nymph discovered inside a bamboo stalk who grows into a young woman. She is sought by various suitors and demands that they perform difficult tasks to prove their love for her. The film features the voices of Chloe Grace Moretz, Lucy Liu, and James Caan.