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Published Apr 6, 2026, 5:31 PM EDT
Luc Haasbroek is a writer and videographer from Durban, South Africa. He has been writing professionally about pop culture for eight years. Luc's areas of interest are broad: he's just as passionate about psychology and history as he is about movies and TV. He's especially drawn to the places where these topics overlap.
Luc is also an avid producer of video essays and looks forward to expanding his writing career. When not writing, he can be found hiking, playing Dungeons & Dragons, hanging out with his cats, and doing deep dives on whatever topic happens to have captured his interest that week.
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Some great films fail to connect on release for numerous reasons. Perhaps they’re too strange, too quiet, too ahead of their time, or simply overshadowed by more obvious classics. Whatever the case, they slip through the cracks, becoming hidden gems just begging to be rediscovered.
With that in mind, this list looks at some gems that people generally don't talk about anymore but which are well worth checking out. While not that obscure, the titles on this list either flopped at the box office, received middling reviews, or just faded from the conversation, all rather unfairly. Nevertheless, all offer something appealing, whether it's a unique perspective, bold storytelling, or a ton of heart.
Collider Exclusive · Taylor Sheridan Universe Quiz
Which Taylor Sheridan
Show Do You Belong In?
Yellowstone · Landman · Tulsa King · Mayor of Kingstown
Four worlds. All of them brutal, complicated, and built on power, loyalty, and the price of survival. Taylor Sheridan doesn't write heroes — he writes people who do what they have to do and live with the cost. Ten questions will reveal which one of his worlds you were made for.
🤠Yellowstone
🛢️Landman
👑Tulsa King
⚖️Mayor of Kingstown
FIND YOUR WORLD →
01
Where does your power come from? In Sheridan's world, everyone has leverage. The question is what kind.
ALand, legacy, and a name that's been feared and respected for generations. BKnowing the deal better than anyone else in the room — and being willing to walk away first. CReputation. I've earned it the hard way, and everyone in the room knows it. DBeing the only person both sides will talk to. That makes me indispensable — and dangerous.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Who do you put first, no matter what? Loyalty in Sheridan's universe is always absolute — and always costly.
AFamily — blood or chosen. The ranch, the name, the people who carry it with me. BThe company — or whoever's signing the cheques. Loyalty follows the contract. CMy crew. The men who stood with me when it counted — I don't abandon them for anything. DMy community — even when my community is a powder keg and I'm the only thing stopping it from blowing.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
Someone crosses a line. How do you respond? Every Sheridan protagonist has a line. What matters is what happens after it's crossed.
AQuietly, decisively, and in a way that sends a message to everyone watching. BI outmanoeuvre them legally, financially, and politically before they even know I've moved. CDirectly. Old school. You cross me, you hear about it to your face — and then you deal with the consequences. DI absorb it, calculate the fallout, and find the move that keeps the whole system from collapsing.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
Where do you feel most in your element? Sheridan's worlds are as much about place as they are about people.
AWide open land — mountains, sky, silence. Somewhere you can see trouble coming from a mile away. BThe oil fields of West Texas — brutal, lucrative, and indifferent to whoever happens to be standing on top of them. CA mid-size city where the rules haven't quite caught up yet — fertile ground for someone with vision and nerve. DA rust-belt town built around a prison — where everyone's life is shaped by what's inside those walls.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
How do you feel about operating in the grey? Nobody in a Sheridan show has clean hands. The question is how they carry the dirt.
AI do what has to be done to protect what's mine. I'll answer for it eventually — but not today. BGrey is just business. The line moves depending on what's at stake, and I move with it. CI have a code — it's not the law's code, but it's mine, and I don't break it. DI've made peace with it. Keeping the peace requires compromises most people don't have the stomach for.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
What are you actually fighting to hold onto? Every Sheridan character is fighting a war. The real question is what they're defending.
AA way of life that the modern world is doing everything it can to erase. BMy position — and the leverage that comes with being the person everyone needs to close a deal. CRelevance. I've been away, I've been written off — and I'm proving that was a mistake. DWhatever fragile order I've managed to build — because without it, everything burns.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
How do you lead? Authority in Sheridan's world is never given — it's established, maintained, and constantly tested.
ABy example and force of will. People follow me because they believe in what I'm protecting — and because they know what happens if they don't. BThrough negotiation and leverage. I don't need people to like me — I need them to need me. CBy being the smartest, most experienced person in the room and making sure everyone quietly knows it. DBy being the calm centre of a situation that would spiral without me — and accepting that nobody thanks you for it.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
Someone new arrives and tries to change how things work. Your reaction? Every Sheridan show has an outsider disrupting an established order. Sometimes that outsider is you.
AThey'll learn. Or they won't. Either way, the land was here before them and it'll be here after. BI figure out what they want, what they're worth, and whether they're an asset or a problem — fast. CI was the outsider once. I give them a chance — one — to show they understand respect. DNew players destabilise everything I've built. I assess the threat and manage it before it manages me.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
What has your position cost you? Nobody gets to where these characters are without paying for it. The bill is always personal.
AMy family's peace — maybe their innocence. The ranch demands everything, and I've let it take too much. BRelationships, time, any version of a normal life. The job eats everything that isn't nailed down. CYears. Decades in some cases. Time I can't get back — but I'm not done yet. DMy conscience, mostly. And the ability to ever fully trust anyone on either side of the wall.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
When it's over, what do you want people to say? Sheridan's characters all know the ending is coming. The question is what they leave behind.
AThat I held the line. That the land is still ours and everything I did was worth it. BThat I was the best at what I did and that no deal ever got closed without me at the table. CThat I built something real, somewhere nobody expected it, and I did it on my own terms. DThat I kept the peace when nobody else could — and that the town is still standing because of it.
REVEAL MY SHOW →
Sheridan Has Spoken You Belong In…
The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you're complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes.
🤠 Yellowstone
🛢️ Landman
👑 Tulsa King
⚖️ Mayor of Kingstown
You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the modern world's indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you're willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family's weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what's yours, you don't escalate — you finish it. You're not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone's world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn't make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it.
You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are thin, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You're a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: sharp, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they'll do to get it. You're not naive enough to think this world is fair. You're smart enough to be the one deciding who it's fair to.
You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you're not above reminding people that the two aren't mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they'd be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they're more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don't need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land.
You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you're the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky's world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You've made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
'The Hired Hand' (1971)
Image via Universal Pictures“I figure you got to come back sometime.” In The Hired Hand, a drifting cowboy named Harry (Peter Fonda) returns home after years on the road, hoping to reconnect with his wife (Verna Bloom) and child. But the life he abandoned hasn’t stood still, and his attempt at redemption is complicated by the consequences of his past. Fonda, who also directs, uses this setup to craft a more meditative kind of Western. Rather than focusing on action or spectacle, he lingers on mood, landscape, and the quiet emotional distance between characters.
The pacing is slow, almost dreamlike, and the dialogue is sparse but meaningful. Ultimately, The Hired Hand deconstructs the myth of the wandering cowboy, showing us a man who realizes too late what he has sacrificed. Perhaps for this reason, it flopped at the box office, but it should please those looking for a more wistful take on the genre.
'Raising Cain' (1992)
Image via Universal Pictures“I’m not who you think I am.” This is one of the stronger late-career efforts from Brian De Palma. Raising Cain features John Lithgow as Dr. Carter Nix, a child psychologist whose life begins to unravel as his multiple personalities emerge, revealing a disturbing connection to his father’s experiments. Reality itself fractures, and the truth becomes increasingly difficult to grasp. From here, the movie fully embraces absurdity, leaning into twists, reversals, and stylistic flourishes that constantly destabilize the narrative.
Indeed, Raising Cain is De Palma at his most playful and unhinged. He engages with some of his favorite material here, like themes of identity and duality, mining them for maximum mayhem, cramming a lot into just 88 minutes. That said, just as much praise must go to Lithgow. His performance here is phenomenal, larger-than-life yet never cartoonish, shifting between personas with unsettling ease.
'A Simple Plan' (1998)
Image via Paramount Pictures“We’re not bad people. We just did a bad thing.” In A Simple Plan, two brothers (Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton) and a friend (Brent Briscoe) discover a crashed plane containing a large sum of cash. Believing they can keep it without consequence, they devise a plan, one that quickly spirals into paranoia, betrayal, and violence. A Simple Plan is a thriller that strips morality down to its breaking point. Each choice the characters make feels understandable, even rational, which makes their descent all the more unsettling.
The film was directed by Sam Raimi, who takes an unusually restrained approach to the material, leaning into realism rather than spectacle. He channels classic noir and even Gothic storytelling here, crafting something that feels a darker, more serious response to Fargo. Finally, on the aesthetic front, the snow-covered landscape adds the perfect sense of immersive isolation, a visual expression of the characters' inner states.
'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World' (2003)
Image via Universal Pictures“We do not have time for your damned hobbies, sir!” On paper, this movie had all the makings of a hit (an epic premise, high production values, peak-career Russell Crowe), yet its box office performance was a little underwhelming, and it's mostly disappeared from the public consciousness. Nevertheless, Master and Commander has a lot to recommend it, including strong performances and grand, intense battle sequences.
The story focuses on Captain Jack Aubrey (Crowe), who leads his crew aboard a British warship during the Napoleonic Wars, pursuing a formidable French vessel across the seas. Aubrey’s friendship with the ship’s surgeon (Paul Bettany) provides the movie with its emotional core, resulting in an epic with more heart than usual. The film was directed by Peter Weir, who reconstructs the period in exquisite detail, down to the ships and uniforms and the formalities of naval life.
'The Loveless' (1981)
Image via Atlantic Releasing“It’s not about where you’re going. It’s about where you are.” The Loveless was Kathryn Bigelow's feature debut, co-directed with Monty Montgomery. It's about a group of bikers passing through a small Southern town, who clash with the locals, leading to escalating tension and violence. Among them is a quiet, enigmatic figure (Willem Dafoe) whose presence lingers even when he says very little.
This premise might have made for a typical crime thriller, but Bigelow and Montgomery turn it into more of a mood piece by focusing on style and atmosphere. The characters are defined as much by what they don’t say as by what they do, giving the movie a detached, almost observational quality. The visual style is likewise stark, composed, and deliberate, reinforcing the sense of tension simmering beneath the surface. All in all, The Loveless resists easy categorization, existing somewhere between genre and art film.
'Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice' (1969)
“I feel… very free.” This movie may be most well-known by modern audiences for being a visual influence on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. In Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, two affluent couples (played by Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, Elliott Gould, and Dyan Cannon) begin experimenting with radical honesty and open relationships after one pair attends a therapy retreat. But what starts as an attempt at emotional liberation gradually exposes insecurities and the limits of their ideals.
With this movie, director Paul Mazursky captures a very specific cultural moment, the late ’60s shift toward self-exploration and emotional openness, but he also interrogates it. The film’s tone is deceptively light, yet it leaves a lingering sense of unease. The characters talk about freedom, but struggle to live it. It's aged surprisingly well and continues to resonate all these decades later.
'Hamlet' (2000)
Image via Miramax Films“To be, or not to be: that is the question.” This take on Hamlet reimagines Shakespeare in a modern New York setting, with Ethan Hawke as the introspective prince grappling with his father’s murder and his mother’s betrayal. The familiar story unfolds amid corporate boardrooms, surveillance, and urban isolation, yet never loses its emotional impact. Indeed, the themes of indecision, grief, and existential doubt feel strikingly modern.
The movie embraces the technology of its time, boldly weaving in multimedia elements like video diaries and surveillance footage. As a result, despite being based on a timeless story, the film also becomes a kind of early 2000s time capsule. It helps that Hawke is so great in the part: he's complex and vulnerable here, nicely capturing the iconic character's inner turmoil. Not everyone liked it, but Hawke's youth, uncertainty, and occasional stiffness work within the context.
'20th Century Women' (2016)
Image via A24“You know, I think you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.” In 20th Century Women, a teenage boy (Lucas Jade Zumann) grows up in late-1970s California under the guidance of his unconventional mother (Annette Bening) and two younger women (Elle Fanning and Greta Gerwig) who help shape his understanding of the world. Each character brings a different perspective, creating a mosaic of experiences rather than a single, linear story.
The film’s structure mirrors the way we remember people: in fragments, impressions, and emotions. The result is a vivid snapshot of the era. Director Mike Mills deftly brings in real-world elements like news footage, adding to the immersion. The most striking example of this is the masterful use of Jimmy Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" speech, giving the words a renewed relevance. All in all, intelligent writing and strong performances make this a coming-of-age movie worth checking out.
'Pauline at the Beach' (1983)
Image Via Acteurs Auteurs Associés (AAA)“It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just that I don’t understand you.” French New Wave director Éric Rohmer specialized in breezy romantic dramas, typically centering on aimless young characters. One of the finest is Pauline at the Beach, about a young woman (Amanda Langlet) who spends the summer at a seaside resort, observing the romantic entanglements of the adults around her. As relationships shift and secrets emerge, Pauline’s perspective offers both innocence and clarity.
The film is built almost entirely on dialogue, with characters discussing love, fidelity, and desire in ways that feel both casual and deeply revealing. The narrative is minimal, yet it feels rich because of the ideas it explores. Different characters become stand-ins for contrasting perspectives on relationships. For example, Marion (Arielle Dombasle) is idealistic and romantic, Pierre (Pascal Greggory) claims to be rational, and Henri (Féodor Atkine) insists he is carefree. But all of them also behave in ways that contradict their stated beliefs.
'Flesh and Blood' (1985)
Image via Orion Pictures“You’ve got to learn to take what you want.” In Flesh and Blood, a group of mercenaries led by a ruthless soldier (Rutger Hauer) seizes control of a castle during a time of war, capturing a noblewoman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and forcing her into their brutal world. Director Paul Verhoeven builds this premise into a truly unique epic adventure with a fantasy edge. Notably, he rejects the polished aesthetics often associated with the genre at the time, instead conjuring up a medieval world that is dirty, violent, and morally ambiguous.
The tone of the movie is also intriguing, constantly shifting between brutality and dark humor, abandoning the usual romanticism of historical epics, yet not being fully realist either. This approach seems to have rubbed audiences the wrong way because Flesh and Blood was a colossal box office bomb. Nevertheless, it has since garnered a cult following that includes Quentin Tarantino and manga artist Kentaro Miura.
Flesh + Blood
Release Date August 30, 1985
Runtime 126 Minutes
Director Paul Verhoeven
English (US) ·