After the Oscars, here’s what to watch

O s c a r season is over, a dimly recalled memory ( who hosted? what won Best Picture again?), but we are still waiting for the good movies of 2015 to kick in. Since these things come in seasonal cycles, that leaves a lot of downtime between thrills. Sure, you could bingewatch TV shows like House of Cards or

Better Call Saul or Walking Dead, but if you want to catch up on some quiet gems you may have missed out on in 2014, here’s a partial list of movies that should have been seen in more local cinemas, but were blindsided by the likes of Mockingjay Part 1 and Fifty Shades of Grey.

Don’t know where to find copies? Ask a friend.

Norte, the End of History, directed by

Lav Diaz. Yeah, sure, it played all over the world and got scads of attention. But here? After a week, it was gone, sent back to the festival circuit where its, er, meditative pace could be better appreciated. My mother-inlaw just didn’t get it (“Why is he focusing on chickens for five minutes straight?”). Poverty porn never really plays well in the Philippines, does it?

Magic in the Moonlight, directed by Woody Allen. Arguably, Woody doesn’t need any more publicity. But this lightweight gem of a romantic comedy, set in the French Riviera, was buoyed by playful performances from Colin Firth and Emma Stone as, respectively, a former magician who debunks mediums, and a young medium he can’t quite debunk. Firth is a stand-in for Allen, yet brings his own comic bluster to the role. Stone is wide-eyed and wonderful, and the gags are funny for a change. Chemistry or magic? You decide.

Only Lovers Left Alive, directed by Jim Jarmusch. A bit too hipsterish for its own good, this wry vampire flick starred Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as Adam and Eve, the coolest bloodsuckers in history. They dig Nikola Tesla, and Neil Young. Worth it just for a peek at Tom’s vintage guitars and Jack White’s Detroit home. And the music maelstrom is by director Jarmusch’s goth band, SQÜRL.

Under the Skin, directed

by Jonathan Glazer. Mesmerizing art film based on Michel Faber’s sci- fi novel about a predatory alien roaming Glasgow. Glazer turned it into an art-house vehicle for Scarlett Johansson’s blank stare and (frequent) nudity. But mostly it dwelt on the heroine’s fatal attraction to Planet Earth. Slip into its hypnotic tone, and you’ll find yourself submerged in inky blackness.

Inherent Vice, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The stoned detective has been a staple of literature since Sherlock Holmes (remember The Seven- Percent

Solution?), and here P.T. Anderson takes Thomas Pynchon’s shaggy ‘70s noir novel and makes of it… a mess. But a hot mess, starring Joaquin Phoenix as private eye Doc Sportello trying to track down missing ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston) in dope-fogged Los Angeles. Will Doc remain in charge of his faculties long enough to solve the mystery? With dialogue so dense you need to press rewind a dozen times, the movie does conjure up the saturated tone and overlapping monologues of Robert Altman’s ‘70s masterpieces.

Snowpiercer, directed by Bong Joon-ho. A dystopian future set on a train endlessly circling a perpetually frozen earth, Snowpiercer was Korean director Joon-ho’s visually stunning sci-fi based on a French graphic novel. Chris Evans leads a pack of rear-car passengers to the front in a workers’ rebellion that takes them straight to the man behind the wheel, Ed Harris. Visionary, if ultimately a little disappointing. Watch for Tilda Swinton stealing every other scene.

Jodorowsky’s Dune, directed by Frank Pavich. The coolest film you’ll never get to see is reenacted in this documentary about Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to make Frank Herbert’s

Dune in the early ‘70s. Assembling visionary artists, designers and musicians, the whole project was later chopped up and parceled out to movies like Alien, Terminator and Contact. This kind of “what if?” glimpse is hot now, with Jon Schnepp’s The Death of ‘Superman Lives’ wrapping up production for the festival circuit (and coincidentally being edited by my sister-in-law, Marie Jamora).

Nightcrawler, directed by

Dan Gilroy. Yes, it played here for about a week, with theaters nearly empty, but it’s a pulse-racing thriller and character study about a mutant of the media age, played by a bug-eyed, uber-creepy Jake Gyllenhaal. Is Lou a parasitic sociopath? Or just someone trying to get ahead?

Nymphomaniac: Vol. I, directed by Lars von Trier. Disturbing, shot through with von Trier’s wry, at times misogynistic wit, it was another brave role for Charlotte Gainsbourg, telling of the sexual rise and fall of the titular character. Like a picaresque novel with an extremely sexual heroine, von Trier’s script goes places no one else will.

The Drop, directed by Michael R. Roskam. Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and the late great James Gandolfini (in typically fine form) make more of Dennis Lehane’s source material — a short story about an abused dog — than you’d think possible through long takes and seamless acting. Hardy plays his silent-type bartender with just the right balance of innocence and tamped-down menace.

Mr. Turner, directed by Mike Leigh. One of the most breathtaking artist films ever, Mike Leigh conjures up the spirit of J.M.W. Turner not only through cinematographer Dick Pope’s English landscapes and wave-crashed rocks, but through Timothy Spall’s spellbinding performance, whether he’s sketching a prostitute in repose, or strapped to a stormbound vessel on the English seas. It’s a journey through a tortured psyche, one that gave birth to new ways of viewing reality. “The sun is God,” indeed.