Never Seen Anything Like It: 32 of the Most Original Movies
Novelty is the one category of Quartile's five you can't fake. A film can have a great story, great acting and beautiful shots and still feel like something you've seen before. A 4 for Novelty means the opposite: you walked out feeling like you'd seen something new.
So we built a playlist out of exactly that. Never Seen Anything Like It is 32 films, every one rated a perfect 4 for Novelty, hand-picked so that each one is original in a different way. Some invented a new kind of movie. Some just have a style you could recognize from a single frame.
Firsts that changed movies
Toy Story was the first feature-length film made entirely with computer animation, and it holds up because the story is just as good as the technology. Jurassic Park put dinosaurs on screen that looked alive for the first time. Avatar built a whole glowing world and sent everyone back to the theater in 3D. Going further back, City Lights is Charlie Chaplin making a silent film after talkies had already arrived, and winning anyway. The Great Dictator is Chaplin mocking Hitler while the war was already underway. And Singin' in the Rain is a joyful musical about the moment Hollywood learned to talk.
Animation that broke the mold
Spirited Away is a bathhouse for spirits and a girl who has to work there to save her parents. Nothing before or since feels quite like it. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is the film that led to Studio Ghibli, and My Neighbor Totoro is the one that made a giant forest spirit and a cat-shaped bus feel completely normal. Your Name. is two strangers who keep waking up in each other's bodies. WALL·E tells its first act almost without words. Soul builds a world for the place before you're born. Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs are Wes Anderson in stop-motion, where every frame is handmade. And The Lion King is Shakespeare on the savanna, which shouldn't work and absolutely does.
Style you can spot in one frame
Chungking Express is Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong in smeared neon, two lonely cops and a lot of canned pineapple. The Grand Budapest Hotel and Moonrise Kingdom are Wes Anderson's live-action dollhouses. The Fifth Element is the loudest, brightest version of the future anyone's put on screen. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a romance shot like a video game. Poor Things is Emma Stone discovering the whole world for the first time, in a world that doesn't look like ours. And Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is both volumes in one cut, a revenge movie that swerves from samurai to anime to spaghetti western.
Tone nobody had tried
Jojo Rabbit is a comedy about a boy in Nazi Germany whose imaginary friend is Hitler, and it ends up being deeply moving. Tropic Thunder starts with fake trailers and never gets less ridiculous. Hot Fuzz is a buddy-cop action movie set in the quietest village in England. The Princess Bride is a fairy tale, a parody of fairy tales and a grandfather reading to his grandson, all at once. And Guardians of the Galaxy is a superhero movie with a seventies mixtape and a talking raccoon.
Epics like no other
Apocalypse Now is a war movie that turns into a fever dream. Ran is Kurosawa's King Lear, with battle scenes painted in color like nothing else. Dune builds a desert world on a scale that makes you feel small. Project Hail Mary is a teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there. And Free Solo is the one that's real: Alex Honnold climbing El Capitan with no ropes. You will hold your breath for an hour and a half.
Every film in the playlist links to its Quartile page, where you can see how it scores across Plot, Acting, Cinematography, Novelty and Ending, and where it's streaming. If you've seen something more original than these, rate it and prove us wrong.
Explore the full Never Seen Anything Like It playlist →