8 Underrated Films From Famous Directors You Probably Missed

Every great director has a list of bonafide classics you just have to watch. When trying to get into Hitchcock, do you start with his British silent films and work forward though his 50-or-so movies? Of course not; you pick out the big icons - Rear Window, Vertigo, The Birds, Psycho - and use them as a grounding.

That's the only way you can deal with over a century of cinematic development - pick and chooses based on legacy and recommendations. But this can mean you're missing out on some great movies, even those from the same filmmakers you've slavishly watched the classics of, for no other reason than the mass culture doesn't quite appreciate them. Sure, while the films you've missed may not be the out-and-out masterpieces that a director's "essential" films are, that doesn't mean they should be striken from the record.

All but the greatest directors have a couple of blemishes on their filmography (even Hitchcock has some iffy outings), but that doesn't mean all of their forgotten or overlooked films are bad. Quite the opposite; some of them are underrated hidden gems. Here are eight movies from some of the world's most famous filmmakers that you really shouldn't have missed.