Best movies you never saw

The Oscars aren’t everything, film critic Leonard Maltin reminds us in his new book, “151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen’’ (HarperStudio). His recommendations are mainly offbeat independent or foreign films from the last 20 years. Among the gems highlighted in capsule reviews are the clever modern-day film noir “Brick’’; “King of California,’’ which Maltin calls Michael Douglas’s all-time best performance; and “Songcatcher,’’ a drama about a musicologist researching Appalachian folk music, which won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance but got lost in the shuffle after being sold to a new distributor. In a world with an overwhelming number of choices and uneven quality, Maltin’s guide fills an important niche.