The 2014 Berlin International Film Festival is quickly receding in what they call Rückspiegel over here. The Grand Budapest Hotel, the movie that opened the Berlinale three weeks ago is opening everywhere now, and the Oscars, SXSW and Cannes are about to drown out whatever may still be resonating from those ten days around Potsdamer Platz. A good time to cast one last look back and ask which moments stuck beyond the obvious highlights and the award winners.

So, here are five smaller, less talked about movies with fresh and startling moments that echoed long after the initial rush to tout our opinions over coffee and on social networks subsided.

Good-bye Bunzo: Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

A young woman finds a badly worn VHS copy of the Coen Brothers' Fargo and sets off to Minnesota in order to find the treasure buried in that movie by Steve Buscemi's character. As someone who's written a novel about a young woman who travels around the globe because of a mysterious movie, this wry portrait of an incorrigible loner (Rinko Kikuchi) was a must-see for me. The Zellner brothers tell Kumiko's story with wry humor and knowing sympathy for the outcast weirdo.

Favorite Moment: Kumiko can't leave home until she rids herself of her pet bunny Bunzo, which leads to what may be the best train platform farewell since Catherine Deneuve promised Nino Castelnuovo she'd wait for him in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Everything Mifune did, but upside down and in high heels: Der Samurai

A transvestite cross between Norman Bates' mother and Kill Bill's The Bride wreaks havoc on a German village while a rookie cop tries to defend its garden gnomes, Shepherd dogs, and human inhabitants.

In Till Kleinert's taut and assured graduation film, psychosexual subtext and splatter effects work hand in hand with two impressive lead performances. Billed fittingly as "Midnight Movie", Der Samurai delighted a beer-drunk audience.  

Favorite Moment: We witness the swift, blood spouting beheading of an entire motorcycle gang from the perspective of the downed policeman--a katana doing its swooshing, bloody work upside down. 

Go slow: Journey to the West

No other movie was recommended to me as much as Tsai Ming-liang's leisurely 56-minute stroll through Marseilles -- and by "leisurely" I mean about a minute per step. In long, static shots, we follow a Buddhist monk on his exceedingly slow walking meditation, on the edge where movement becomes stasis, while around him the Mediterranean life teems in streets, plazas and cafes. In his red robe, the monk becomes the only constant, and with each cut, we find ourselves searching for him, waiting for him to appear somewhere in the frame. His slowness has a hypnotizing effect, and after a while, it's not the monk who looks strange: he has somehow transformed everything around him.

Favorite Moment: The monk is about halfway down a long flight of stairs to the subway when a little girl pauses for a while and watches him. To her, his spiritual practice must seem like a fun game. Later, Denis Lavant appears and imitates the monk's walk, as if to say, what's the difference?