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The movies 1 (obviously), 3 and 5 are quite stand-alone ones, so these stories may be understandable without seeing the others.

BUT.

The chronological order of the movies goes like this :
movie 2, movie 4, movie 3, movie 1, movie 5, movie 6, movie 7.
It's also the order of the chapters of the books.

So there was already things you couldn't understand before seeing the 3 next movies in the first movie.
But the first serves as an introduction and the questions are here to seed some curiosity on the viewer's side (like "what's the story behind her arm ?"), whereas the fifth is a culmination/conclusion of the previous movies.

Seeing directly the fifth movie without knowing the previous plots and character developments will lessen the psychological powerfulness of quite a few scenes.

If you're into the "dark ambient anime" type, the other movies go from "nice but a bit boring" to "very good".
Each one has its own atmosphere (the first reminded me of Texhnolyze and Angel, the second of Higurashi), so the appreciation of each movie depends highly on your tastes.

tl;dr :
1. Yes, you should see the other movies first, but if you don't you'll still understand a large part of the plot.
2. You should see the other movies because overall they're quite good.