You are inching into the territory of subjunctive mood in English grammar. You are constructing sentences around hypotheticals.

Subjunctives, while technically a part of English language, have inconsistent usage in most forms of oral and written English. The exceptions might be technical, legal, and format writing.

Here are a few links for further reading:

 - [OED blog on subjunctive mood][2]
 - [Get It Write blog article][1]

The short story is that, in these sentences, nothing is actually happening. You are hypothetically suggesting that something **happen** - and I use 'happen' in subjunctive mode for the same reason.

> He recommends you read the book before watching the movie. (No one is reading a book here.)

However, because of the flexibility around subjunctive mood in everyday English usage, either of these should be acceptable in **most** cases:

> He recommends reading the book before watching the movie. 
>
> He recommends you to read the book before you watch the movie. (Technically incorrect, but so widely used that most will not pick on it.)

  [1]: http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/073001subjunct.htm
  [2]: https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/02/10/does-english-have-subjunctive/