The mistake most marathons make is consistency - same tone, same energy, film after film. Vary the weight. Follow something heavy with something lighter. Let the list breathe.
The best dramas don't require extraordinary circumstances. They find the extraordinary inside ordinary lives, and trust you to recognise it.
George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George's modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business's $8,000 is lost and George's troubles begin.
A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
As the railroad builders advance unstoppably through the Arizona desert on their way to the sea, Jill arrives in the small town of Flagstone with the intention of starting a new life.
A true story of two men who should never have met - a quadriplegic aristocrat who was injured in a paragliding accident and a young man from the projects.
The dramas worth your time are the ones that don't resolve too neatly. Life doesn't tie itself off, and neither do these films.
At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.
With dreams of diving abroad, Tsuneo gets a job assisting Josee, an artist whose imagination takes her far beyond her wheelchair. But when the tide turns against them, they push each other to places they never thought possible, and inspire a love fit for a storybook.
SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity.
In Fujisawa, Sakuta Azusagawa is in his second year of high school. Blissful days with his girlfriend and upperclassman, Mai Sakurajima, are interrupted by the appearance of his first crush, Shoko Makinohara.
The best measure of whether a film is worth watching is whether you'd recommend it to someone you respect. These all qualify.
Great drama stays with you because it refuses easy comfort. These films hand you something true and let you carry it.