Friday night with friends is about energy. You want something that earns its place in the conversation - a film that people are still talking about on the way home.
In retrospect, the 2010s were a decade of quiet excellence - films doing serious work without demanding credit for it.
Drama works when it makes you forget you're watching a film. The best of them pull you in so completely that the credits are a genuine surprise.
A family dog - with a near-human soul and a philosopher's mind - evaluates his life through the lessons learned by his human owner, a race-car driver.
Based on actual events that took place at Gwangju Inhwa School for the hearing-impaired, where young deaf students were the victims of repeated sexual assaults by faculty members over a period of five years in the early 2000s.
Fleeing the war, the immortal Machia, graced with eternal youth, finds a baby abandoned in the forest and decides to raise it as her own child, sparking a moving story between a mortal and a being who does not age.
After running away from his negligent parents, committing a violent crime and being sentenced to five years in jail, a hardened, streetwise 12-year-old Lebanese boy sues his parents in protest of the life they have given him.
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
These films earn their emotional weight by grounding everything in specificity. The characters feel like people, not constructs. That's rare and it's not easy.
A bullied teenage girl forms an unlikely friendship with a mysterious young man who protects her from her assailants, while she copes with the pressures of her final examinations.
The story of August Pullman - a boy with facial differences - who enters fifth grade, attending a mainstream elementary school for the first time.
Keller Dover is facing every parent's worst nightmare. His six-year-old daughter, Anna, is missing, together with her young friend, Joy, and as minutes turn to hours, panic sets in. The only lead is a dilapidated RV that had earlier been parked on their street.
A mother's last wishes send twins Jeanne and Simon on a journey to Middle East in search of their tangled roots. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's acclaimed play, Incendies tells the powerful and moving tale of two young adults' voyage to the core of deep-rooted hatred, never-ending wars and enduring love.
A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son's custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.
Not every highly-rated film deserves its rating. These do. Watch them without expectations and see what you think.
Great drama stays with you because it refuses easy comfort. These films hand you something true and let you carry it.