The best films for a group don't flatten the experience - they create one. You want something that generates opinions, debates, a reason to stay up later than planned.
In retrospect, the 2010s were a decade of quiet excellence - films doing serious work without demanding credit for it.
A great drama earns every emotion it asks of you. Nothing is unearned. Nothing is manipulated. You feel it because the film has made you care.
All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.
High schoolers Mitsuha and Taki are complete strangers living separate lives. But one night, they suddenly switch places. Mitsuha wakes up in Taki's body, and he in hers. This bizarre occurrence continues to happen randomly, and the two must adjust their lives around each other.
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
After 8-year-old So-won narrowly survives a brutal sexual assault, her family labors to help her heal while coping with their own rage and grief.
Shouya Ishida starts bullying the new girl in class, Shouko Nishimiya, because she is deaf. But as the teasing continues, the rest of the class starts to turn on Shouya for his lack of compassion. When they leave elementary school, Shouko and Shouya do not speak to each other again... until an older, wiser Shouya, tormented by his past behaviour, decides he must see Shouko once more. He wants to atone for his sins, but is it already too late...?
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.
Under the direction of a ruthless instructor, a talented young drummer begins to pursue perfection at any cost, even his humanity.
The film tells the story of Ariel, a 21-year-old who decides to form a rock band to compete for a prize of ten thousand dollars in a musical band contest, this as a last option when trying to get money to save their relationship and reunite with his ex-girlfriend, which breaks due to the trip she must make to Finland for an internship. Ariel with her friend Ortega, decides to make a casting to find the other members of the band, although they do not know nothing about music, thus forming a band with members that have diverse and opposite personalities.
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.
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.
Separated from his daughter, a father with an intellectual disability must prove his innocence when he is jailed for the death of a commander's child.
Tension is a byproduct of investment. You're only on the edge of your seat if the film has made you care first. These do.
Great drama stays with you because it refuses easy comfort. These films hand you something true and let you carry it.