The best moral cinema doesn't tell you anything. It just shows you something and lets you work it out.
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
It shows someone doing something quietly right. No announcement. No reward. Just doing it.
Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.
You finish this and feel a vague, good pressure to be more considered. That's the right feeling.
In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.
You finish this and feel a vague, good pressure to be more considered. That's the right feeling.
Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker.
It shows someone doing something quietly right. No announcement. No reward. Just doing it.
A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.
It shows someone doing something quietly right. No announcement. No reward. Just doing it.
The films that inspire you to be better never set out to do that. They just get close enough to something true that the comparison lands.
The moral weight of crime films is itself instructive.
Good for the specific solitude of post-breakup evenings.
A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.
You finish this and feel a vague, good pressure to be more considered. That's the right feeling.
The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.
You finish this and feel a vague, good pressure to be more considered. That's the right feeling.
In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José "Zé" Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.
It shows someone doing something quietly right. No announcement. No reward. Just doing it.
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.
It shows someone doing something quietly right. No announcement. No reward. Just doing it.
Two homicide detectives are on a desperate hunt for a serial killer whose crimes are based on the "seven deadly sins" in this dark and haunting film that takes viewers from the tortured remains of one victim to the next. The seasoned Det. Somerset researches each sin in an effort to get inside the killer's mind, while his novice partner, Mills, scoffs at his efforts to unravel the case.
It shows someone doing something quietly right. No announcement. No reward. Just doing it.
Some films earn their effect. These do.