Short attention span, long movie list. These make it work.
Suffering from insomnia, disturbed loner Travis Bickle takes a job as a New York City cabbie, haunting the streets nightly, growing increasingly detached from reality as he dreams of cleaning up the filthy city.
Strong enough momentum to keep pulling you back in, even when your mind wanders.
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.
Short scenes and clear stakes. Your attention doesn't have to stay perfect to keep up.
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.
Short scenes and clear stakes. Your attention doesn't have to stay perfect to keep up.
A botched robbery indicates a police informant, and the pressure mounts in the aftermath at a warehouse. Crime begets violence as the survivors -- veteran Mr. White, newcomer Mr. Orange, psychopathic parolee Mr. Blonde, bickering weasel Mr. Pink and Nice Guy Eddie -- unravel.
Strong enough momentum to keep pulling you back in, even when your mind wanders.
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.
Strong enough momentum to keep pulling you back in, even when your mind wanders.
When focus is a problem, pacing is the solution. These films understand that.
Scene structure is tight. Easy to re-engage after a distraction.
A card shark and his unwillingly-enlisted friends need to make a lot of cash quick after losing a sketchy poker match. To do this they decide to pull a heist on a small-time gang who happen to be operating out of the flat next door.
Short scenes and clear stakes. Your attention doesn't have to stay perfect to keep up.
An insurance representative is seduced by a dissatisfied housewife into a scheme of insurance fraud and murder that arouses the suspicion of his colleague, a claims investigator.
Short scenes and clear stakes. Your attention doesn't have to stay perfect to keep up.
Best friends Peppe and Mario are thieves, but they're not very good at it. Still, Peppe thinks that he's finally devised a master heist that will make them rich. With the help of some fellow criminals, he plans to dig a tunnel from a rented apartment to the pawnshop next door, where they can rob the safe. But his plan is far from foolproof, and the fact that no one in the group has any experience digging tunnels proves to be the least of their problems.
Short scenes and clear stakes. Your attention doesn't have to stay perfect to keep up.
Raised in a poverty-stricken slum, a 16-year-old girl named Starr now attends a suburban prep school. After she witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend, she's torn between her two very different worlds as she tries to speak her truth.
Strong enough momentum to keep pulling you back in, even when your mind wanders.
In Prohibition-era Chicago, musicians Joe and Jerry witness a mob hit, and flee the state in an all-female band disguised as Josephine and Daphne, but further complications set in.
Strong enough momentum to keep pulling you back in, even when your mind wanders.
These films work because they match where you actually are, not where you think you should be.