The best films of this kind don't manipulate you. They just point at something true.
Tony Lip, a bouncer in 1962, is hired to drive pianist Don Shirley on a tour through the Deep South in the days when African Americans, forced to find alternate accommodations and services due to segregation laws below the Mason-Dixon Line, relied on a guide called The Negro Motorist Green Book.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
As U.S. troops storm the beaches of Normandy, three brothers lie dead on the battlefield, with a fourth trapped behind enemy lines. Ranger captain John Miller and seven men are tasked with penetrating German-held territory and bringing the boy home.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
The unlikely friendship of a boy, a mole, a fox and a horse traveling together in the boy's search for home.
This film slows everything down in a way that makes ordinary things look extraordinary.
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds, lead by Lt. Aldo Raine soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.
This film slows everything down in a way that makes ordinary things look extraordinary.
Seventeen-year-old Stella spends most of her time in the hospital as a cystic fibrosis patient. Her life is full of routines, boundaries and self-control - all of which get put to the test when she meets Will, an impossibly charming teen who has the same illness. There's an instant flirtation, though restrictions dictate that they must maintain a safe distance between them. As their connection intensifies, so does the temptation to throw the rules out the window and embrace that attraction.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
The afterglow of these films is the point. You'll know it when you feel it.
The most direct path to this feeling. Drama built around ordinary lives does it best.
Ideal flight viewing. Absorbing and complete.
After her werewolf lover unexpectedly dies in an accident, a woman must find a way to raise the son and daughter that she had with him. However, their inheritance of their father's traits prove to be a challenge for her.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
The invasion of a village in Belarus by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.
This film slows everything down in a way that makes ordinary things look extraordinary.
Roberto, a shy law student in Rome, meets Bruno, a forty-year-old exuberant, capricious man, who takes him for a drive through the Roman and Tuscany countries in the summer. When their journey starts to blend into their daily lives though, the pair's newfound friendship is tested.
This film slows everything down in a way that makes ordinary things look extraordinary.
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
A peculiar neighbor offers hope to a recent widow who is struggling to raise a teenager who is unpredictable and, sometimes, violent.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
Some films earn their effect. These do.