The best moral cinema doesn't tell you anything. It just shows you something and lets you work it out.
George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George's modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business's $8,000 is lost and George's troubles begin.
It shows someone doing something quietly right. No announcement. No reward. Just doing it.
A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..
You finish this and feel a vague, good pressure to be more considered. That's the right feeling.
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
It shows someone doing something quietly right. No announcement. No reward. Just doing it.
As the railroad builders advance unstoppably through the Arizona desert on their way to the sea, Jill arrives in the small town of Flagstone with the intention of starting a new life.
It shows someone doing something quietly right. No announcement. No reward. Just doing it.
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.
You finish this and feel a vague, good pressure to be more considered. That's the right feeling.
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 deepest possible well for this effect. Drama built around moral choice.
A strong addition to any marathon. Holds its own in a sequence.
At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
You finish this and feel a vague, good pressure to be more considered. That's the right feeling.
A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.
You finish this and feel a vague, good pressure to be more considered. That's the right feeling.
With dreams of diving abroad, Tsuneo gets a job assisting Josee, an artist whose imagination takes her far beyond her wheelchair. But when the tide turns against them, they push each other to places they never thought possible, and inspire a love fit for a storybook.
You finish this and feel a vague, good pressure to be more considered. That's the right feeling.
SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity.
You finish this and feel a vague, good pressure to be more considered. That's the right feeling.
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.
It shows someone doing something quietly right. No announcement. No reward. Just doing it.
Some films earn their effect. These do.