Hope in films works best when it's been earned. These earn it.
Bud Baxter is a minor clerk in a huge New York insurance company, until he discovers a quick way to climb the corporate ladder. He lends out his apartment to the executives as a place to take their mistresses. Although he often has to deal with the aftermath of their visits, one night he's left with a major problem to solve.
It doesn't wrap things up perfectly. It just leaves you believing in the possibility of better.
1930s Korea, in the period of Japanese occupation, a new girl, Sook-hee, is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress, Hideko, who lives a secluded life on a large countryside estate with her domineering Uncle Kouzuki. But the maid has a secret. She is a pickpocket recruited by a swindler posing as a Japanese Count to help him seduce the Lady to steal her fortune.
The hope at the end of this has been paid for by everything that came before. It's earned.
A family dog – with a near-human soul and a philosopher's mind – evaluates his life through the lessons learned by his human owner, a race-car driver.
The hope at the end of this has been paid for by everything that came before. It's earned.
In 1999, a teen girl keeps close tabs on a boy in school on behalf of her deeply smitten best friend – then she gets swept up in a love story of her own.
The hope at the end of this has been paid for by everything that came before. It's earned.
A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.
It doesn't wrap things up perfectly. It just leaves you believing in the possibility of better.
Real hope in film comes from honesty about difficulty. These films know that.
Love as hope. The genre's natural register.
Something to watch when sleep won't cooperate.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
It doesn't wrap things up perfectly. It just leaves you believing in the possibility of better.
In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film star falls for a chorus girl just as he and his paranoid screen partner struggle to make the difficult transition to talking pictures.
The hope at the end of this has been paid for by everything that came before. It's earned.
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.
It doesn't wrap things up perfectly. It just leaves you believing in the possibility of better.
On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.
It doesn't wrap things up perfectly. It just leaves you believing in the possibility of better.
In the summer of 1983, a 17-year-old Elio spends his days in his family's villa in Italy. One day Oliver, a graduate student, arrives to assist Elio's father, a professor of Greco-Roman culture. Soon, Elio and Oliver discover a summer that will alter their lives forever.
It doesn't wrap things up perfectly. It just leaves you believing in the possibility of better.
Some films earn their effect. These do.