Not every film that makes you appreciate life is a tearjerker. Some just show it clearly.
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.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
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.
This film slows everything down in a way that makes ordinary things look extraordinary.
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.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
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.
This film slows everything down in a way that makes ordinary things look extraordinary.
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.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
Films that make you appreciate life usually work by contrast, or by slowing time down enough to see it properly.
The beauty of ordinary connection. Direct path to appreciation.
Good paired viewing. Worth pausing to discuss.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
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.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
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.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
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.
This film slows everything down in a way that makes ordinary things look extraordinary.
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.
You finish it and look up, and whatever room you're in looks slightly different.
Some films earn their effect. These do.