Some films make you want to get off the sofa and do something. These are those films.
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 shows what sustained effort looks like without making it feel impossible. That sticks.
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 one ends and you immediately think about something you've been putting off.
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.
This one ends and you immediately think about something you've been putting off.
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 one ends and you immediately think about something you've been putting off.
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.
This one ends and you immediately think about something you've been putting off.
Ambition in film is most effective when it comes through character rather than message. These films show rather than tell.
Ambition of a different kind. Still applies.
Solves boredom immediately. No warm-up required.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
This one ends and you immediately think about something you've been putting off.
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.
This one ends and you immediately think about something you've been putting off.
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.
This one ends and you immediately think about something you've been putting off.
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 one ends and you immediately think about something you've been putting off.
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.
This one ends and you immediately think about something you've been putting off.
Some films earn their effect. These do.