Not naive. Not sentimental. Just honestly good at showing what humans are capable of.
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 people at their best without pretending the world is easy. That's the specific thing.
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.
It shows people at their best without pretending the world is easy. That's the specific thing.
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.
It shows people at their best without pretending the world is easy. That's the specific thing.
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.
There's a moment in this that restores something. You'll know it when you see it.
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 shows people at their best without pretending the world is easy. That's the specific thing.
Films that restore faith in people don't do it through sentimentality. They do it through honesty. These are honest.
Human connection at its clearest. Natural fit.
Ideal flight viewing. Absorbing and complete.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
It shows people at their best without pretending the world is easy. That's the specific thing.
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.
It shows people at their best without pretending the world is easy. That's the specific thing.
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.
There's a moment in this that restores something. You'll know it when you see it.
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.
There's a moment in this that restores something. You'll know it when you see it.
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 shows people at their best without pretending the world is easy. That's the specific thing.
Some films earn their effect. These do.