The kind of film that makes you cancel tomorrow.
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.
The end of each scene makes the next one feel necessary. That's the mechanism.
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 end of each scene makes the next one feel necessary. That's the mechanism.
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.
Once it has you, it keeps you. Plan accordingly.
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 end of each scene makes the next one feel necessary. That's the mechanism.
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.
Once it has you, it keeps you. Plan accordingly.
The impossible-to-stop quality is usually about stakes and pacing in equal measure. These have both.
Will-they-won't-they mechanics are specifically designed for this.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
The end of each scene makes the next one feel necessary. That's the mechanism.
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 end of each scene makes the next one feel necessary. That's the mechanism.
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.
The end of each scene makes the next one feel necessary. That's the mechanism.
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.
The end of each scene makes the next one feel necessary. That's the mechanism.
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.
The end of each scene makes the next one feel necessary. That's the mechanism.
These films were chosen for the state you're in, not the state you wish you were in.