Easy watching. No subtext to untangle, no plot to decode.
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.
Nothing to decode. Just watch it and you've done the whole 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.
No subtext to work through. Exactly what it looks like, which is enough.
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.
Nothing to decode. Just watch it and you've done the whole 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.
Nothing to decode. Just watch it and you've done the whole thing.
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.
Nothing to decode. Just watch it and you've done the whole thing.
Easy watching doesn't mean empty. These have everything they need, packaged simply.
The lightest romance films ask almost nothing. Easy viewing.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
No subtext to work through. Exactly what it looks like, which is enough.
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.
Nothing to decode. Just watch it and you've done the whole 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.
No subtext to work through. Exactly what it looks like, which is enough.
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.
No subtext to work through. Exactly what it looks like, which is enough.
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.
No subtext to work through. Exactly what it looks like, which is enough.
These films were chosen for the state you're in, not the state you wish you were in.