An overstimulated brain needs something that slows the feed, not speeds it up.
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.
Calm enough not to spike the signal. Absorbing enough to hold your attention.
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.
Calm enough not to spike the signal. Absorbing enough to hold your attention.
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.
The rhythm of this one quiets rather than amplifies. Right choice for tonight.
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.
Calm enough not to spike the signal. Absorbing enough to hold your attention.
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.
Calm enough not to spike the signal. Absorbing enough to hold your attention.
Films for overstimulation work by slowing the rhythm down. These don't compete with the noise.
Gentle emotional stakes. Good antidote to an overstimulated state.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
Calm enough not to spike the signal. Absorbing enough to hold your attention.
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.
Calm enough not to spike the signal. Absorbing enough to hold your attention.
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 rhythm of this one quiets rather than amplifies. Right choice for tonight.
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.
Calm enough not to spike the signal. Absorbing enough to hold your attention.
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 rhythm of this one quiets rather than amplifies. Right choice for tonight.
These films were chosen for the state you're in, not the state you wish you were in.