The Moviepiq team selected these films specifically for when watching someone become a stranger. Chosen because they understand the specific weight of this moment.
Films for when someone you know is becoming someone you don't. The face is familiar. Almost everything else isn't.
They changed and the direction of the change has something pointed in it, something that looks, from where you're standing, like they are becoming the kind of person who doesn't think much of who they were. Which means they don't think much of you either, or of what you were to each other, and that information has a very clean conversion rate into something useful. You work. You build. You become more of the thing you already were before they decided that wasn't enough. The spite is reciprocal. These films are about people who didn't let someone else's revision of them become their own.
The summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo, and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits. The weather is unusually gloomy and rainy every day, as if taking its cue from his life. After many days of s
Built from the same fuel you are running on right now. The conversion from feeling dismissed to doing something about it is very clean in this story.
Built for forward motion
James Bowen, a homeless busker and recovering drug addict, has his life transformed when he meets a stray ginger cat.
Characters who were underestimated and did not disappear. The spite is in the architecture of the whole thing.
Knows this engine
Second chances start when a hardened criminal crosses paths with a precocious little girl who is helped by an angel to change hearts during the holiday season.
It knows this energy and treats it as legitimate. You will feel understood before you feel better, which is the right order.
Clean conversion
Before he was a protector, Kenshin was a fearsome assassin known as Battosai. But when he meets gentle Tomoe Yukishiro, a beautiful young woman who carries a huge burden in her heart, his life will change forever.
It runs on the same engine and it knows how to use it. You will recognize the feeling in here without having to name it.
Doesn't look away
Built from the same conversion you are running right now. Feeling into motion.
Born free in the American West, Black Beauty is a horse rounded up and brought to Birtwick Stables, where she meets spirited teenager Jo Green. The two forge a bond that carries Beauty through the different chapters, challenges and adventures.
Built from the same fuel you are running on right now. The conversion from feeling dismissed to doing something about it is very clean in this story.
Built for forward motion
As Frank Castle searches for meaning beyond revenge, an unexpected force pulls him back into the fight.
Characters who were underestimated and did not disappear. The spite is in the architecture of the whole thing.
Knows this engine
In the aftermath of the Fourth Impact, stranded without their Evangelions, Shinji, Asuka and Rei find refuge in one of the rare pockets of humanity that still exist on the ruined planet Earth. There, each lives a life far different from their days as an Evangelion pilot. However,
It knows this energy and treats it as legitimate. You will feel understood before you feel better, which is the right order.
Clean conversion
Shouya Ishida starts bullying the new girl in class, Shouko Nishimiya, because she is deaf. But as the teasing continues, the rest of the class starts to turn on Shouya for his lack of compassion. When they leave elementary school, Shouko and Shouya do not speak to each other aga
It runs on the same engine and it knows how to use it. You will recognize the feeling in here without having to name it.
Doesn't look away
Violet Evergarden, a former soldier returned from war, comes to teach at a women's academy and changes a young girl's life.
Built from the same fuel you are running on right now. The conversion from feeling dismissed to doing something about it is very clean in this story.
Built for forward motion
The story of life on our planet by the man who has seen more of the natural world than any other. In more than 90 years, Attenborough has visited every continent on the globe, exploring the wild places of our planet and documenting the living world in all its variety and wonder.
Characters who were underestimated and did not disappear. The spite is in the architecture of the whole thing.
Knows this engine
Against all the odds, a thirteen year old boy in Malawi invents an unconventional way to save his family and village from famine.
It knows this energy and treats it as legitimate. You will feel understood before you feel better, which is the right order.
Clean conversion
Edmond Dantès becomes the target of a sinister plot and is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he did not commit. After 14 years in the island prison of Ch--teau d’If, he manages a daring escape. Now rich beyond his dreams, he assumes the identity of the Count of Monte-Cristo
It runs on the same engine and it knows how to use it. You will recognize the feeling in here without having to name it.
Doesn't look away
The fuel is real. These know how to use it.
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