Not Just Movies
My favourite drama movies and more
Log in to copy items to your own lists.
1.
Babel
(2006)
Tragedy strikes a married couple on vacation in the Moroccan desert, touching off an interlocking story involving four different families. (143 mins.)
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
2.
Lost in Translation
(2003)
A faded movie star and a neglected young woman form an unlikely bond after crossing paths in Tokyo. (101 mins.)
Director: Sofia Coppola
3.
Cashback
(2006)
After a painful breakup, Ben develops insomnia. To kill time, he starts working the late night shift at the local supermarket, where his artistic imagination runs wild. (102 mins.)
Director: Sean Ellis
4.
Blue Velvet
(1986)
The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child. (120 mins.)
Director: David Lynch
5.
Mulholland Dr.
(2001)
After a car wreck on the winding Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesiac, she and a perky Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality. (147 mins.)
Director: David Lynch
6.
Paris, Texas
(1984)
Travis Henderson, an aimless drifter who has been missing for four years, wanders out of the desert and must reconnect with society, himself, his life, and his family. (147 mins.)
Director: Wim Wenders
7.
No Country for Old Men
(2007)
Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and more than two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande. (122 mins.)
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
8.
The Tree of Life
(2011)
The story of a family in Waco, Texas in 1956. The eldest son witnesses the loss of innocence and struggles with his parents' conflicting teachings. (139 mins.)
Director: Terrence Malick
9.
Little Miss Sunshine
(2006)
A family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus. (101 mins.)
Director: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
10.
10 Items or Less
(2006)
An actor (Freeman) prepping for an upcoming role meets a quirky grocery clerk (Vega), and the pair hit the road to show one another their respective worlds. (82 mins.)
Director: Brad Silberling
11.
Delicatessen
(1991)
Post-apocalyptic surrealist black comedy about the landlord of an apartment building who occasionally prepares a delicacy for his odd tenants. (99 mins.)
Director: Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
12.
The Machinist
(2004)
An industrial worker who hasn't slept in a year begins to doubt his own sanity. (101 mins.)
Director: Brad Anderson
13.
Little Children
(2006)
The lives of two lovelorn spouses from separate marriages, a registered sex offender, and a disgraced ex-police officer intersect as they struggle to resist their vulnerabilities and temptations in suburban Massachusetts. (136 mins.)
Director: Todd Field
14.
The Reader
(2008)
Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial. (124 mins.)
Director: Stephen Daldry
15.
Never Let Me Go
(2010)
The lives of three friends, from their early school days into young adulthood. (103 mins.)
Director: Mark Romanek
16.
Donnie Darko
(2001)
A troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes, after narrowly escaping a bizarre accident. (113 mins.)
Director: Richard Kelly
17.
Vanilla Sky
(2001)
A self-indulgent and vain publishing magnate finds his privileged life upended after a vehicular accident with a resentful lover. (136 mins.)
Director: Cameron Crowe
18.
Garden State
(2004)
A quietly troubled young man returns home for his mother's funeral after being estranged from his family for a decade. (102 mins.)
Director: Zach Braff
19.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(2004)
When their relationship turns sour, a couple undergoes a procedure to have each other erased from their memories. But it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with. (108 mins.)
Director: Michel Gondry
20.
Stranger Than Fiction
(2006)
An IRS auditor suddenly finds himself the subject of narration only he can hear: narration that begins to affect his entire life, from his work, to his love-interest, to his death. (113 mins.)
Director: Marc Forster
21.
Reign Over Me
(2007)
A man who lost his family in the September 11 attack on New York City runs into his old college roommate. Rekindling the friendship is the one thing that appears able to help the man recover from his grief. (124 mins.)
Director: Mike Binder
22.
Interstellar
(2014)
A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity's survival. (169 mins.)
Director: Christopher Nolan
23.
The Prestige
(2006)
Two stage magicians engage in competitive one-upmanship in an attempt to create the ultimate stage illusion. (130 mins.)
Director: Christopher Nolan
24.
American Beauty
(1999)
A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend. (122 mins.)
Director: Sam Mendes
25.
Requiem for a Dream
(2000)
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island people are shattered when their addictions run deep. (102 mins.)
Director: Darren Aronofsky
26.
Into the Wild
(2007)
After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters that shape his life. (148 mins.)
Director: Sean Penn
27.
The Truman Show
(1998)
An insurance salesman/adjuster discovers his entire life is actually a television show. (103 mins.)
Director: Peter Weir
28.
Mr. Nobody
(2009)
A boy stands on a station platform as a train is about to leave. Should he go with his mother or stay with his father? Infinite possibilities arise from this decision. As long as he doesn't choose, anything is possible. (141 mins.)
Director: Jaco Van Dormael
29.
Atonement
(2007)
Fledgling writer Briony Tallis, as a thirteen-year-old, irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit. (123 mins.)
Director: Joe Wright
30.
The Game
(1997)
Nicholas Van Orton is a very wealthy San Francisco banker, but he is an absolute loner, even spending his birthday alone... (129 mins.)
Director: David Fincher
31.
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
(1993)
After his father's death, Gilbert has to care for his mentally disabled brother, Arnie, and his morbidly obese mother, which is suddenly challenged when love walks into his life. (118 mins.)
Director: Lasse Hallström
32.
My Summer of Love
(2004)
In the Yorkshire countryside, working-class tomboy Mona meets the exotic, pampered Tamsin. Over the summer season, the two young women discover they have much to teach one another, and much to explore together. (86 mins.)
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
33.
25th Hour
(2002)
Cornered by the DEA, convicted New York drug dealer Montgomery Brogan reevaluates his life in the 24 remaining hours before facing a seven-year jail term. (135 mins.)
Director: Spike Lee
34.
Being John Malkovich
(1999)
A puppeteer discovers a portal that leads literally into the head of movie star John Malkovich. (112 mins.)
Director: Spike Jonze
35.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
(2008)
Tells the story of Benjamin Button, a man who starts aging backwards with bizarre consequences. (166 mins.)
Director: David Fincher
36.
Leaving Las Vegas
(1995)
Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera. (111 mins.)
Director: Mike Figgis
37.
The Life of David Gale
(2003)
A man against capital punishment is accused of murdering a fellow activist and is sent to death row. (130 mins.)
Director: Alan Parker
38.
Eyes Wide Shut
(1999)
A New York City doctor, who is married to an art curator, pushes himself on a harrowing and dangerous night-long odyssey of sexual and moral discovery after his wife admits that she once almost cheated on him. (159 mins.)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
39.
Another Earth
(2011)
On the night of the discovery of a duplicate Earth in the Solar system, an ambitious young student and an accomplished composer cross paths in a tragic accident. (92 mins.)
Director: Mike Cahill
40.
Before Sunset
(2004)
Nine years after Jesse and Celine first met, they encounter each other again on the French leg of Jesse's book tour. (80 mins.)
Director: Richard Linklater
41.
Brazil
(1985)
A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state. (132 mins.)
Director: Terry Gilliam
42.
Detachment
(2011)
A substitute teacher who drifts from classroom to classroom finds a connection to the students and teachers during his latest assignment. (98 mins.)
Director: Tony Kaye
43.
Drive
(2011)
A mysterious Hollywood stuntman and mechanic moonlights as a getaway driver and finds himself trouble when he helps out his neighbor. (100 mins.)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
44.
Julia
(2008)
A woman tries to extort money, using a young boy as bait. (144 mins.)
Director: Erick Zonca
45.
My Blueberry Nights
(2007)
A young woman takes a soul-searching journey across America to resolve her questions about love while encountering a series of offbeat characters along the way. (95 mins.)
Director: Kar Wai Wong
46.
Snow Cake
(2006)
A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident. (112 mins.)
Director: Marc Evans
47.
Taking Woodstock
(2009)
A man working at his parents' motel in the Catskills inadvertently sets in motion the generation-defining concert in the summer of 1969. (120 mins.)
Director: Ang Lee
48.
Three Colors: Blue
(1993)
A woman struggles to find a way to live her life after the death of her husband and child. (98 mins.)
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
49.
What Dreams May Come
(1998)
After he dies in a car crash, a man searches heaven and hell for his beloved wife. (113 mins.)
Director: Vincent Ward
50.
Sunshine Cleaning
(2008)
In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school, a mom starts an unusual business -- a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service -- with her unreliable sister. (91 mins.)
Director: Christine Jeffs
51.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
(2014)
Illustrated upon the progress of his latest Broadway play, a former popular actor's struggle to cope with his current life as a wasted actor is shown. (119 mins.)
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
52.
21 Grams
(2003)
A freak accident brings together a critically ill mathematician, a grieving mother, and a born-again ex-con. (124 mins.)
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu