Drama that earns its runtime

P

Parasite

Bong Joon-ho, 2019

A comedy about a poor family infiltrating a rich one that becomes something else entirely, and the turn is structural rather than a shock. The house is the thesis.

TL

The Lives of Others

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006

A Stasi officer surveilling a playwright gradually switches sides, and the switch is told through what he writes in his reports. Restrained where it could have been sentimental.

B

Burning

Lee Chang-dong, 2018

A love triangle that may or may not be a crime, and the film refuses to resolve it either way. The class resentment is the engine and it is never stated out loud.

S

Shoplifters

Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2018

A family that is not related by blood and is held together by necessity, and the film withholds judgement until it is too late to give any. Warm and then very cold.

YY

Yi Yi

Edward Yang, 2000

A Taipei family across a year, with the camera almost always outside the room looking in. Three hours that pass faster than most ninety-minute films.

M

Moonlight

Barry Jenkins, 2016

Three chapters in one life and a swimming lesson that is really about learning to be touched. The blue is doing as much work as the dialogue.

MB

Manchester by the Sea

Kenneth Lonergan, 2016

A film about grief that refuses the recovery arc, and it is the only one on this list that is honest about the fact that some people do not get better.

TW

There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007

A man builds an oil fortune and loses the ability to be in a room with another person. The score does the work a monologue would have done badly.

1A

12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet, 1957

One room, twelve men and ninety-six minutes, and it invented most of what film has done with a jury since. Had a second life in Chinese guanxi textbooks, of all places.

WS

Wild Strawberries

Ingmar Bergman, 1957

An old professor drives to a ceremony and dreams about his own death on the way, which is about as warm as Bergman gets. The most accessible of his films.

AS

Autumn Sonata

Ingmar Bergman, 1978

A mother and daughter spend a night taking each other apart, and the sequence is a single extended confrontation. Bergman with almost no formal games, just the argument.

SF

Scenes from a Marriage

Ingmar Bergman, 1973

Five hours about one couple if you watch the television cut, which is the one to watch. It reportedly raised divorce rates in Sweden, which says more than any review.

A

Amour

Michael Haneke, 2012

An old couple and a stroke, filmed entirely inside one flat so there is no escape for anyone including the viewer. Haneke at his most humane and therefore most difficult.

DM

Drive My Car

Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, 2021

Three hours in which a theatre director stages Uncle Vanya and slowly tells his driver the thing he has never said. The most patient film on this list and it is worth the patience.

R

Roma

Alfonso Cuarón, 2018

A year in the life of a housekeeper in Mexico City, filmed in long wide shots that keep her in the middle distance. The political events happen in the background, which is the point.

TT

The Tree of Life

Terrence Malick, 2011

A family in 1950s Texas interrupted by the creation of the universe, and the film is either profound or pretentious depending on the day. Worth finding out which for you.

B

Boyhood

Richard Linklater, 2014

Twelve years of the same actors, so the aging is real rather than cosmetic. The gimmick is the production and what is left is an ordinary childhood, which is enough.