Six sliders. No stars.
Nothing on this site is recommended because people liked it. Films are described by what they are (how heavy, how fast, how far from the real world), and you get the ones closest to what you asked for.
Neither of these is the better film. They are just at opposite ends.
51 films tagged ambition, showing 50
Move a slider to sort by what films are like.
2007 · Drama
A silver miner turns oilman in California at the turn of the century and buys up a small town's land, running into a young preacher with a following of his own. It follows him across three decades of getting what he wants.
AI estimate, not yet described
2007 · Animation
A rat with an exceptional nose and a taste for cooking ends up steering a hopeless kitchen boy around a famous Paris restaurant. Nobody can be allowed to know.
AI estimate, not yet described
2014 · Drama
A first-year drummer at a competitive music school wins a seat in the top band, which is run by a conductor who teaches through humiliation. It is mostly the two of them in one room.
AI estimate, not yet described
2010 · Drama
A Harvard undergraduate builds a website that spreads from campus to campus, and is sued by the friend who funded it and by classmates who say he took their idea. Told through the two depositions, with a great deal of fast talking.
AI estimate, not yet described
2023 · Drama
The physicist who ran the Manhattan Project builds the bomb, then spends years in rooms answering for it. Three hours, mostly of men talking, cut between two timelines.
AI estimate, not yet described
2024 · Drama
A nineteen-year-old with a guitar arrives in New York in 1961 and talks his way into the folk clubs of Greenwich Village. Songs played end to end, and a lot of people arguing about them.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2009 · Crime
A nineteen-year-old with no family and no schooling starts a six-year sentence, and the Corsican men who run the prison put him to work. It takes its time, and the violence is sudden and close.
AI estimate, not yet described
2018 · Drama
A rock star with a drinking problem hears a singer in a bar and puts her on stage with him the next night. It is mostly the two of them, with full songs played end to end.
AI estimate, not yet described
2023 · Drama
In 1984 Nike's basketball arm is broke and running third behind Adidas and Converse, and one scout wants to spend the whole budget on a single rookie. Men in offices and on the phone, talking fast.
AI estimate, not yet described
2014 · Comedy
An actor known for playing a superhero two decades ago is directing and starring in a Broadway play, days from opening night. It is shot to look like one unbroken take and barely leaves the theatre.
AI estimate, not yet described
2018 · Drama
The rise of Queen from a pub band to Live Aid, following Freddie Mercury from his first audition to the stadiums. Built around the songs, with the concerts staged at full length.
AI estimate, not yet described
2024 · Drama
A tennis coach enters her slumping husband in a small tournament, where he draws his oldest friend across the net. The match keeps cutting back through thirteen years of the three of them.
AI estimate, not yet described
2024 · Thriller
The Pope dies and the cardinals are locked inside the Vatican to choose the next one, while the man running the vote keeps learning things about the candidates. Whispered talk in beautiful rooms.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Drama
The son of a famous heavyweight, who never knew him, turns up in Philadelphia and asks his father's old rival to train him. The usual boxing shape, with the fights shot in long unbroken takes.
AI estimate, not yet described
2016 · Drama
A former wrestler in a village in Haryana decides his two daughters will win the gold medal he never did, and starts training them before either of them wants it. Long, loud, and built around the bouts.
AI estimate, not yet described
2023 · Comedy
A mild biology professor finds he has started turning up in the dreams of strangers all over the world, doing nothing in particular. It plays as a comedy about sudden fame and gets darker as it goes.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2022 · Drama
The life of Elvis Presley, from a Memphis boyhood to the Las Vegas years, told by the manager who ran his career. Loud, fast-cut and packed with songs from start to finish.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Action
A driver whose Formula One career ended in a crash in the eighties is brought back decades later to rescue a last-place team and its rookie. Huge engine noise, big screens, simple story.
AI estimate, not yet described
2014 · Drama
An Olympic wrestler living in his brother's shadow takes an invitation to train at the estate of a very rich man who wants to be part of the sport. Slow and quiet, with nearly all of the tension in what nobody says.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2014 · Comedy
A young office worker talks his way into a band whose singer never takes off the large fake head he wears, and follows them to a cabin to record an album. Odd and funny early, heavier later.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Comedy
An American figure skater comes up poor and hard in a sport that wants her sweet, told through interviews with everyone who was there. Funny and mean, and the people telling it keep contradicting each other.
AI estimate, not yet described
2013 · Drama
A folk singer in 1961 Greenwich Village sleeps on other people's sofas, plays a set most nights, and cannot get a record to sell. A week of his life, mostly cold streets and a cat he cannot shake off.
AI estimate, not yet described
2021 · Drama
A father in Compton has a written plan for turning his two youngest daughters into tennis champions, and spends years pushing coaches, clubs and his own family to follow it. Warm and steady, and more about the household than the matches.
AI estimate, not yet described
2016 · Musical
A jazz pianist and an actress who keeps failing auditions meet in Los Angeles and push each other toward what they want. People sing and dance, and it runs across a year in the city.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2023 · Horror
A struggling late-night host books a Halloween special in 1977 with a parapsychologist and the girl she says came out of a satanic cult. Presented as the tape of that broadcast, near enough in real time.
AI estimate, not yet described
2021 · Comedy
A fifteen-year-old child actor in 1973 Los Angeles decides he is going to be with a woman ten years older, and the two of them drift in and out of each other's schemes. Loose and wandering, a run of episodes rather than a plot.
AI estimate, not yet described
2019 · Drama
Four sisters grow up in Massachusetts during and after the Civil War, one of them trying to make a living writing. It cuts back and forth between their childhood and seven years on, so you have to keep track of where you are.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2020 · Drama
A blues singer and her band gather at a Chicago recording studio on a hot afternoon in 1927 and spend most of it waiting. From a play: one building, long speeches, four musicians in a rehearsal room.
AI estimate, not yet described
2004 · Drama
A waitress past thirty talks a stubborn old trainer into taking her on, and turns out to be worth the trouble. Slow and quiet, and almost all of it is three people around one gym.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Drama
A former skier ends up running the highest-stakes private poker game in America, and years later has to explain herself to a lawyer and the FBI. Fast, dense talk and voiceover, almost non-stop.
AI estimate, not yet described
2011 · Drama
The general manager of a baseball team with no money starts picking players by statistics instead of scouting instinct, and has to sell it to a clubhouse that thinks he has lost it. Mostly meetings, phone calls and arguments about numbers.
AI estimate, not yet described
2014 · Thriller
A young man with no job and no limits finds he can sell footage of crashes and shootings to a Los Angeles morning news show, and gets very good at arriving first. Night driving, police scanners, and one man talking his way into places he shouldn't be.
AI estimate, not yet described
2007 · Musical
A Dublin street singer and a Czech woman selling flowers spend a week writing and recording songs together. Small, shot on the street, and the songs are played all the way through.
AI estimate, not yet described
2022 · Horror
In 1918 a young woman stuck on her family's Texas farm while her husband is away at war dreams of dancing in pictures. Bright, slow, and mostly her on the same few acres.
AI estimate, not yet described
2013 · Drama
Two Formula One drivers in the 1970s, one reckless and charming, the other precise and unloved, spend a season trying to beat each other. It cuts between their private lives and the races, and the races are loud.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2010 · Documentary
Ayrton Senna's decade in Formula One, told with footage from the time: races, press conferences and the arguments between drivers. No narrator on camera, no interviews shot afterwards.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2018 · Comedy
A broke telemarketer in Oakland finds that putting on a white voice on the phone gets him promoted, and the promotion takes him somewhere odd. It starts as an office comedy and keeps getting stranger.
AI estimate, not yet described
2020 · Animation
A New York middle school band teacher finally lands the jazz gig he has wanted his whole life, and that same day ends up somewhere else entirely. A Pixar film about what a life is for, with a lot of piano in it.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Drama
Three product launches, forty minutes each, spent backstage with Steve Jobs arguing with the same handful of people. It is almost entirely fast talking in corridors.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Drama
Five young men from Compton put what they see on their own streets onto record, and the records make them famous and watched. Loud, long, and covering about ten years.
AI estimate, not yet described
2022 · Drama
A famous conductor at the very top of the classical world prepares a live recording in Berlin while things from her past start pressing in. Long, talky, and she is in almost every scene.
AI estimate, not yet described
2024 · Drama
A Hungarian architect who survived the war arrives in Pennsylvania with nothing, and a rich man hires him to build something enormous on a hill. Three and a half hours, with an interval in the middle.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Comedy
Moscow, 1953: the man at the top drops dead and the committee around him start going for his job before the body is cold. Everyone talks fast, nobody says what they mean, and the jokes are about ugly things.
AI estimate, not yet described
2018 · Drama
A sick and unpredictable Queen Anne is managed by her closest friend, until a ruined cousin turns up at court as a scullery maid and starts climbing. Filthy jokes, wide lenses, three women circling each other.
AI estimate, not yet described
2003 · Action
An American officer worn down by the Indian wars is hired to train Japan's new conscript army in the 1870s, and ends up living among the swordsmen it was built to defeat. Big battles and long stretches in a mountain village.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2021 · Drama
A Scottish general meets three witches who tell him he will be king, and goes home to his wife with the news. Black and white, bare sets, and the original language kept word for word.
AI estimate, not yet described
2013 · Crime
A young stockbroker sets up his own firm selling worthless shares over the phone, and spends the money as fast as it arrives. Three hours of shouting, drugs and parties, played for laughs.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2021 · Comedy
A woman in Oslo coming up on thirty keeps changing what she wants to be and who she wants to be with, told in twelve chapters. Funny and sad in the same scene, moving at the speed of a conversation.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2016 · Comedy
A retired German prankster puts in false teeth and a wig and turns up unannounced in Bucharest, where his daughter is working long hours as a consultant. It is nearly three hours of meetings and awkward silences, and very dry.
AI estimate, not yet described
2018 · Comedy
A drink-driving power line worker from Wyoming climbs through Washington to become the most powerful vice president the United States has had. Told out of order, with jokes, charts and narration.
AI estimate, not yet described