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.
92 films tagged ambition, showing 50
Move a slider to sort by what films are like.
2025 · Horror
A young quarterback with a head injury he should not be playing through accepts a week of training at the desert compound of the ageing star he idolises. Mostly the two of them, and it turns strange fast.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
A West Virginia basketball player wins a local boxing contest and lets the coach who spotted her run her career, then marry her. It follows her rise through the 1990s, with a controlling husband in her corner.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Comedy
A lieutenant governor is handed the governor's office when her mentor quits, with fourteen months of his term left and a reporter already digging. Her estranged father picks the same week to reappear.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
Newly married to a debt-ridden academic, Hedda throws a party to win him a professorship, and the woman she once loved turns up with a new partner and a manuscript. One house, one night, and all talk.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A gold-medal student remakes himself as the college troublemaker to impress a girl, drops out with dozens of failed exams, and then lies his way into a job he never earned. Long, and it follows him for years.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Comedy
An ageing Colombian poet whose obsession has brought him nothing meets a teenage girl with real talent and sets about cultivating it. A tragicomedy that stays close to one man.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Musical
Two rappers from Dundee cannot get anyone in the record industry to take them seriously, so they put on American accents and spend three years pretending to be from California. Based on what the pair actually did.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Thriller
A finance prodigy joins a big investment bank as assistant to its star dealmaker, then an executive asks him to trick his mentor into signing off on falsified accounts. Most of it is deals and manoeuvring.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Romance
Two young people meet, drop everything and move to a new city together, where she chases a career as a chef and he cannot get himself going. The strain shows in the relationship.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A computer engineer in her thirties loses the funding for her tech project and takes a job on the till at a big electronics shop. A Spanish drama that stays with her while she works out what she wants.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Crime
A 1950s New York mob boss survives an assassination attempt ordered by his own underboss, and tells him he only wants to retire. The underboss does not believe him, and it goes from there.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A young artist in 1990s Russia turns into the spin doctor at the centre of the Kremlin while Vladimir Putin rises to power. It runs from the last days of the Soviet Union onward, seen from inside the room.
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
Little-known
2025 · Drama
The son of a Nagasaki yakuza boss is taken in as an apprentice by a great kabuki actor and grows up performing women's roles alongside the master's own son and heir. It runs close to three hours and covers decades.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A young graduate talks her way into a tech startup, suggests the name Tinder for its dating app, and learns what the industry thinks of women. It is a founder story, told fast.
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
Little-known
2025 · Drama
An eighteen-year-old promoter in 1975 Cologne talks her way past her conservative parents and a run of near-disasters to put a Keith Jarrett concert on. It is a true story about getting one night to happen.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
An unknown Copenhagen teacher wins the competition to build a monument at the end of Paris's grand axis, and is handed the biggest project in the country. Then he meets the engineers and the budget.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A post office clerk who published one book of poems fifty years ago is tracked down by a young admirer and taken up by a circle of rich would-be writers who treat him as a lost master. It is small and quiet, and it stays with him.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
The story of the pianist Lang Lang and the father who took him from Shenyang to the United States in the 1980s to play, while his mother held the household up behind them. It is one family organised entirely around a boy's practice.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Comedy
The CEO of an airline runs it under a strict no-dating rule, then has to work a big case with the reserved British lawyer she has just hired. A romantic comedy about two people trying not to.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
A young George Washington, refused a commission in the British Army for being colonial, is sent into the Ohio Country to tell the French to leave, and comes back with a regiment to command. It is a big historical war film.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Musical
A Dublin wedding singer plays a visiting pop star one of his own songs over a late night of drinking, then hears it everywhere six months later under somebody else's name. He sets out to prove he wrote it.
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
Little-known
2026 · Comedy
A failed tennis pro working at his father's club injures his wrist again and is told to play pickleball while it heals, which is the sport his father is fighting to keep off the courts. He is partnered with a woman getting over a divorce.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
Seven people in Prague between thirty and fifty take stock of their careers and their marriages: a self-promoting painter, his more talented wife, a lawyer on drugs. The stories run side by side.
AI estimate, not yet described
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
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
Little-known
2025 · Comedy
A startup boss who only knows how to do research has to win a huge government contract off a rival who is much better at buying favours, so he takes up golf. Most of it is deals angled for over drinks.
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
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
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