No film here is good or bad. It is only like something.

2015 · Thriller

An FBI agent is recruited onto a cross-border task force going after a cartel, and is told very little about who she is working for or what the job actually is. She spends the film trying to find out.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• RealisticClearly realistic

2008 · Action

Batman, a new district attorney and a straight-arrow cop try to break organised crime in Gotham, and a criminal with no name and no plan starts pulling the city apart. Much of it is about what each of them will agree to do.

• HeavyClearly heavy
• EpicClearly epic

2015 · Drama

The Boston Globe's investigations desk works a story about abuse in the Catholic church, and keeps finding it is bigger than the last version of it. Mostly documents, doorsteps and phone calls.

• RealisticStrongly realistic

2005 · Action

A billionaire's son leaves Gotham after his parents are killed and spends years abroad learning to fight, then comes back to a city run by mobsters. A good half of it is the training and the building of the kit.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2015 · Crime

A Boston gangster becomes an FBI informant and uses the arrangement to take over the city, while the agent who signed him up keeps covering for him. Cold and talky, with long scenes of men at tables.

• RealisticStrongly realistic

2014 · Action

Steve Rogers is working for a spy agency he trusts less every week when an attack from inside it puts him on the run with Black Widow. It plays like a 1970s conspiracy film with fights in it.

• FastStrongly fast
• Plot-drivenClearly plot-driven

2007 · Mystery

Two private investigators from a working-class Boston neighbourhood are hired to look for a missing four-year-old in the places the police cannot reach. A detective story that keeps turning into an argument about what is right.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyStrongly heavy

2002 · Crime

A policeman has spent ten years undercover in a Hong Kong triad while one of the triad's men has spent the same ten years rising inside the police. Both sides find out there is a mole, and it moves fast.

• RealisticClearly realistic

2018 · Animation

A Japanese city banishes every dog to a rubbish island, and a boy flies out there alone to find his. The dogs talk in flat deadpan, and the whole thing is stop-motion built like a doll's house.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2007 · Thriller

A law firm's fixer is sent to clean up after their star litigator falls apart in the middle of defending a chemical company. Grown-ups in offices talking, and it tightens slowly.

• RealisticStrongly realistic

2001 · Animation

In a city powered by children's screams, the top scare team's day goes wrong when a little girl follows one of them home through a closet door. Bright and fast, made for kids with plenty of jokes over their heads.

• FantasticStrongly fantastic
• LightClearly light

2024 · Action

A former Marine cycling into a small Southern town to post his cousin's bail is knocked off his bike by police who take his cash and dare him to argue. He tries the front counter and the paperwork first.

• RealisticStrongly realistic

2022 · Drama

Two New York Times reporters spend months trying to get women to go on the record about a film producer. Mostly phone calls, doorsteps and newsroom talk.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyClearly heavy

2022 · Action

In his second year out at night, Batman follows a killer who leaves riddles addressed to him at every scene, and the trail runs into the city's oldest families. Long, rainy, and closer to a detective film than a superhero one.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2015 · Comedy

A handful of investors work out that the American housing market is built on bad loans and bet against it, while everyone tells them they are wrong. Fast and jokey, and it stops to explain the finance.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• ComplicatedClearly complicated
• FastClearly fast

2002 · Action

A man is fished out of the Mediterranean with two bullets in his back, no memory, and a bank account number under his skin. He finds out what he can do at the same time you do, and it keeps moving.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2006 · Crime

A young cop goes undercover inside a Boston crime boss's crew while one of the boss's own men rises through the state police, and each side works out there is a rat. It is long, loud and full of swearing.

• HeavyClearly heavy
• RealisticClearly realistic

2016 · Comedy

A hopeless private eye and a man who breaks bones for a living end up working the same missing-girl case in 1977 Los Angeles. It is a detective story played for laughs, with the two of them bickering the whole way.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2017 · Drama

In 1971 the Washington Post gets hold of a secret government history of the Vietnam war, and its owner has to decide whether to print with the courts already involved. Rooms, phones and deadlines, and no action at all.

• RealisticStrongly realistic

2001 · Crime

A rookie's first day with the LAPD narcotics unit is spent in a car with a detective who has his own way of doing things. One day, mostly two men talking, and the ground keeps shifting under the new guy.

• HeavyClearly heavy

2018 · Crime

Four women in Chicago are left holding their husbands' debts after a robbery goes wrong, and decide to carry out the job the men had planned next. A heist film that spends as much time on city politics and grief.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyClearly heavy

2014 · Comedy

Six separate stories from Argentina about people who reach the end of their patience and act on it. Each runs about twenty minutes, and each one escalates further than you expect.

Sits near the middle on every axis.