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

2008 · Crime

Two Irish hitmen are sent to a picture-postcard Belgian town to lie low after a job, and one of them is bored out of his mind. They wait for a phone call.

• IntimateClearly intimate
• Character-drivenClearly character-driven

1996 · Crime

A car salesman short of money hires two men to kidnap his own wife, and the plan goes wrong immediately. A very pregnant small-town police chief works it out at her own pace.

• RealisticClearly realistic

1964 · Comedy

An American general goes off the reservation and orders a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, and the men in the war room try to call it back. A comedy, played entirely straight.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2024 · Comedy

Two cousins who have drifted apart take a group tour of Poland to see the town their grandmother left. It is mostly the two of them talking, funny and awkward by turns.

• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• RealisticStrongly realistic
• IntimateClearly intimate

2023 · Drama

A Black novelist whose careful books nobody buys writes, as a joke, the crude street story publishers keep asking him for. Half of it is that joke going too far, half is his family at home.

• RealisticClearly realistic

2024 · Comedy

A Brooklyn sex worker meets the young son of a Russian oligarch, and a week of spending turns into a marriage his family has no plan to allow. Loud and fast, and the back half is mostly people arguing in cars and hallways.

• RealisticStrongly realistic

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.

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.

• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• IntimateClearly intimate

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.

• RealisticClearly realistic
• Character-drivenClearly character-driven

2019 · Comedy

A ten-year-old in the Hitler Youth, whose imaginary friend is a clownish Adolf Hitler, finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic. Broad silly jokes sitting right next to the worst thing in the room.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2023 · Comedy

A Victorian surgeon brings a drowned woman back to life, and she starts again from nothing, learning fast and then running off across Europe with a bad lawyer. Big sets, odd colors, and very blunt talk about sex.

• FantasticStrongly fantastic
• Character-drivenClearly character-driven

2002 · Comedy

A lonely man who sells novelty bathroom supplies, has seven sisters, and loses his temper in ways he cannot explain meets a woman who likes him anyway. Loud in odd places, and ninety minutes long.

• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• IntimateStrongly intimate

2020 · Comedy

A student turns up at a family shiva and finds her ex-girlfriend and the older man she has been seeing in the same crowded house. Seventy-eight minutes in one home, and it tightens the whole way.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• IntimateStrongly intimate
• Character-drivenClearly character-driven

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.

• FantasticClearly fantastic

2022 · Comedy

On a small Irish island in 1923, a man is told by his only friend, with no warning and no reason given, that they are not friends any more. Two men, a pub and a lot of talking, and it gets darker as it goes.

• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• IntimateStrongly intimate
• RealisticClearly realistic
• HeavyClearly heavy
• SlowClearly slow

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

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.

• RealisticClearly realistic

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.

• Character-drivenClearly character-driven

2023 · Comedy

A disliked teacher at a New England boarding school is stuck minding the boy nobody collected for Christmas 1970, along with the cook who has just lost her son. Slow, snowy, and mostly the three of them.

• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• RealisticStrongly realistic
• IntimateStrongly intimate
• SlowClearly slow

2015 · Science fiction

In a world where single people are sent to a hotel and given forty-five days to pair off or be turned into an animal of their choosing, a newly dumped man checks in. Everybody speaks flatly, on purpose, and the rules are followed to the letter.

• FantasticClearly fantastic

2001 · Comedy

Three grown-up child prodigies move back into their mother's New York townhouse at the same time as the father who walked out on them turns up saying he is dying. Deadpan, storybook-looking, and sadder than it first sounds.

• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven

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.

• FastStrongly fast

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.

• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• IntimateStrongly intimate
• RealisticClearly realistic

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.

• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• SlowClearly slow
• RealisticClearly realistic
• IntimateClearly intimate

2022 · Comedy

A model couple who argue over who pays for dinner are given free places on a cruise full of very rich passengers. Long, in three parts, and most of the comedy is about who has to be pleasant to whom.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

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.