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

2001 · Romance

A shy Paris waitress decides to quietly arrange other people's lives for the better, and finds her own much harder to touch. Bright colours, small schemes, and a lot of narration.

• LightClearly light

1994 · Romance

Two Hong Kong policemen, both recently left by someone, drift through the same late-night food stall in two separate stories. Loose, fast-cut, and more about routine than plot.

• IntimateClearly intimate
• Character-drivenClearly character-driven

2019 · Romance

A painter is sent to a remote island to paint a reluctant bride's wedding portrait without her sitting for it, so she has to watch her closely and work from memory. Almost no men appear.

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

2014 · Horror

In an Iranian ghost town, a lonely young man with a nice car crosses paths with a skateboarding vampire in a chador. Black and white, very slow, and more mood than plot.

• SlowClearly slow

2010 · Action

A dozen samurai are quietly gathered to kill a lord whose cruelty the shogunate would rather not discuss, and they turn a whole village into a trap. The last three quarters of an hour is one long battle.

• Plot-drivenClearly plot-driven
• HeavyClearly heavy

2007 · Science fiction

A man spots something through binoculars behind his new house, walks into the woods to look, and ends up somewhere he cannot easily explain. Almost all of it happens on one hillside over a single afternoon.

• ComplicatedStrongly complicated
• Plot-drivenStrongly plot-driven
• IntimateClearly intimate

2006 · Drama

A Stasi officer in 1984 East Berlin is assigned to bug a playwright's flat and listen, day after day. What he hears starts to work on him.

• RealisticStrongly realistic

2009 · Comedy

Two friends go looking for the classmate who vanished after they survived a brutal engineering college, and the search takes them back through their student years. Broad jokes and songs, then it turns serious.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

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.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• RealisticClearly realistic

2018 · Horror

A family lives on a farm in total silence, because anything that hears them comes for them. Most of it is signed or whispered, with long stretches where nobody makes a sound at all.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2019 · Thriller

A family with no money talk their way one by one into jobs with a rich household on the other side of the city. The first half plays as a con, and they are good at it.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• ComplicatedClearly complicated

2011 · Drama

A Tehran wife wants to leave the country and her husband will not leave his father, and the woman they hire to mind him ends up taking them to court. Almost all of it is people arguing, and everyone has a point.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• IntimateClearly intimate
• HeavyClearly heavy

2016 · Animation

A boy who led the bullying of a deaf classmate in primary school tracks her down years later to try to say something to her. Most of it is quiet, awkward conversation between teenagers who do not know how to start.

• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• IntimateClearly intimate
• HeavyClearly heavy

2017 · Drama

A Seoul cabbie takes a big fare to drive a German reporter down to Gwangju in May 1980, with no idea what is happening in the city. It starts as a comedy about a man chasing money and does not stay one.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyClearly heavy

2022 · War

A German schoolboy signs up in 1917 with his friends, excited about the war, and is sent to the trenches of the Western Front. It is loud and muddy and there is almost no let-up.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• RealisticStrongly realistic

2012 · Drama

An elderly Paris couple, both retired music teachers, are living quietly together when the wife has a stroke and her husband takes on her care. Almost all of it happens inside their apartment.

• SlowStrongly slow
• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyStrongly heavy
• IntimateStrongly intimate
• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven

2023 · Drama

A man falls from the top floor of a chalet in the Alps and his wife goes on trial, with their partly sighted son the only other person in the house. Most of it is courtroom argument about a marriage.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• ComplicatedStrongly complicated
• HeavyClearly heavy
• IntimateClearly intimate
• Character-drivenClearly character-driven

2020 · Comedy

Four schoolteachers in their forties test a theory that people do better with a bit of alcohol in their blood, so they start drinking at work. It follows the four of them over a term and swings between funny and sad.

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

2006 · Action

A young man from a forest village is taken captive in a raid and marched to a Mayan city, and then he runs. Most of the film is a chase through the jungle, very violent, in Mayan with subtitles.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• Plot-drivenStrongly plot-driven
• FastClearly fast
• SimpleClearly simple

2010 · Animation

A family of four-inch people live under the floorboards of a country house, borrowing what they need, until the daughter is seen by the boy who has come to stay. Slow and quiet, with everything sized from her point of view.

• FantasticClearly fantastic
• IntimateClearly intimate

2015 · Action

A young man raised in a village under a huge waterfall climbs it and finds a kingdom that has been waiting a long time for someone like him. Enormous: armies, cliffs, and fights that ignore what a body can actually do.

• EpicStrongly epic
• Plot-drivenClearly plot-driven
• FantasticClearly fantastic

2000 · Action

A class of Japanese ninth-graders is taken to an island, handed weapons, and told that in three days only one of them may be left. It moves fast and does not soften what the kids do to each other.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• FastClearly fast

2013 · Romance

A French teenager drifting through school meets an older art student with blue hair, and her whole life reorganises around her. It runs three hours and stays very close to her face.

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

2018 · Thriller

A young man getting by on delivery work runs into a girl from his old neighbourhood, and when she comes back from a trip abroad she has a rich, easy-going friend with her. Very slow, and it holds a lot back.

• SlowStrongly slow
• RealisticStrongly realistic
• Character-drivenClearly character-driven
• HeavyClearly heavy

2018 · Drama

A twelve-year-old boy living rough in Beirut takes his parents to court for having him. Most of it follows him around the city day to day, shot hand-held with people who had not acted before.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyStrongly heavy
• Character-drivenClearly character-driven

2002 · Crime

Two boys grow up in a Rio housing project through the sixties and seventies, one drifting toward photography and the other toward the drug trade. It moves fast and jumps between dozens of lives.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• RealisticStrongly realistic
• FastClearly fast

2022 · Drama

Two thirteen-year-old boys who have been inseparable their whole lives start a new school, where the other children ask what exactly they are to each other. Quiet, slow, and close to their faces.

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

2000 · Action

A master swordsman hands over his famous blade to be retired, and it is stolen the same night by someone who fights as well as he does. Wire-work fights over rooftops, with a lot of longing in between.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

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.

• RealisticClearly realistic

2022 · Mystery

A detective who cannot sleep looks into a man's fall from a mountain, and spends more and more of his time watching the dead man's wife. It moves slowly, and much of it is two people being careful about what they say.

• RealisticClearly realistic
• IntimateClearly intimate

2008 · Drama

A cellist whose orchestra folds moves back to his home town and takes a job he did not expect: preparing the dead for their families before burial. Slow and gentle, with a lot of quiet ceremony.

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

2004 · War

The last days in Hitler's bunker under Berlin, watched mostly by the young woman hired to type his letters. Almost all of it is underground, in German, with the shelling going on above.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyStrongly heavy

2021 · Drama

A stage actor takes a job in Hiroshima directing a Chekhov play, and the theatre assigns him a young woman to drive him there and back each day. Three hours, mostly conversation, much of it in the car.

• SlowStrongly slow
• RealisticStrongly realistic
• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• IntimateStrongly intimate
• HeavyClearly heavy

2024 · Musical

A Mexico City lawyer with no prospects is hired by a cartel boss who wants help disappearing from his own life and becoming someone else. It is sung, and it swings between crime story and dance number.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2022 · Drama

A grey donkey is taken from the circus where he worked and passes from one owner to the next across Poland and Italy. There is barely any dialogue and no plot to speak of; you watch what happens to him.

• HeavyClearly heavy
• SlowClearly slow

2023 · Comedy

Two lonely people in Helsinki, both scraping by on bad jobs, meet at a karaoke bar and keep losing track of each other. Short, very quiet, deadpan, and in Finnish.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• IntimateStrongly intimate
• SlowStrongly slow
• SimpleClearly simple
• Character-drivenClearly character-driven

2014 · Drama

A Swedish family are having lunch on a ski resort terrace when an avalanche comes at them, and they spend the rest of the holiday arguing about those few seconds. Uncomfortable to watch, and mostly one hotel.

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

2023 · Science fiction

A pilot who came home from the war alive and ashamed is rebuilding a life in flattened Tokyo when something huge starts coming ashore. Half of it is a family drama, half is a city being wrecked.

• EpicClearly epic

2003 · Comedy

A young man in East Berlin whose mother sleeps through the fall of the Wall is told any shock could kill her, so he rebuilds the vanished country inside her flat. Gentle comedy with real history running behind it.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2002 · Action

A nameless swordsman is brought before the king of Qin to explain how he killed the three assassins who had been hunting him, and tells it more than once. Each version gets its own color, and the fights are closer to dance than to brawling.

• EpicClearly epic

2004 · Action

In ninth-century China two policemen set a trap for a rebel group by freeing a blind dancer they believe will lead them to it. The fights are long and colourful and mostly outdoors.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2004 · Animation

A quiet young hatmaker is cursed into the body of an old woman and takes shelter in the walking castle of a wizard everyone is afraid of. Hand-drawn, warm, and it wanders rather than hurries.

• FantasticStrongly fantastic

2024 · Drama

In Rio in 1971, a mother of five keeps the household running after soldiers take her husband away for questioning under Brazil's dictatorship. It stays close to the family and covers many years.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• HeavyStrongly heavy

2000 · Romance

Two neighbours in 1960s Hong Kong work out that their husband and wife are seeing each other, and start spending evenings together. Slow and quiet, mostly small talk in corridors and stairwells, in Cantonese.

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

2010 · Drama

Twins in Montreal open their mother's will and find two letters: one for a father they thought was dead, one for a brother they never knew about. They go looking, and it keeps cutting back to her life.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• RealisticClearly realistic
• ComplicatedClearly complicated

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

2009 · War

In occupied France a squad of American soldiers hunts Nazis behind the lines while a young cinema owner in Paris makes plans of her own. It is built out of long talking scenes that keep tightening.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2008 · Action

A quiet martial arts master in 1930s Foshan avoids fighting until the Japanese occupation leaves him nowhere to stand. Fights every ten minutes, and the rest is his household getting poorer.

• SimpleClearly simple

2001 · Musical

A village in colonial India can skip three years of tax if it beats the British garrison at cricket, a game none of them has played. Nearly four hours, with songs, and the last hour is the match.

• EpicClearly epic

2008 · Horror

A bullied twelve-year-old in a snowed-in Stockholm suburb makes friends with the girl who has moved in next door and only comes out at night. It is very quiet and very cold, and it takes its time.

• IntimateStrongly intimate
• HeavyClearly heavy
• SlowClearly slow