711 Best Discussion-sparking Movies to Watch (Page 28)

It’s no coincidence that many of the highest-acclaimed movies are also controversial. Serving beyond entertainment, these stories provoke essential social dialogues. As a case in point, here are the best discussion-sparking movies and shows available to stream now.

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406. The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, 2016

	
Most sports biopics are centered around winners– their drive, their spirit, and their determination to beat the competition, and maybe win some glory for their respective teams, hometowns, or countries. The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki instead focuses on a Finnish boxer that lost a match. Shot in 16mm black and white film stock, writer-director Juho Kuosmanen captures the man, not the legend, in sequences that feel like decades-old memories that draws you into his story, his humble character, and the motivations that drive him, a yearning for love rather than bragging rights, trophies, and nationalistic pride. It’s such a charming twist to the genre, one that recognizes a different kind of masculinity. While Mäki might not be the world’s best boxer, this film suggests that he might be one of the happiest, forgoing an important match for a marriage that ended up lasting his lifetime.Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Aaro Airola, Anna Airola, Claes Andersson, Deogracias Masomi, Eero Milonoff, Elma Milonoff, Emilia Jansson, Esko Barquero, Heikki Metsämäki, Iiris Anttila, Jarkko Lahti, Jarmo Kiuru, Joanna Haartti, Joonas Saartamo, Leimu Leisti, Mika Melender, Olli Rahkonen, Oona Airola, Pia Andersson, Salla Yli-Luopa, Tiina Weckström, Viljami Lahti
Director: Juho Kuosmanen
Rating: NR

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407. The Disappearance of Shere Hite, 2023

	
Feminism has made plenty of strides in multiple areas, but even in the era of free love, talking about sex was difficult, and certain figures were dismissed just because of it. The Disappearance of Shere Hite reexamines the titular forgotten feminist figure that simply focused on the female orgasm, giving a second look at her immediate rise and fall in the American media, and the reasons for her leaving the country. With Dakota Johnson’s soft voice, an excellent selection of archival footage, and Hite’s deeply personal words, the film paints a portrait of a mild-mannered, self-possessed woman, but it also reveals the heartbreakingly repetitive vitriol that affects these open discussions today.Genre: Documentary
Actor: Dakota Johnson, Shere Hite
Director:  Nicole Newnham

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408. The Beast, 2024

	
Are connections truly fated, completely chosen, or purely circumstantial? The slow tragedy of Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle hangs entirely on the question, which captivated readers and filmmakers with the concept, including Bertrand Bonello, which forms the foundations of 2023’s The Beast. Bonello lets loose The Beast in the Jungle into an AI playbox of time and space and destiny, transforming the simple examination of human life into a sci-fi epic, a moving period romance, and an existential mystery all at once. It can occasionally feel a bit jumbled up at times, with the way Bonello jumps across lives, but Léa Seydoux and George MacKay hold everything together with their performance, making La Bête deeply striking, if a bit derivative.Genre: Drama, Romance, Science Fiction
Actor: Alice Barnole, Bertrand Bonello, Dasha Nekrasova, Elina Löwensohn, George MacKay, Guslagie Malanda, Isabelle Prim, Julia Faure, Laurent Lacotte, Léa Seydoux, Lukas Ionesco, Marta Hoskins, Martin Scali, Rémi Canaple, Tiffany Hofstetter, Xavier Dolan
Director: Bertrand Bonello
Rating: NR

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409. The Banker, 2020

Revolutionaries come in many forms. Some prefer to rally in the streets, while others, like the businessman Bernard Garrett, championed race equality in his field of finance. Discreetly and rather dangerously, he purchased buildings and offered loans to his fellow Black men at a time when they were denied these rights and more. It was an ingenious plan hatched at a precarious time, and the film captures how Garrett (Anthony Mackie) managed to pull it off (for the most part).

The Banker doesn't get as thrilling as it could be, but it is fueled by a smart script that unapologetically gets to the nitty-gritty math of it all, as well as engaging performances by Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, and Nicholas Hoult. The film effectively revives Garrett's inspiring story for a modern audience, turning it into an important piece of American history that won't soon be forgotten.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Anthony Mackie, Bill Kelly, Chris Gann, Colm Meaney, Craig Welzbacher, Daniel Johnson, David Maldonado, Gregory Alan Williams, James DuMont, Jaylon Gordon, Jessie T. Usher, Michael Harney, Nia Long, Nicholas Hoult, Paul Ben-Victor, Samuel L. Jackson, Taylor Black

Director: George Nolfi

Rating: PG-13

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410. Temple Grandin, 2010

	
When depicting a person known best for an advocacy, you have to be accurate to their story, but it’s rare to see a biopic match the ideas of that advocacy in its direction. It’s because of this that the HBO film Temple Grandin is great. While made for TV, it’s not a by-the-numbers biopic that just depicts the academic’s life straight. No, instead, the film experiments with visual ways to depict her unique visual intelligence– as Grandin’s autism also granted her photogenic memory, an above-average instinct for mechanical smarts, and a focus and drive to understand that’s not as shakable as other neurotypical academics. This novel approach matches the very advocacies she lived throughout her life– the systematic, more humane treatment in slaughterhouses, and the idea that autism doesn’t mean deficiency, it just needs support to allow that different intelligence to thrive.Genre: Drama, History
Actor: Barry Tubb, Blair Bomar, Brady Coleman, Carl Savering, Catherine O'Hara, Charles Baker, Cherami Leigh, Claire Danes, David Blackwell, David Born, David Strathairn, Gabriel Luna, Gerry Robert Byrne, Joe Nemmers, Julia Ormond, Kurt Cole, Melissa Farman, Michael Crabtree, Michael D. Conway, Nicole Holt, Richard Dillard, Rick Espaillat, Tamara Jolaine, Toby Metcalf, Xochitl Romero
Director: Mick Jackson

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411. Swan Song, 2023

	
If you’re hard working and well-situated enough, you get to chase and achieve and live out your dreams for your whole life. But if you’re lucky enough, you get to choose how you’ll leave. Swan Song is the journey Canadian ballet icon Karen Kain took to direct one last production of Swan Lake just before retiring as artistic director of National Ballet of Canada. Director Chelsea McMullan takes a fairly standard approach in her documentary, but to be fair, the subject matter is interesting by itself. The beauty of the ballet has long captivated cinema, so it’s unsurprising that the beauty is present, but McMullan effortlessly highlights the way Kain shaped her directorial style based on her own experience, with more humane and collaborative leadership that allowed the country’s troupe to shine.Genre: Documentary
Actor: Jurgita Dronina, Karen Kain, Shaelynn Estrada, Siphesihle November
Director: Chelsea McMullan
Rating: NR

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412. Stand and Deliver, 1988

	
Education isn’t always a guarantee, especially in less privileged areas that are underfunded, overlooked, and underprioritized, in the belief that these kids wouldn’t amount to much in the end. That being said, sometimes, what changes that fate is having a teacher that believed in his students and encouraged them to learn more than what they were expected. Stand and Deliver is a dramatization of the real life Jaime Escalante, who transformed a math program in an east LA high school to the point where his entire class ace California’s calculus test. The film definitely takes some dramatic liberties, but it does capture a sense of his quiet determination, the personality that pushed him to believe in and connect with students differently. While Escalante’s program eventually ended due to admin changes and staff in-fighting, Stand and Deliver is a reminder of the importance of nurturing ganas, or desire, in the classroom.Genre: Drama
Actor: Andy Garcia, Betty Carvalho, Bodie Olmos, Carmen Argenziano, Edward James Olmos, Eliot, Estelle Harris, Graham Galloway, Ingrid Oliu, Irene Olga López, Karla Montana, Lou Diamond Phillips, Lydia Nicole, Manuel Benitez, Mark Phelan, Rosanna DeSoto, Vanessa Marquez, Virginia Paris, Will Gotay
Director: Ramón Menéndez
Rating: PG

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413. Small Things Like These, 2024

	
Small Things Like These is the kind of film that doesn’t have a grand resolution, a dramatic climax, or a widespread shift that would change the world forever. What happens might not even change the country, or the town Bill Furlong lives in. But that doesn’t mean the film is unimportant. While Cillian Murphy masterfully reckons with Furlong’s conscience, the community is silent… So too is the score, but it challenges the automatic flinch when we hear the background– the screams, the wailing, and the pain. It challenges the way we, and the town of New Ross, try to make sense of the sounds, explaining it away with more plausible, more palatable reasons, or justifying them with excuses. Small Things Like These can be a tad understated in its approach, but it’s a smart comparison to the way community can silence the conscience, and how abuse can lay rampant in secret.Genre: Drama
Actor: Abby Fitz, Agnes O'Casey, Aidan O'Hare, Amy De Bhrún, Cillian Murphy, Clare Dunne, Eileen Walsh, Emily Watson, Helen Behan, Joanne Crawford, Mark McKenna, Michelle Fairley, Patrick Ryan, Peter Claffey, Zara Devlin
Director: Tim Mielants
Rating: PG-13

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414. Searching for Bobby Fischer, 1993

	
Generally, a mentorship is a great way to find guidance and direction, but rarely do we discuss the importance of finding the right mentor– or the right mentors– and that it sometimes takes a while to find a great fit. Searching for Bobby Fischer is about real-life child chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, but rather than depicting the straightforward mentorship plot we’ve seen in many sports films before, the film captures the journey of a boy who needs both the freedom and the structure for his chess career. Searching for Bobby Fischer does take on the tone and style typical of these child prodigy biopics, but Waitzkin’s story is worth telling, especially for children trying to find their own voice outside of their guardians.Genre: Drama
Actor: Andrew Sardella, Anthony Heald, Austin Pendleton, Ben Kingsley, Bobby Fischer, Caroline Yeager, Chelsea Moore, Dan Hedaya, David Paymer, Hal Scardino, Joan Allen, Joe Mantegna, John Bourgeois, Josh Kornbluth, Josh Mostel, Laura Linney, Laurence Fishburne, Maria Ricossa, Max Pomeranc, Michael Nirenberg, Nathan Carter, R.D. Reid, Robert Stephens, Steven Randazzo, Tom McGowan, Tony De Santis, Tony Shalhoub, Vasek Simek, William Colgate, William H. Macy
Director: Steven Zaillian
Rating: PG

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415. Sankofa, 1993

	
While most are familiar with Hollywood depictions of the transatlantic slave trade, there were also other countries that depicted this terrible time period, including countries from the African continent. Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima self-funded and self-distributed Sankofa in its initial release, but despite the lack of screens, it still managed to become a landmark classic thankfully restored. Like plenty of films on the topic, Gerima creates a harrowing depiction of the slave owners’ evil, but unlike others, it’s more interested in the difficult dynamics between the enslaved, the ways they sought refuge and freedom in each other, and the inner lives of the community they shared despite the terror, all through Gerima’s striking images and the masterfully mixed soundscape, both in the soundtrack and various accents. It’s not perfect, and it’s definitely not easy to watch, but Sankofa has a distinct vision that needs to be seen.Genre: Drama, Fantasy, History, Science Fiction
Actor: Afemo Omilami, Alexandra Duah, Kofi Ghanaba, Mutabaruka, Mzuri, Nick Medley, Oyafunmike Ogunlano, Reggie Carter, Reginald Carter
Director: Haile Gerima

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416. Reversal of Fortune, 1990

This gripping legal drama is based on a case we still don’t know the truth of — which might make it seem like a pointless exercise, were it not for the fact that it’s infectiously fascinated by greater questions than whether wealthy socialite Claus von Bülow (Jeremy Irons) really did attempt to kill wife Sunny (Glenn Close), who was left comatose by the mysterious event. After being convicted, Claus recruited for his appeal then-hotshot lawyer Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver), now better known for personal allegations and his defense of men even more nefarious than Claus. Reversal follows the tricky legal argument-crafting process, embedding us with Dershowitz’s elite team as they meticulously comb through the prosecution’s theory to find the hairline crack they need to break the case open.

But why go to all this effort to exonerate an unlikeable and frustratingly enigmatic man like Claus, whom Dershowitz apparently doesn’t even believe himself? While we’re morbidly fascinated by unknowable cases like this, it’s the passion of the defense that’s really puzzling — something Reversal shrewdly gets as it wrestles with the ethical arguments for and against Dershowitz’s involvement, making for a pre-courtroom drama whose power extends beyond that of the particular case it documents.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Alan Pottinger, Annabella Sciorra, Bill Camp, Brian Delate, Bruno Eyron, Christine Baranski, Christine Dunford, Constance Shulman, Edwin McDonough, Ericka Klein, Felicity Huffman, Fisher Stevens, Frank Stellato, Frederick Neumann, Glenn Close, Gordon Joseph Weiss, Jack Gilpin, Jad Mager, JD Cullum, Jeremy Irons, Jessika Cardinahl, Johann Carlo, Julie Hagerty, Keith Reddin, Larry Sherman, Leo Leyden, LisaGay Hamilton, Malachy McCourt, Mitchell Whitfield, Redman Maxfield, Ron Silver, Sarah Fearon, Stephen Mailer, Tom Wright, Uta Hagen

Director: Barbet Schroeder

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417. Queen of Katwe, 2016

	
If you wanted to watch a woman that rose to the top rankings of chess, playing piece-to-piece against some of the greatest chess players of the world, you would probably think about watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, but you might be disappointed to find out that Beth Harmon isn’t real. However, there was one film before the iconic miniseries that depicted the story of a real life female chess player, one that clawed her and her family out of poverty through the game, and that story is Queen of Katwe. As a Disney original film, it does go through plenty of the familiar beats we’ve seen in the company’s previous works, but Mira Nair’s direction and the excellent performances of Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo create an underdog story that feels so sincere, so heartfelt, that it reportedly inspired Ugandan teenagers to do better in their national exams.Genre: Drama
Actor: David Oyelowo, Ethan Nazario Lubega, Lupita Nyong'o, Madina Nalwanga, Martin Kabanza, Nikita Waligwa, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Taryn "Kay" Kyaze
Director:  Mira Nair
Rating: PG

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418. Priscilla, 2023

	
There are a striking number of similarities between Priscilla and director Sofia Coppola’s earlier offering, Marie Antoinette: both revolve around 14-year-old girls hand-picked to be partners to more powerful men in long-unconsummated relationships, and both girls are emotionally cut adrift and forced to live in gilded cages. But where Coppola’s Barbie-pink historical biopic is punkily anachronistic and riotous, Priscilla is a far more muted affair. There are no wild parties at Graceland as there were at Versailles; instead, Priscilla’s emotional isolation, thousands of miles away from her family, is made disconcertingly clear in shots of the infatuated teenager (played by Cailee Spaeny) anxiously ruminating alone in endless lavish rooms while the decade-older King (Jacob Elordi) plays away. Elvis’ emotional manipulation of Priscilla is conveyed subtly but inescapably — and the full sickening, insidious effect comes to the fore thanks to Spaeny’s astonishing performance. Based on Priscilla Presley’s own memoir, this is a bubble-bursting biopic, and it’s so compelling and painfully immersive that we never feel, even for a moment, like we’re watching the B side — instead, Spaeny and Coppola convincingly assert that this was the real story all along.Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Alanis Peart, Ari Cohen, Cailee Spaeny, Conni Miu, Dagmara Domińczyk, Dan Abramovici, Dan Beirne, Deanna Jarvis, E. Fegan DeCordova, Emily Mitchell, Gwynne Phillips, Jacob Elordi, Jorja Cadence, Josette Halpert, Kamilla Kowal, Kelaiah Guiel, Kelly Penner, Luke Humphrey, Lynne Griffin, Mary Kelly, Olivia Barrett, R Austin Ball, Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, Sarah Dodd, Stephanie Moore, Stephanie Moran, Tim Dowler-Coltman, Tim Post
Director:  Sofia Coppola
Rating: R

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419. Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, 2023

Brooke Shields talks openly about her controversial past in this two-part documentary on Hulu. Through interviews and archival footage, the former child actor and model walks us through every contentious event in her life, from starring in the mature film Pretty Baby at age 12 to modeling tight jeans for Calvin Klein at age 16.

It’s a disturbing and enraging account of child exploitation, and the documentary does well to frame this as a system-wide issue instead of an isolated incident.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Brooke Shields, Drew Barrymore, Judd Nelson, Laura Linney, Lionel Richie, Louis Malle, Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise

Director: Lana Wilson

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420. Pom Poko, 1994

	
This 1994 animated gem from Studio Ghibli is one of their many environmentally-conscious works. In a world of shape-shifting animals and environmental conservation, Pom Poko beautifully combines folklore, humor, and social commentary to tell a tale of raccoons fighting to save their forest home from human encroachment. The animation is stunning, showcasing Ghibli's signature attention to detail and vibrant visuals. But it's the heartfelt story and lovable characters that really steal the show. Although it is slow-paced, Pom Poko is a thought-provoking and entertaining film that will make you laugh, cry, and appreciate the wonders of nature.Genre: Adventure, Animation, Drama, Fantasy
Actor: Akira Fukuzawa, Akira Kamiya, Beichou Katsura, Bunshi Katsura, Bunshi Katsura Vi, Gannosuke Ashiya, Hayashiya Shōzō IX, Kobuhei Hayashiya, Kokondei Shinchou, Kosan Yanagiya, Makoto Nonomura, Megumi Hayashibara, Nijiko Kiyokawa, Norihei Miki, Osamu Kato, Shigeru Izumiya, Shincho Kokontei, Shozo Hayashiya, Takehiro Murata, Yorie Yamashita, Yumi Ichihara, Yuriko Ishida
Director: Isao Takahata
Rating: PG

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