Usually, what makes a movie memorable are the scenes and provoke raw, unadulterated emotions. Whether you’re into suspenseful thrillers or emotional dramas, we’ve rounded up the best movies and shows to stream now for a raw emotional experience.
Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: André Julien, Béatrice Dalle, Catherine D'At, Claude Aufaure, Claude Confortès, Clémentine Célarié, Consuelo De Haviland, Dominique Besnehard, Dominique Pinon, Gérard Darmon, Jacques Mathou, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Nathalie Dalyan, Philippe Laudenbach, Raoul Billerey, Robin Bernard, Simon de La Brosse, Vincent Lindon
Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix
This installment in Netflix's series of sports documentary films, Untold, relies too heavily on information to pad its runtime. Even with intriguing parallel storylines that explain what Victor Conte was doing to secretly deal performance-enhancing drugs, and what investigators were doing to try and catch him, the story begins to repeat itself, forgetting to place more emphasis on analyzing this information and finding personal insights into the BALCO scandal. That said, Victor Conte himself is admittedly a fascinating criminal, seemingly remorseful for the lives and careers he's damaged, but still fascinated by the idea of synthesizing substances to push sports beyond their physical limits. By the end, there's a real moral grayness to this whole ordeal, putting into question what some athletes' goals really are, and whether or not certain sports organizations willingly play along with fraudulence or not.
Genre: Crime, Documentary
Actor: Barry Bonds, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, John Ashcroft, Matt Biondi
Director: Bryan Storkel
Starting off as the 24th(!) overall season of this long-running TV franchise at the time of its release, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon understandably treads very familiar ground: general paranoia and distrust, humanity divided into survivalist factions, a search for a cure. In its early episodes, though, this series gets a boost from its uniquely historical setting—which creates a feeling of these characters stuck in a previous century—as well as a strong focus on religious faith in the time of the apocalypse. Still, this spin-off continues to go through the same action-horror motions, sticking to what's expected at the expense of any suspense or meaningful development for its stoic title character.
Genre: Action & Adventure, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Actor: Adam Nagaitis, Anne Charrier, Clémence Poésy, Laïka Blanc-Francard, Louis Puech Scigliuzzi, Norman Reedus, Romain Levi
It’s easy to identify what Bone Cold is trying to be, which is a psychological thriller that explores the traumatized psyches of military personnel. And initially, the film achieves this goal. The inhuman creature that creeps from behind genuinely startles, and the movie is able to effectively connect the monster to lead sniper Jon Bryant’s (Jonathan Stoddard) decaying mental health. But the lack of a strong style, cohesive vision, and adequate budget betray the movie’s premise and turn it instead into a jumbled mess. The creature, upon closer inspection, is no more than a pixelated CGI creation, while Jon’s PTSD is diminished into melodrama fodder. Moreover, the two-hour runtime is bloated with awkward close-ups and overlong sequences that don’t add much to the central point the film is trying to make. If Bone Cold were ever to be the haunting, heavy movie it set out to be, then it might’ve been worth it for writer-director Billy Hanson to let the film incubate a bit more and invest in the fantasy, the world-building, the weirdness, and the details. These small things add up, and in this case, they fall short of what Bone Cold could’ve been.
Genre: Action, Horror, Thriller
Actor: Elise Berggreen, Jennifer Khoe, Jonathan Stoddard, Matt Munroe, Trinity Bliss
Director: Billy Hanson
The depressing reality when it comes to a documentary like Sound of the Police is that new, equally damning examples of state-sponsored violence—perpetrated by cops against vulnerable citizens—will likely continue to pop up at a pace that films just can't keep up with. And that eyewitness reports spread throughout social media will provide even more horrific (and necessary) images that movie studios may not be willing to show on screen. But while this film feels more like a basic crash course on racist American policing (touching on its roots in slavery, sympathetic media portrayals of cops, and the importance of cameras today), it still touches on most of the essential arguments that should leave anybody with a heart in disgust. There may not be much of a through line or a proper conclusion here, but it's still good to be reminded of the kind of tyranny that Black America lives through today.
Genre: Documentary
Director: Stanley Nelson, Valerie Scoon
Third dates usually feel more casual than that depicted in Longest Third Date, but with 2020 shifting everyone’s plans, it’s not surprising it shifted romantic relationships too. The documentary doesn’t feel like a factual and organized documentary, cobbled up together from the couple’s vlog and filmed interviews once they got back to the States, but it’s definitely a unique story, one that’s only been saved because of Matt’s influencer aspirations. It’s certainly watchable, with a spry 75-minute runtime, and with understandable conflicts, like flight cancellations and tipped over cars. The film does feel like it glosses things over, and Khani seems to be the private type of person, uncomfortable with the camera, but Longest Third Date, even with all its reality TV style, also feels somewhat like a cultural artifact. It’s not deep, but it does feel like opening a time capsule.
Genre: Documentary
Actor: Khani Le, Matt Robertson
Director: Brent Hodge
Frankly, In the Morning of La Petite Mort is not as provocative nor as erotic as implied by the title. Sure, there are sex scenes, with plenty of nude shots. But these scenes come about silently, nearly without dialogue, with a lack of passion in between most of the lovers, a lack of connectedness. It’s no less visceral, though, as it mirrors the same disconnection the characters feel, being at the margins of Taipei. While it’s sometimes muddled with certain subplots, the haunting, strikingly-shot images stirs some compassion, especially with the cast’s performances, but the indirect approach makes the film feel unclear and sometimes unrealistic.
Genre: Drama
Actor: Cres Chuang, Huei-ling Jan, Ivy Yin, Jieh-Wen King, Tzu-Chiang Wang, Yun-Chih Wang, Yûsuke Fukuchi
Director: Yu-Lin Wang
For its first half-hour or so, Saw X really doesn't feel like an entry in the long-running horror series commonly described by detractors as "torture porn." It's quiet and steadily paced and does a better job than many horror sequels and reboots of recent years in making its primary antagonist a sympathetic human being. The way the character of John Kramer (AKA Jigsaw) has been written here—elevated by Tobin Bell's performance—gives even the film's later, more extreme segments a hint of soulfulness, since we're made to feel exactly what drives his self-appointed mission to exact justice on other terrible people.
But this new, dramatic spin on Saw doesn't last for very long, and this tenth film eventually slides back into its trademark cheesy elements that won't make any new converts to the series. Overly aggressive editing and music, hammy performances from the supporting cast, and death traps that grow increasingly unimaginative all dull the greater impact that Saw X could have had. The batch of victims we get this time around are somewhat compelling given their connections they have to each other and to Kramer himself, but they're still ultimately more of the same—just cannon fodder waiting for execution.
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Actor: Costas Mandylor, Craig Hurley, Donagh Gordon, Jorge Briseño, Joshua Okamoto, Katie Barberi, Kerry Ardra, Lucía Gómez-Robledo, Michael Beach, Natasha Goss, Octavio Hinojosa Martínez, Paulette Hernández, Renata Vaca, Shawnee Smith, Steven Brand, Synnøve Macody Lund, Tobin Bell
Director: Kevin Greutert
With expired film stock, seemingly random shots, not much dialogue, and virtually no plot, there is little to recommend It is Night in America for casual viewing. It is definitely experimental, and as director, editor, and sound designer Ana Vaz presents these shots of animals and urban landscapes, it doesn’t feel like it’s meant for entertainment. But there’s a curiously poignant tone, with the blue tint darkening the cityscape, in their eyes. Night falls for these creatures, who once had a home in this city, and all they can do is survive. É Noite na América isn’t quite the eco-horror it proclaims to be, but its moody and trancelike direction is an interesting approach to the nature documentary genre.
Genre: Documentary
Director: Ana Vaz
Fear the Night has an exciting premise and finds a competent lead in the ever-dependable Maggie Q, who delivers both heart and action in this home invasion thriller. But the film just has too many loose ends to be taken seriously. The attackers’ motivations, when the film finally reveals them, are plain silly and render the entire thing limp. The attempt at gender commentary is equally flimsy, and so is every other bid to be believable. In the wake of a shootout, for instance, you can clearly see the actress breathing peacefully after being supposedly dead. Moments like this make the film more funny than frightening, and much more tiresome than any slasher should be.
Genre: Action, Thriller
Actor: Brenda Meaney, Gia Crovatin, Kat Foster, Maggie Q, Travis Hammer
Director: Neil LaBute
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Actor: Adolf Hitler, Aidan McArdle, Albert Einstein, Andrew Havill, Gethin Alderman, Helena Westerman, James Musgrave, Jonathan Rhodes, Leo Ashizawa, Rachel Barry, Simon Markey, Toby Longworth
Director: Anthony Philipson
As has become increasingly common among Disney-Marvel projects, there's plenty of culture and character at the heart of Echo—that all gets flattened by the franchise's usual action-thriller formula. In its first two episodes watched for this review, the miniseries doesn't develop the titular hero as much as she deserves, but it does sketch out the image of a community deeply rooted to its past, trying to forge past its unfortunate criminal connections. But these episodes end up concerning themselves far too much with more of the same types of dimly lit set pieces and hand-to-hand fights. These sequences may be cleanly shot and choreographed but they're ultimately just as uninspired as they've been for a long time, upholding the status quo within this dull superhero world.
Genre: Action & Adventure, Crime, Drama
Actor: Alaqua Cox, Chaske Spencer, Cody Lightning, Devery Jacobs, Graham Greene, Tantoo Cardinal, Vincent D'Onofrio
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Actor: Aubrey Joseph, Brandon Rogers, D.C. Young Fly, Darell M. Davie, Jim O'Heir, John Lewis, Nikki Blonsky, Theo Rossi, Thomas Jane, Tory Lanez, Tyrese Gibson, Vivica A. Fox
Director: Nicholas Manuel Pino
Genre: Action, Crime
Actor: Andrea Jeremiah, Arya, Baby Sara, Getup Srinu, Jayaprakash, Jisshu Sengupta, Mukesh Rishi, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Ramajogayya Sastry, Ravi Varma, Ruhani Sharma, Sailesh Kolanu, Shraddha Srinath, Venkatesh
Director: Sailesh Kolanu
Starting out with an ad for the protagonist’s practice, Irugapatru clearly advocates for couples therapy and marriage counseling. Dr. Mitra even recommends it as a preventative measure, not just as a cure. However, this well-meaning objective doesn’t feel like it’s been met. The film showcases common fights and situations that any couple might be familiar with, but these instances come and go without seeing any development within each marriage. It dumps a set of psychology theories and therapeutic strategies that might be useful, but it seems to come out of nowhere. But most of all, these relationships don’t feel real, because the characters themselves don’t feel like people, they feel like examples. Because of this, Irugapatru doesn’t really explore couples therapy, it only prescribes it without recognizing the love that was lost.
Genre: Drama, Family, Romance
Actor: Abarnathi, Manobala, Saniya Iyyappan, Shraddha Srinath, Sri, Vidharth, Vikram Prabhu
Director: Yuvaraj Dhayalan