325 Best Touching Movies to Watch (Page 14)

Based on co-writer Wu Nien-jen’s experiences, Dust in the Wind is a bittersweet coming-of-age story about lost love. The two sweethearts, Ah Yuan (Wang Chien-wen) and Ah Yun (Hsin Shu-fen), move out of their rural hometown to try to make a life in Taipei. Through day-to-day glimpses of the life they’re trying to make, it’s easy to root for their love in the beginning. As they go through the struggles of daily life, the lovers seem to glow only in each other’s presence, thanks to the gorgeous cinematography from Mark Lee Ping-Bin. However, love isn’t enough. Outside circumstances threaten their love, such as poor healthcare, theft, and the military draft. Director Hou Hsiao-hsien refuses to let us recognize this at the immediate moment, though. Like Yuan, the weight of each moment hits us belatedly, and it’s only in the end when he can’t do anything, that we realize it.

Genre: Drama, Romance

Actor: Chien-wen Wang, Danny Deng, Grace Chen Shu-Fang, Hsin Shu-Fen, Lawrence Ko, Li Tian-Lu, Mei Fang, Wu Ping-nan, Yang Li-yin

Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien

Rating: Not Rated

Nat Geo is still the champion of pristine nature documentaries: the skies, the seas, the snow, and the coloring everywhere is divine. But the serene seaside in Scotland, combined with the reflective, poetic musings about love from Billy and Susan isn’t just cutesy light viewing. I’m confident it can heal an exhausted person. This documentary is a mesmerizing meditation on love and connection, on the things that unite people and other creatures. It might feel like a chunky 77 minutes, especially in the latter half given the pace it goes by, but it’s a warm experience that you instantly know you’ll want to revisit.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Billy Mail, Susan Mail

Director: Charlie Hamilton James

Rating: G

Although (or because) it lacks structure and specific insights into death from the perspective of children, Beautiful Something Left Behind emphasizes what it believes is the more important thing to keep in mind when talking to kids. One cannot impose an adult's perspective on the way children choose to process their feelings, but one can and should be able to provide a protected space for those kids to speak freely. It's an incredibly kind film, one that fully believes that young people are already fully formed "characters" whose ignorance about the world isn't seen as a flaw nor as innocence to be romanticized.

Genre: Documentary

Director: Katrine Philp

Genre: Drama

Actor: Alexis Llewellyn, Alison Lohman, Benicio Del Toro, David Duchovny, Halle Berry, John Carroll Lynch, Liam James, Maureen Thomas, Micah Berry, Omar Benson Miller, Patricia Harras, Paula Newsome, Quinn Lord, Robin Weigert, Sarah Dubrovsky, Vincent Foster, 宝拉·纽瑟姆

Director: Susanne Bier

Rating: R

A beloved children’s story gets its umpteenth adaptation here, this time from the screenwriter of 2018’s Watership Down — who proves that it’s a story worth retelling. This version of The Velveteen Rabbit is mostly faithful to Margery Williams’ original 1920s-set tale, but it does pad the plot out with a backstory of sorts about the shy little boy at its center. We’re introduced to William on the last day he spends at his school before moving to another town; the filmmaking gently plays on memories of the scariness of that first-ever goodbye, starting us off on a tender melancholy note that sets the tone for the rest of the 45-minute-long seasonal special.

For his first Christmas in the family’s new house, William is given a cuddly toy bunny in which he finds the comfort and company he misses so acutely. If you had a beloved plaything as a child, chances are you wished they’d come alive with all the might that little you could conjure up — nostalgia that this adaptation taps right into when the rabbit comes to life via mixed animated styles. The sincere emotion of the duo’s commitment to each other — involving sickness and self-sacrifice — is thus difficult to resist, no matter how grown up you are.

Genre: Animation, Family, Fantasy

Actor: Alex Lawther, Bethany Antonia, Clive Rowe, Edward Baker-Duly, Helena Bonham Carter, Leonard Buckley, Lois Chimimba, Nathaniel Parker, Nicola Coughlan, Paterson Joseph, Paul Sparkes, Phoenix Laroche, Samantha Colley, Sean Duggan, Tilly Vosburgh, Саманта Колли

Director: Jennifer Perrott, Rick Thiele

Rating: G

A Ken Loach type of vibe drives The Selfish Giant  to be an interesting mix between anger,  desperation, and the beauty and humor often found in tough circumstances (think I, Daniel Blake but with kids as main characters). This sort of contemporary fable tells the story of two friends who skip school and hustle for work from a local scrap-dealer.  As they get more and more involved with him and his entourage, the grim realities of what once seemed a way out start to cast a shadow over their lives. The script is based on a short story by Oscar Wilde, it's a beautiful, ultimately sad portrayal of the British underclass.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Conner Chapman, Elliott Tittensor, Ian Burfield, Joseph Priestly, Lorraine Ashbourne, Macy Shackleton, Ralph Ineson, Rebecca Manley, Robert Emms, Sean Gilder, Shaun Thomas, Siobhan Finneran, Steve Evets

Director: Clio Barnard

Rating: Not Rated

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Agnes Albright, Bill Veeck, Charley Rossman, Charlie Day, Dan Barreiro, Darryl Strawberry, Don Wardlow, Eliza Hayes Maher, Gary Private, Howard M. Lockie, Ila Borders, Jeff Daniels, Joel Spence, Kalup Allen, Lamar Johnson, Lee Adams, Max Kassidy, Oscar Jordan, Stewart Skelton, Tom Billett, Tony LaRussa

Director: Jeff Malmberg, Morgan Neville

Rating: PG-13

Genre: Animation, Drama

Actor: Didier Gustin, Eilidh Rankin, Jacques Tati, Jean-Claude Donda, Jil Aigrot

Director: Sylvain Chomet

Rating: PG