325 Best Touching Movies to Watch (Page 8)

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Staff & contributors

Want that warm, fuzzy feeling? Some movies are made to stir curioisty, while others are made to kindle the soul. If you’re seeking stories that melt the heart, here are the best touching movies and shows to stream.

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, 2016

This small movie set over one summer weekend is a tender and affecting coming-of-age drama.

Jack is a bullied adolescent who lives in a run-down small town. When his aunt falls sick, he has to take care of his cousin, a younger and even more vulnerable kid. Their relationship evolves in this sensitive drama that spans a quick hour and 15 minutes.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Charlie Plummer, Chloë Levine, Christian Madsen, Cory Nichols, Danny Flaherty, Elijah Richardson, Yainis Ynoa

Director: Felix Thompson

Rating: Not Rated

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, 2014

A calm and cute story about a manic-depressive father in late 70’s Boston taking care of his two daughters. Starring familiar-face Mark Ruffalo in the lead. The film is inspired by its director’s own experience as one of the two daughters, which added to the amazing performances, makes for a movie made and filled with love. But as it manages to keep a smile on your face most of the time, it also doesn’t shy away from hard and moving sequences. A Sundance movie filled with heart.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Alicia Love, Ashley Aufderheide, Beth Dixon, Brianne Siddall, Chris Papavasiliou, Christopher Alan, George J. Vezina, Georgia Lyman, Imogene Wolodarsky, Keir Dullea, Liam McNeill, Mark Ruffalo, Mary O'Rourke, Mike Jablon, Nekhebet Kum Juch, Patrick Shea, Scout Lyons, Wallace Wolodarsky, William Xifaras, Zoe Saldana

Director: Maya Forbes

Rating: R

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, 2011

Before gay marriage and gay adoption was legalized in America, people had plenty of hurdles to jump over when their same sex partner died. Partners weren’t guaranteed visits to their loved one, weren’t permitted to visit them at their last hours. They were the last to be informed and the last to be asked about their medical records, even though they would be the best source of knowledge after living together. Same sex parents weren’t guaranteed custody of their partner’s children. In The Family may depict these previous experiences in a dry, straightforward way for nearly three hours, but it’s a needed, respectful approach, with the lived-in knowledge of the quiet cruelties that was enforced just a decade ago.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Conan McCarty, Harriett D. Foy, Juliette Angelo, Lisa Altomare, Patrick Wang, Peter Hermann, Sebastian Banes, Susan Kellermann, Trevor St. John

Director: Patrick Wang

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, 2021

Herself tells the story of Sandra (Clare Dunne), a single mother who runs away from her abusive husband to start a new life with her children. When welfare and charity prove to be insufficient with their help, she takes things into her hands by building a house of her own.

This Irish movie, co-written by star Clare Dunne, may be small in scale and budget, but it is affecting in big and powerful ways. Despite what girlbosses might tell you, chasing full independence isn't always as easy or even empowering as it looks, especially when you're stuck in the lower rungs of society like Sandra; Herself takes the honest approach by showing us the unglamorous side of making it on your own. It also has meaningful things to say about marriage and divorce, so if you were moved by Marriage Story or Kramer vs Kramer, you may feel the same about Herself, which references the latter two's iconic courtroom scenes.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Anita Petry, Cathy Belton, Clare Dunne, Conleth Hill, Eimear Morrissey, Ericka Roe, Ger Carey, Harriet Walter, Ian Lloyd Anderson, Jane Brennan, Liz Fitzgibbon, Lorcan Cranitch, Molly McCann, Peter Gaynor, Ruby Rose O’Hara, Sean Duggan, Tina Kellegher

Director: Phyllida Lloyd

Rating: R

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, 2023

Aptly for a film partly set in a fortune cookie factory, Fremont deals with luck — specifically, the other side of good luck: survivor’s guilt. Donya (played by real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada) is a former translator for the US Army who fled her home city of Kabul on an emergency evacuation flight when the Taliban took over in 2021. Now living a safe, if drab, existence in the titular Californian town, insomniac Donya struggles to embrace her freedom, tormented by the knowledge that she lost some of her old colleagues to reprisal attacks and that her loved ones are still living under repressive rule in Afghanistan.

As Donya shuttles between her little apartment in Fremont, her job writing cryptic one-liners for a fortune cookie factory in San Francisco, and appointments with her eccentric psychiatrist (Gregg Turkington), Fremont balances a moving study of her melancholy with deadpan humor. Despite its black-and-white cinematography and tight Academy ratio, this is no austere drama, but an endlessly warm and understated portrait of someone rediscovering themselves and all of life’s unexpected moments of connection, like chance romantic encounters and sudden tears at karaoke.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Anaita Wali Zada, Boots Riley, Eddie Tang, Gregg Turkington, Hilda Schmelling, Jeremy Allen White, Siddique Ahmed

Director: Babak Jalali

Rating: NR

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, 2016

It’s always fun to watch something that makes you second guess each move, that shifts seamlessly from one thing to another. Frantz is that kind of film, and as the deceptively simple premise unfolds—a widow befriends her late husband’s friend—you’re never really sure if what you’re watching is a romance, a mystery, or a sly combination of both. It helps that Frantz is also more than just a period piece, packed as it is with tiny but thoughtful details. When it is filled with color, for example, it does so in the muted palette of 1900s portraits, making each shot look like a picture come to life. When it talks about love, it goes beyond heterosexual norms and hints at something more potent and, at times, political. And when it takes a swing at melodrama, its actors ground the moment with enough restraint and reserve so that it never teeters on excess. All this results in a well-executed, gripping, and overall lovely film to watch.

Genre: Drama, History, Romance, War

Actor: Alice de Lencquesaing, Anton von Lucke, Axel Wandtke, Camille Grandville, Claire Martin, Cyrielle Clair, Eliott Margueron, Elizabeth Mazev, Ernst Stötzner, Étienne Ménard, Jean-Claude Bolle-Reddat, Jean-Paul Dubois, Jean-Pol Brissart, Jeanne Ferron, Johann von Bülow, Johannes Silberschneider, Laurent Borel, Louis-Charles Sirjacq, Lutz Blochberger, Marie Gruber, Merlin Rose, Michael Witte, Nicolas Bonnefoy, Paula Beer, Pierre Niney, Rainer Egger, Ralf Dittrich, Torsten Michaelis, Zimsky

Director: François Ozon

Rating: PG-13

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Derry Girls blended with Encanto): that’s kind of what this series is, but actually good. It has all the trappings of a quarter-life-crisis sitcom—broke 25-year-olds with big dreams and little prospects living under one roof—while also being set in a world where everyday humans develop a superpower by the age of 18. The British series follows Jen, a late bloomer who has yet to find her power. Having had enough of sucky jobs and boyfriends, she sets out to discover her power in the hopes of finally knowing more about herself. It’s a bizarre premise with an authentic, endearing core that's certainly worth checking out.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Comedy

Actor: Bilal Hasna, Mairéad Tyers, Robbie Gee, Safia Oakley-Green, Siobhan McSweeney, Sofia Oxenham

Rating: TV-MA

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, 2019

This beautiful drama is set over a summer in New York State. Kathy and her son Cody drive to her estranged sister's house, who had just passed. Kathy plans to quickly sell the house and go back to her normal life but that doesn't happen when she learns that her sister was a hoarder. Forced to spend more time cleaning the house, her son sparks a friendship with the next-door neighbor, an old Korean War veteran. 

Now, I know what you're thinking, Gran Torino, right? The initial set up is the same but in Driveways is much more realistic, and its characters don't really need to be redeemed (no one is screaming "get off my lawn" with a shotgun). In fact, the actor who plays the old man, the fantastic Brian Dennehy, brings so much kindness and heart to the story. It ended up his last movie before his passing, and what a beautiful farewell his performance is.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Bill Buell, Brian Dennehy, Christine Ebersole, Fernando Mateo Jr., Hannah Bos, Hong Chau, Jack Caleb, James DiGiacomo, Jennifer Delora, Jerry Adler, Jeter Rivera, Lucas Jaye, Paul Thureen, Raymond Lee, Robyn Payne, Rosemary Howard, Samantha Jones, Sophia DiStefano, Stan Carp, Wayne Pyle

Director: Andrew Ahn

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, 2022

The film unfolds in the rhythm of a cow’s life: birth, mating, feeding, milking, checkups. Soon, these events become regular occurrences. Instead of showcasing the more ‘spectacular’ parts of these animal lives in order to build a narrative that's engaging in a more conventional sense, British director Andrea Arnold opts for intimacy through banal instances. Even if female cows are symbolic of labour (reared for milk, meat, and reproduction), the actual cows in the documentary are not actors in a traditional sense. Yet, Cow opens up the dialogue about the on-screen role of animals beyond the call for activism. In it, the protagonists dictate the camera movements and positions just as any other human subject would, but since Arnold is an intuitive and sharp filmmaker, she embraces the opportunity to challenge cinema's status quo. A beautiful addition here is the presence of pop music needle drops, through which the film jolts us into being more attentive, helping us to experience everything we consume in everyday life unperturbed (milk, meat, or pop songs) anew.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Lin Gallagher

Director: Andrea Arnold

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, 2015

A razor-sharp script and beautiful scenery make this one of the best road movies in recent memory. When their cynical best friend dies, Seph and Alex embark on a journey to scatter his ashes over four spots he wants to go back to. Tupperware of ashes in the glove-box, they start their big adventure. Burn Burn Burn, an expression their friend quotes from Kerouac, is a chance for the two friends to escape their hectic city life and to discover themselves. It’s a beautiful movie.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Alice Lowe, Alison Steadman, Chloe Pirrie, Eleanor Matsuura, Hannah Arterton, Jack Farthing, Jane Asher, Joe Dempsie, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Kyle Lima, Laura Carmichael, Lotte Spring Rice, Matthew Kelly, Melanie Walters, Nigel Planer, Owen Findlay, Sally Phillips, Susan Wokoma

Director: Chanya Button

Rating: N/A

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, 2023

At once intimate and sweeping, A Thousand and One seamlessly weaves Inez's personal turmoil and familial troubles with the systemic inequality that was rampant in '90s New York. The hideous faces of gentrification, poverty, and police brutality are constantly appearing in the film, not merely because they lend weight to the story, but because they are inevitable for people like Inez. People who, despite their best efforts at achieving upward mobility are continually pushed down by self-serving institutions. 

It's easy for social issue dramas like this to buckle under the weight of their lofty goals, but nothing about A Thousand and One feels forced. Just the opposite, the film has an authentic quality to it—almost documentary-like in its precise depiction of Harlem throughout the years. It's deeply personal and achingly tender, and everything else—the social commentary and the political beats—stems from that specificity. 

Genre: Crime, Drama

Actor: Adriane Lenox, Amelia Workman, Artrece Johnson, Aven Courtney, Bianca LaVerne Jones, Delissa Reynolds, Emmy Harrington, Jennean Farmer, Josiah Cross, Mark Gessner, Naya Desir-Johnson, Rudolph Giuliani, Terri Abney, Teyana Taylor, William Catlett

Director: A.V. Rockwell

Rating: R

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, 2024

Will and Harper’s premise is simple: two friends journey from one end of the States to another and, amid pit stops and bar hops, sunsets and beers, they talk about life, from its biggest concepts down to its tiniest details. The only difference in this case is that Will and Harper are navigating their friendship as well as the roads; since Harper has only recently transitioned (formerly, she was the comedy screenwriter Andrew Steele), she and Will feel the need to settle more than a few questions. When did this all start? What kept Harper from coming out? Will the friendship still be the same? Does Harper still like bad beer? Will, for his part, is earnest and curious, and though he fumbles along the way—at one point, he inadvertently exposes Harper to a transphobic crowd—he’s quick to recognize his mistakes, learn from them, and recenter our attention to Harper, who is the real star of this film. We learn about her childhood and how she grappled with identity throughout her life. We even visit her home in Iowa and get to know her family. The film keeps it light by smartly relying on their naturally funny tandem and the beautiful American country backdrop. It’s been said that to know the real American pulse, you’d have to go to the Midwest, and that’s exactly what they do. It’s not always pretty, but there are bubbles of joy there that present hope not just to Harper but to the many transpeople out there waiting to know if it’s finally time to head out (it is).

Genre: Comedy, Documentary

Actor: Cheri Oteri, Chris Kattan, Colin Jost, Fred Armisen, Harper Steele, Kenan Thompson, Kristen Wiig, Lorne Michaels, Molly Shannon, Paula Pell, Seth Meyers, Tim Meadows, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Will Forte

Director: Josh Greenbaum

Rating: R

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, 2024

Those unfamiliar with James Hamilton would be forgiven for asking “Why him?” Why does he get a documentary? What makes this photographer so special? But a few minutes in, those questions are immediately replaced with the more appropriate, “Well, why not him?” Hamilton’s work spans decades, and they capture in rich detail a New York that’s long gone, as well as an alternative form of journalism that used to thrive back then (in print no less!), but can now only be found few and far between. It’s enough to see his work, sectioned here in order of their appearance in iconic publications like Harper’s Bazaar, The Village Voice, and New York Observer. Still, they’re complemented by moving images and illuminating interviews beautifully shot in 35mm. Uncropped is reminiscent of other documentaries that also capture New York in its heyday, a distinguished roster that includes films like All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, Paris is Burning, and The Automat. But Uncropped, like Hamilton, has a distinctive edge that marks it as an instant classic. By the end, you can’t help but think, what a rich life Hamilton’s lived, and how lucky we are to see through his vivid, imaginative lens.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Alexandra Jacobs, James Hamilton, Joe Conason, Mark Jacobson, Sylvia Plachy, Thulani Davis, Thurston Moore, Wes Anderson

Director: D.W. Young

Rating: NR

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