The 40 Best Movies on Kanopy Right Now

Though it starts off somewhat slow, I was delightfully surprised at how much I loved this movie. A 28-year-old man ventures through Europe with a buddy, ending in Copenhagen, where he hopes to contact the last of his family. There he enlists a local girl to help him. An interesting relationship unfolds as they take a captivating journey through Copenhagen in search of William’s grandfather. The tag line of the movie is “When the girl of your dreams is half your age, it’s time to grow up” and William really does have to grow up when he’s faced with his own personal tumult.
The girl is played by Frederikke Dahl Hansen, who gives an exceptional natural performance, which adds even more to the abundance of charm in this film.

Set in the 1930’s English Countryside, the story of the eccentric Mortmain family is told from the daughter Cassandra’s point of view. Her father, a once acclaimed and famous writer has written nothing in years, leading the family into bankruptcy. Themes such as first love and financial troubles are explored from Cassandra’s comic and intelligent point of view. A classic and a must-see.

Ida, the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is a stark black & white drama set in the early 60’s about a young Polish nun-to-be and her bawdy Aunt Wanda searching for the truth behind her family’s demise at the hands of the Nazis. What initially comes off as a painfully slow sleep-inducer pretty quickly evolves into a touching and lively contrast between the two lead characters; one virtuous and pure, the other boorish and hedonistic. Their journey is equal parts amusing, insightful and heartbreaking, with Ida’s personal exploration of self playing out as a remarkably humanistic affair. The cinematography by Lukasz Za and Ryszard Lenczewski is particularly striking, each shot a work of art in it’s own right. Logging in at just 82 minutes, the entire story whizzes by in a flash. The kind of film that will stay with you long after you’ve watched it.

If you like movies without plot, you’ll love Korean master Hong Sang-soo’s work in Grass. Sang-soo likes to write the script for his characters and not the other way around: he hires actors, then writes a script that would fit them every morning of the shoot.

The result is a personal movie that feels improvised and experimental, despite being quite simple: it’s about a small café and a woman who observes the interactions of the guests.

This original comedy-drama is about a young man on the autism spectrum called Luke. Propelled by a scandalous grandpa with no filters, Luke decides that what he needs in his life is to lose his virginity.

His dysfunctional family setting, which includes a mother who left him and a neurotic step-mother, makes his search more difficult but more also pressing. Luke decides he first has to get a job, and with a world that doesn’t expect much from him, his unbreakable determination is a joy to watch.

An indigenous language is dying, and the last two people who speak it have not spoken to each other in 50 years. In this calm drama from Mexico, linguists are sent to try to get them to talk so they can document the language. 

The story goes that two men have stopped talking because they fell in love with the same woman, so there is a romance wrapped neatly within the linguistic story. What truly steals the show, however, is the breathtaking nature in which it’s all set – the stunning region of Chiapas.

An electrifying portrayal of a girl growing up in a poor Paris suburb. This coming-of-age story follows Marieme, a girl struggling in high-school who learns that she will be rerouted out of academia and onto a track where she will learn a trade. Frustrated by the news and fearful of an abusive elder brother, she finds solace in a gang of girls from her neighborhood. Initially she decides against joining them but does so at the prospect of pursuing a crush. Her new friends take her into the center of Paris and to a more violent and crime-driven lifestyle. An undeniably grim movie, Girlhood compensates with an amazing character study – themes of identity and adolescent need for belonging are at the center of a type of a story that rarely ever gets any attention.

From the director of Drive comes Bronson, the true story of a man who was sentenced to seven years in prison but ends up spending three decades in solitary confinement. Tom Hardy is phenomenal in this dark comedy. His character is so likable and you quickly feel sorry for what he is going through. No one can help him no matter how much he asks for it. Bronson has class, great acting, hilarious comedy, and a true story backing it up. There is nothing not to love about this film.

We Are the Best! is one movie that may be overlooked largely by viewers, though it perfectly captures counterculture, and relates to the misfit young and old. The movie is an adaptation of Moodysson’s wife Coco’s graphic novel “Never Goodnight”. Set in Stockholm, Sweden in 1982, Klara (Mira Grosin) and her best friend Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) are junior high teenage girls who believe in their heart that punk rock is alive and well. With both of their home lives not so pleasant, the girls spend their time at the local youth center while taking up the time slot in the band room to get revenge on the local metal band. That’s when they find themselves starting a punk band without even knowing how to play an instrument. We Are the Best! is a fun and deeply sincere exploration of adventure, friendship, love, and betrayal in adolescence.

This Danish movie is about a failed 38-year-old bodybuilder who lives with his mom and has never left Denmark. In an expected move, and while telling his mom he’s going to Germany, he travels to Thailand in hopes of finding love.

It might at first seem like a disastrous storyline (of sex tourism), but that part of the movie is almost accidental. Teddy Bear is actually a sweet and likable story of a man who wants to break away from his domineering mother, and a journey of someone who starts growing up later in life.