The Best Challenging Movies to Watch on Hoopla

To plenty of countries around the globe, democracy has become so ubiquitous that we forget it’s relatively new, at least relative to the rest of human history. Bhutan is one of the last countries that became a democracy, and writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji chose to depict a slice of how they made the shift in […]

At two hours and nearly 30 minutes, Stonewalling is quite long. The third film from spouses Ryuji Otsuka and Huang Ji takes place in slow, slice-of-life moments, centered around a female lead that mostly doesn’t actively make choices for her own life, so it can feel frustrating to watch. But as the film unfolds, Lynn’s […]

Since we live in a society, interacting with authority is inescapable. Terrestrial Verses depict fairly mundane day-to-day interactions– getting a birth certificate, settling a traffic violation, or attending a job interview– but through nine vignettes framed with a static camera, aimed at a person trying to negotiate with someone more powerful just outside the frame, […]

In Playground, we follow seven-year-old Nora as she navigates friends and school. Through her eyes (and often on her eye level), we witness her and her brother trying and often failing to fit in. The film is an unfiltered account of their formative years, and possibly a reflection of our own. Commercials and kid-friendly media […]

In the first few minutes of Mass, hushed tones, solemn movements, and awkwardly averted eyes hint at an unspoken tragedy that haunts everyone in the film. The four main characters discuss it during a sit-down, but even then it remains unspeakable; such is the dedication of first-time full-length director Fran Kranz in depicting the reality […]

Of the three Brontë sisters—all of whom are accomplished writers in their own right—it’s Emily who remains the most enigmatic to this day. She died early and left in her wake just one work: her first and only novel, Wuthering Heights. The book shook England back then; it was rugged and sexual and violent, and […]

Formally speaking, 20 Days in Mariupol is little more than a compilation of footage bravely collected by Mstyslav Chernov in Ukraine, excerpts of which may seem familiar from when they were broadcast by major news stations. Unsure of whether or not Chernov would survive long enough to pass on his footage, he shot as much […]

As a sluggishly paced, three-hour spiritual drama with little dialogue and even less plot, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell certainly won’t convert anybody who isn’t already interested in slow cinema. Even those who don’t mind these types of films in which “nothing happens” might feel that it doesn’t weave its themes of faith and suffering […]

One woman’s main character syndrome reaches shocking lows in this vicious Norwegian satire of social-media-era narcissists. Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and her artist boyfriend Thomas (Eirik Sæther) are a deeply toxic couple who torture everyone around them with their constant, petty one-upmanship. When he lands a flashy magazine spread, though, Signe’s usual tactics for slyly […]

Education is a human right, but for many girls around the world, this isn’t necessarily guaranteed– especially if they want to learn past the required years of basic education. Yuni is a coming-of-age drama that depicts a girl in West Java, Indonesia who wants to go to university, but due to the marriage and virginity […]

You’ll probably never find a film like The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic. The camera is blurry, with lead Petri Poikolainen’s face the only image we see clearly. The audio sometimes goes in and out. There’s even a section that turns completely dark. While this would usually mean that something is […]

Rather than talking about what it takes to get to the other side of the border, Identifying Features instead focuses its attention back home. It’s part of the reason why the film actually highlights how difficult this actually is– Before even reaching it, people hoping to enter America go through a dangerous journey, many of […]

Named after a slur for people of Asian descent, this 2017 film put Justin Chon on the map as a director. More than that, he also starred as the main lead in this raw and uncompromising period drama about Asian-Americans and the LA riots in 1992. Shot completely in black and white, it tells the […]

Almost more like an audiobook than a traditional movie, the first and unfortunately final film from Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson pairs soothing narration by Tilda Swinton with surreal images of alien structures on a desolate planet for a piece of sci-fi that may very well be un-categorizable. As a “story” ostensibly meant to carry some […]

Understated in budget but lavished with praise, this semi-autobiographical drama by Daniel Destin Cretton flings its audience into the chaotic lives and personal crises of at-risk youths and the passionate social workers that aid them. In his first feature film, the young director draws the viewers into the storm of events and the emotional ups-and-downs […]

Another indie zombie movie? Far from it. One Cut of the Dead, written and directed by Shin’ichirô Ueda, became a global sensation following its small theatrical run in Japan for its creative and original screenplay. A hack director and film crew are shooting a low-budget zombie movie in an abandoned WWII Japanese facility when they […]

Legend has it that director Derek Cianfrance had the co-stars and co-executive producers Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling live together in the same house for a month in preparation of their roles. The fictional couple they play in Blue Valentine lived in the same house. True or not, this created the harsh proximity, intensity, and […]

A wealthy paraplegic needs a new caretaker. His choice is surprising — an ex-con down on his luck. Both of their lives are changed forever. Based on a true story, it is funny, touching, and very surprising.  It will have you rolling on the floor laughing one minute and reaching for your hankie the next. Intouchables is one […]

A follow-up/companion piece to the award-winning The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence is another compelling documentary from Director Joshua Oppenheimer. Both films aim attention at the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66, when the military government systematically purged up to one million communists. While the first film’s focus was on the culprits and on providing […]

A very poetic film by Tony Kaye (American History X) about an English Literature teacher (Adrien Brody – “The Pianist”) who only works as a substitute in schools which are located in very poor urban areas. The reason behind his choice is that he doesn’t want to bond too much with his students and colleagues […]

One of those movies which are actually good for your education; think of it as a book you can read in two hours. It is, however, a very well-cast and well-filmed book. Hotel Rwanda is brutal and disturbing, which is only reasonable since it tells the story of one of the most horrific times in […]

Orcas killing people? Saving whales? There was indeed a time when these issues were frontpage news and that might be the reason why this sounds like a 90s cliché to you. You might agree that this issue should be staunchly dealt with once you’ve watched Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s 2013 documentary. Orcas still being held captive by […]

Based on a true story, The Whistleblower is the biography of a once Nebraskan police officer who volunteers for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in post-war Bosnia. Once there, she uncovers a human trafficking scandal involving peacekeeping officials, and finds herself alone against a hostile system in a devastated country. Rachel Weisz plays the whistleblower in a powerful lead role, but […]

In a world where mortality has been overcome, people watch in awe as the as the 118-year-old Nemo Nobody, the last mortal on Earth, nears his end. He is interviewed about his life, recounting it at three points in time: as a 9-year-old after his parents divorced, when he first fell in love at 15, […]

When depicting war and faith, it seems like men are the only ones that have to undertake these challenges, at least it seems, in the stories made available about these topics. But that simply isn’t true. The Innocents is one of the few reminders that, while women might have been kept from the front lines, […]

I’m Not There is an unusual biopic in that it never refers to its subject, Bob Dylan, by name. Instead, Todd Haynes’ portrait of the singer mimics his constant reinvention by casting six separate actors to play as many reincarnations of the same soul. It’s an ingenious spin on a usually stale genre, one that […]

Nebraska is a poem distilled into a film. Peter Travers from Rolling Stone says “is it a comedy or a drama? Both at the same time, as life itself.” Everything about it is perfect: the acting, the photography, the story. In case that’s not enough and you need to know the plot to get convinced, I’ll tell […]

Named for all the connections that form a functioning society, Threads is a harrowing look at what might happen when those ties are rent apart by nuclear war. This British TV movie — released during the Cold War — so violently seized on the nuclear anxieties of the time that its premiere was dubbed “the […]

Poetry is a masterpiece from one of South Korea’s most cherished movie directors, Lee Chang-dong. The simple story follows the everyday life of a grandmother, Mija, who works as a caretaker for a living. To fill her inner emptiness, she decides to join a poetry club with other grandmothers in her neighborhood. Meanwhile, as Mija […]

Danish writer-director Lars von Trier concludes his so-called Depression trilogy with the two parts of Nymphomaniac, an elaborate retelling of the life of a young woman (played by Stacy Martin and then, by Charlotte Gainsbourg) lived from one libidinous pleasure to another. The film’s elaborate subplots have a life of their own and flashbacks often […]

Bad Lieutenant is no misnomer: Harvey Keitel’s policeman really is one of NYPD’s worst. Already corrupt, abrasive, and abusive at the film’s outset, the movie chronicles his coked-out descent into total depravity after he’s called to investigate a heinous crime amid rapidly worsening personal circumstances. The brilliance of Bad Lieutenant is therefore a counterintuitive one: […]

Given the time period, it’s easy to see The Teacher as a satirical critique of the communist regime. Through the parent-teacher conference in a small high school, director Jan Hřebejk depicts a community shaken by the placement of a new teacher aligned with the Party. The new hire in question is nasty. While outwardly amiable, […]

In 2005, Palestinian olive farmer Emad Burnat bought a camera to document the birth of his new son, Jibreel. But what was intended as an act of celebration quickly grew into something else, as Burnat inadvertently became a documentarian of the oppression his West Bank village faced when a wall was erected through it and […]

Can the Western only be made in the West? The Italians answered with the Spaghetti Western, and in 2010, China came up with their own gunslinging, horse riding group of gangsters in Let the Bullets Fly. It feels just like an old fashioned Western in Old China, only with quips as fast as its bullets, […]

Here’s a based-on-a-true-story courtroom drama that transcends the limits of its genre by virtue of an incisive and unexpectedly prescient script. Twenty years before 2016 sent us hurtling through the looking glass and into a post-truth era, the idea that you could deny the facts as you pleased teetered terrifyingly on the brink of legitimacy […]

Wendy (Michelle Williams) is a drifter driving up to Alaska in hopes of finding work. When her car breaks down, she and her dog Lucy are stranded and forced to scrounge for food and repairs, hitting one roadblock after another on her path to an uncertain dream. This sympathetic and solemn look at poverty from […]

Not to be confused with the American cop thriller with the same name, Shōhei Imamura’s Black Rain is about the atomic bomb, but it’s not really concerned about nuclear warfare. Sure, the film opens with gruesome shots of the day the bomb dropped, not sparing the viewers from the gore and the titular nuclear fallout, […]

Our Children opens at the harrowing end of the true story it’s based on: with the image of a distraught mother (Émilie Dequenne) in a hospital bed, begging a police officer to ensure that her children — who have just predeceased her — are buried in Morocco. From this ominous beginning, the film rewinds into […]

Murdering your spouse is bad, so it’s slightly bizarre how Drowning by Numbers has an unbothered, even amused, attitude towards its murders. Moments seem randomly placed, like the first scene of a girl jumping rope while listing the stars by name, and the film can be hard to follow, even if the production design and […]

An absolutely beautiful film about superficiality, arrogance, and heartbreak. It focuses on the life of Aydin, a retired actor who now lives very comfortably managing a small hotel and a number of other small properties. Throughout the film Aydin’s image shifts as he tackles the problems of his rather typical life. Having said this, there […]

It’s not so easy to get rid of an evil ruler. Sometimes, you have to resort to not one, not two, not even three assassins– you have to get thirteen of them. Remaking the 1963 jidaigeki film, which in turn is based on a real life feudal lord, Takashi Miike’s take brings his signature style […]

The first in famed Korean director Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy (after cult films Oldboy and Lady Vengeance), Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance follows a Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun), a deaf-mute man who resorts to crime when his ailing sister is in need of a kidney transplant. He decides to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy man named […]

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS FILM IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. CONTAINS VERY GRAPHIC SCENES. In fact, the movie opens with rape. While definitely not an easy watch, it is an incredible story and it should definitely be seen by more people. Set in the 1970s during the peasant revolts, a group of locals in the […]

Despite how the title sounds like, the horror of Bedevilled isn’t a devil, a demon, or a spirit. It isn’t even the way childhood friend Bok-nam snaps, taking up a scythe and going on a murderous rampage to kill all the people that wronged her. No, the actual horror of Bedevilled is that everyday people […]

Many people would rather see happy, positive depictions of people like them, but sometimes, it’s important to see the sides that we don’t really like to see, but should have some awareness of, in order to address them. It’s because of this director Lee Tamahori initially thought that adapting the Maori novel Once Were Warriors […]

For viewers who aren’t familiar, the Stations of the Cross is a series of prayers that contemplates Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s also the title and the basis of this German coming-of-age drama. It can seem controversial to create such a work, given how extreme Maria gets in proving her devotion. But given the raw, naturalistic approach […]

Despite the title and the premise, The Naked Kiss is actually less raunchy than it sounds. Sure, it does have themes that seem more explicit than what’s expected from older classic films, but writer-director Samuel Fuller considers these themes with the weight it deserves, directly challenging the way the men of the town would scorn […]

When a regime falls, what follows isn’t a clean slate– it lingers, and it haunts those that were able to survive, part due to what was done to them and part to what they have done. Marshland ostensibly is a police procedural investigating a series of women murdered in rural Spain, but it’s also a […]