The Best Character-driven Movies to Watch on Kanopy (Page 3)

Before Games of Thrones delivered court intrigues, shocking murders, and adulterous affairs, Queen Margot delivered all these nearly two decades earlier, depicting the dramatized, real life events of the French Wars of Religion. While it doesn’t have dragons, it has style, with some of the most stunning scenes intercut with some of the most gruesome, […]

As the third instalment in Paul Schrader’s “man in a room” trilogy after First Reformed (2017) and The Card Counter (2021), Master Gardner rounds up the issues at stake in a most profound way. For anyone who’s seen a film either scripted by Schrader (such as Taxi Driver) or directed by him, there will be […]

Divorce is hard, even with a fairly civil separation and moving to another place entirely free from the divorced parent. The main emotional stakes are usually carried by the parent, but even then, children have some stake in this relationship, seeing that this permanently affects their relationship with both parents and any siblings they may […]

When modern systems like law enforcement and forensics fail to come up with definite answers to a murder, loved ones of the victim usually have no recourse, which is the fear at the heart of Irish horror film Oddity. To lose someone you care about, forever, hurts. So when Darcy takes more strange and esoteric […]

Even a director of William Friedkin’s caliber had his work cut out for him with this remake of the towering 1957 drama tracking a jury’s fraught deliberations in an apparently open-and-shut murder trial. Wisely, he changes little: most of the incisive dialogue remains the same, and the film still only takes place in one sweltering […]

When forming a connection with someone, sometimes it doesn’t go the way you plan to– it’s a familiar romcom thread, something from the classics, but it’s a story that works. Trick is a witty comedy of errors with a similar thread, but through the various obstacles shy gay man Gabriel has in trying to get […]

Watch this if you like weird movies. And don’t be fooled by the first half, which serves just to set Jesse Eisenberg’s character and the monotone life he leads. It’s the calm before the storm, during which that character is attacked by a violent gang and decides to take self-defense classes in an unusual club. […]

When Émilie finds a new roommate in Camille, she also gains a friend and a lover. Still, the parameters of their relationship are never quite sure, causing a complicated chasm that both divides and arouses them. Eventually, they meet Nora, who brings her own desires and insecurities into the mix. Experimentation ensues as the film […]

Shattered Glass tells the unbelievably true story of Stephen Glass, a popular and promising young journalist at The New Republic. Stephen’s storytelling skills are sought out not just by his admiring colleagues but by other publications as well, so when a rival journalist from Forbes finds holes in one of Stephen’s stories, no one takes […]

All We Imagine as Light is a political film that has many smart and moving things to say about the loneliness of migrating from the country to the city, the double standards women face on the daily, and the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor. But thanks to director Payal Kapadia’s deft hands, these […]

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 […]

It’s not easy to watch films about child abuse, so it makes sense that This Boy’s Life wouldn’t be a hit blockbuster, but it’s still surprising how this 90’s film still remains an underrated gem. For starters, big names like Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio (in his breakthrough role), star as leads, and their […]

When it comes to fantasy anime between two races, usually there would be some sort of romance between the leads. But Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms does it differently. Instead, between the humans and the immortal humanoid lorph race that weaves a chronicle of their history is a mother-son relationship, with the human son […]

The self destructive, substance abusing history teacher Dan (Ryan Gosling) works in a Brooklyn middle-school and is constantly at odds with the curriculum, preferring to teach 13 year old kids Marxist theory in class. Meanwhile, his student Drey (Shareeka Epps) has to go through struggles of her own, her brother being in jail on drug […]

Who among us hasn’t committed a white lie to save a relationship? And who among us hasn’t yearned for the full and brutal truth? In You Hurt My Feelings, Nicole Holofcener digs into that paradox and delivers a film that is honest and funny in equal measure. Here, the writer-director doesn’t just use a hilarious […]

When A Better Tomorrow was released, its producers expected a box office bomb. It was more melodramatic than most action films prior, and the cast was not well known then. Instead, this gangster flick became a surprise box office hit. The reasons it was expected to fail were also the very reasons it succeeded, as […]

The Western had its heyday in the 60s, but the decades have proven that there’s still stories from the deserts that we haven’t heard yet, and gems that twist the genre on its head. The Proposition is a unique Western, being from the East, in Australia where the Brits have started to form colonies. As […]

Surreal, off-putting, and extremely disturbing, Infinity Pool plays with the concepts of cloning and the death penalty to craft an examination on colonial tourism. It’s a thematically rich horror film, with hazy neon-lit sex scenes and absolutely terrible behavior, enabled by their wealth and advanced technology that could have been put to better use. Mia […]

With plenty of old men having extramarital affairs, taking advantage of younger women and leaving them forlorn in love, it can feel deceptively easy to take sides in the first forty minutes of He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not. Who wouldn’t side with Angélique, especially with the innocent, childlike face of Audrey Tautou? And […]

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 […]

Florence Pugh broke through with her powerhouse performance here as Katherine, a young woman who is “sold” into a coldly transactional marriage with a cruel and impotent merchant in 1800s Northern England. Lady Macbeth seems to begin as one thing — a gloomy period tale of oppression and feminist rebellion — but, on the strength […]

Given that it is a modern day, colored film remake of a classic, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai was always going to be compared to the 1962 film, especially since it’s considered one of the greatest Japanese films of all time. Admittedly, there’s not a lot added aside from the 3D filming, and for fans […]

A sincere portrayal of the gritty British working class life through the coming-of-age story of a girl who loves rap music and dancing to it. It features a stunning and powerful performance from newcomer Katie Jarvis who had no acting experience whatsoever, and who was cast in the street after she was spotted fighting. She plays Mia, a 15 […]

Within the fantasy of fairytales and folklore, there’s a hint of something true and human wrapped inside, passed down from generation to generation, translated for the imagination of children. The Secret of Roan Inish is inspired by selkie folklore– the seals that shed their skin to become human, though they still yearn for the sea– […]

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 […]

Before The Silence of the Lambs and Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal, there was Manhunter and Brian Cox’s deeply unnerving Dr. Lecktor. Michael Mann’s neon-lit serial-killer thriller follows Will Graham (William Petersen), a retired FBI agent lured back to work by a psychotic mass murderer whom no one at the Bureau can catch. But Will has something […]

A fantastic return to form for disgraced actor Mel Gibson, Get the Gringo is proof that you can have all the controversy you want off-screen, and come back to make a great piece of film. Fast, entertaining and crazy, Get the Gringo is a wild tale of a crime gone bad and eventually, becomes a […]

This movie originally caught my eye for all the attention it got at the Cannes festival, but I assure you, all of the hype is more than warranted. Two Days, One Night takes you on an emotional journey with Sandra, recovering from depression and ready to get back to work, when she discovers that her […]

TV’s Alan Partridge — Steve Coogan’s brilliant skewering of small-time celebrity vanity — gets the big-screen treatment in this suitably parochial action thriller. The premise feels like the kind of ridiculous scenario the radio DJ would fantasize about in between songs: Pat (Colm Meaney), an ex-employee of North Norfolk Digital, returns to the station armed […]

Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin are part of the ensemble cast that is one of two things that make this movie so great. The second is dialogue, profane, harsh, yet hilarious dialogue. A motivational agent (Baldwin) is sent to a real estate agency with the goal of improving sales. His approach is simple: everyone but […]