The Best Dramatic Movies to Watch on Kanopy (Page 3)

Minari is a film written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung, about a Korean-American family in search of the so-called American Dream. It is an intimate drama that is powerful yet quiet, and filled with moments of innocence. With dreamlike scoring, unique characters, and a captivating climax, this movie tugs on the heartstrings, and serves […]

A documentary about two “climbing” friends who attempt to summit Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. I say climbing friends because they are both somewhat egotistical, yuppie risk takers and seem to be the type who are only friends when their interests align. Nevertheless, they are truly ambitious, driven adventurers. A storm hits […]

Comparison to the latest adaptation aside, there’s plenty to enjoy from the 1978 version of Death on the Nile. For one, the cast is stacked– Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, and Jane Birkin join Peter Ustinov in his first stint as the detective Hercule Poirot. And for another, as Poirot goes through […]

A Simple Plan, directed by Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Spider-Man) is a psychological thriller that follows two brothers and a friend who stumble upon $4 million in a crashed airplane. Initially agreeing to return the money once winter is over, they start to argue among themselves and get paranoid about being found out, eventually […]

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 […]

Directed by Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda, the Korean film Broker is a simple but tender story about chosen family. It follows Moon So-young (IU), a young mother who decides to drop her baby off at a church, seemingly for good. But when So-young decides to return for the child, she discovers that he’s been stolen […]

Prior to being defined by that fateful bombing in 1945, Hiroshima was like any other city outside of Tokyo; small but full, quiet but busy, and in the midst of a slow-but-sure journey to modernization. We experience the rich and intimate details of this life through the kind-hearted Suzu, who herself is stuck between the […]

Bryan Cranston, best known for his role as Walter White in the Breaking Bad series, stars as Robert Mazur, a federal agent, who goes undercover to infiltrate the trafficking network of Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. With the film based on Mazur’s memoir, Bryan Cranston gives an impressive lead performance that captures the intense distress […]

Director Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt) reunites with Mads Mikkelsen to tell the story of four teachers going through a mid-life crisis. They’re not sad, exactly—they have homes and jobs and are good friends with each other—but they’re not happy either. Unlike the ebullient youth they teach, they seem to have lost their lust for life, […]

You might expect a movie about the Irish struggle for independence from the British Empire during the 1920s to be a sweeping historical epic a la Braveheart, but The Wind That Shakes The Barley is instead a heartbreaking miniature portrait of the human impact that the brutal occupation has on the residents of a small […]

Do you know those movies where you just look at the poster and you go “damn this will be good”? This is absolutely not one of those, but I promise, it’s still great. Warrior is surprisingly sophisticated for its genre, awesomely executed and what about the acting you say? Hardy and Edgerton are strong together (pun intended). […]

Escape from Mogadishu follows diplomats from the North and South Korean embassies as they put aside their differences and work together to escape from an outbreak of civil war in Mogadishu, Somalia. Director Ryoo Seung-wan provides thrilling, high-budget action, especially intense car chases and suspenseful escape scenes that pump you with adrenaline and leave you […]

Inside Llewyn Davis tells the interesting and captivating story of a young, struggling singer navigating through the Greenwich Village folk scene in 1961. The movie conveys all sorts of emotions, thanks to Coen brothers’ stroke of genius: it is strange, funny, dramatic and satisfying at the same time. Not to mention, the ensemble cast is […]

While zombies weren’t new in film, it wasn’t until writer-director George A. Romero’s Living Dead saga that the zombie as we know it today was created. Day of the Dead is the third in the franchise, and like Night and Dawn, Romero was more interested in the way humans were the threat, more so than […]

FBI agents Rupert and Alan (Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe) visit Jim Crow-era Mississippi to investigate the disapperance of three civil rights activists. They find out soon enough, however, that answers won’t come easy when local officials and police have ties with the KKK. There’s no shortage of films like Mississippi Burning, but it stands […]

Admittedly, The Man from Nowhere can feel a bit derivative. A quiet and mysterious stranger befriending a child, and ending up enacting his revenge when the child gets kidnapped… It feels like writer-director Lee Jeong-beom took two certain film plots and stitched it together into one. But where the film lacks in original story, The […]

In rural Korea a policeman starts to investigate peculiar and violent events that most of the people in his village attribute to the arrival of a new Japanese resident. As the occurrences keep multiplying, and different perspectives in the film are shown, you start to lose touch with reality in the face of what can […]

The 2008 film Doubt offers a haunting peek into the crisis of pedophilia within the Catholic church. Featuring an all-star cast of Amy Adams,  Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Viola Davis, it is more than just a fictional tale. With performances that will make you question your intuition and cast a shadow of doubt […]

Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, and Shia Laboeuf (the good Shia Laboeuf) all star in this true-story-based gangster tale. As a result, Lawless is cliché-free, fast, and violent – yet it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Bootlegging Bondurant brothers live according to different rules, yet run a successful business during the prohibition era. When […]

Family movies were made to teach a lesson or two – whether it be loving dear parents, being a tad empathetic about others, or simply cherishing the moment. Like a true family dramedy, August: Osage County is all that, and more. The Westons is a family seemingly (actually, more like) falling apart at the seams […]

For the longest time, land was where people formed strength in community, where people were born, lived, died, and was buried in, but it was also how empires grew in power, often at the expense of the people that came before. Exhuma is centered in a haunted burial site of a Korean family that migrated […]

I mean its Denzel Washington, ain’t that enough of a reason? The GOAT baddass delivers once more in Flight, a 1/3 action, 1/3 drama and 1/3 ethical quandary movie. Denzel’s performance is nuanced and exquisite and the story has so many layers you’ll stay entranced. Definitely a movie to watch with friends so you can […]

While best known for his Western work, including directing the second Mission Impossible, John Woo made his start in China, returning more than a decade later to film this historical war epic. Based on the Battle of the Red Cliffs, the film may not be 100% factual, but Woo is clearly more at home here, […]

British director Adrian Lyne (9 1/2 Weeks) is famous for his uncompromising treatment of seedy eroticism and charged stories. Fatal Attraction is a staple of the erotic thriller genre and with good reason, it’s steamy and very 1980s in the best possible way. Like a good vintage, it has the whiff of old times, but […]