Best Amused Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of amused cinema — measured across 9,045 indexed frames from 107 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
- 1
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Quentin TarantinoDP Andrzej SekulaIMDb 8.8TMDB 8.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) are two hitmen who are out to retrieve a suitcase stolen from their employer, mob boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). Wallace has also asked Vincent to take his wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out a few days later when Wallace himself will be out of town. Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) is an aging boxer who is paid by Wallace to lose his fight. The lives of these seemingly unrelated people are woven together comprising of a series of funny, bizarre and uncalled-for incidents.
- 2
Star Wars (1977)
George LucasDP Gilbert TaylorIMDb 8.6TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →
The Imperial Forces, under orders from cruel Darth Vader, hold Princess Leia hostage in their efforts to quell the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon, work together with the companionable droid duo R2-D2 and C-3PO to rescue the beautiful princess, help the Rebel Alliance and restore freedom and justice to the Galaxy.
- 3
Gore VerbinskiDP Dariusz WolskiIMDb 8.1TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →
This swash-buckling tale follows the quest of Captain Jack Sparrow, a savvy pirate, and Will Turner, a resourceful blacksmith, as they search for Elizabeth Swann. Elizabeth, the daughter of the governor and the love of Will's life, has been kidnapped by the feared Captain Barbossa. Little do they know, but the fierce and clever Barbossa has been cursed. He, along with his large crew, are under an ancient curse, doomed for eternity to neither live, nor die. That is, unless a blood sacrifice is made.
- 4
Parasite (2019)
Bong Joon HoDP Hong Kyung-pyoIMDb 8.5TMDB 8.5See in full on FrameThrower →
The Kims - mother and father Chung-sook and Ki-taek, and their young adult offspring, son Ki-woo and daughter Ki-jung - are a poor family living in a shabby and cramped half basement apartment in a busy lower working class commercial district of Seoul. Without even knowing it, they, especially Mr. and Mrs. Kim, literally smell of poverty. Often as a collective, they perpetrate minor scams to get by, and even when they have jobs, they do the minimum work required. Ki-woo is the one who has dreams of getting out of poverty by one day going to university. Despite not having that university education, Ki-woo is chosen by his university student friend Min, who is leaving to go to school, to take over his tutoring job to Park Da-hye, who Min plans to date once he returns to Seoul and she herself is in university. The Parks are a wealthy family who for four years have lived in their modernistic house designed by and the former residence of famed architect Namgoong. While Mr. and Mrs. Park are all about status, Mrs. Park has a flighty, simpleminded mentality and temperament, which Min tells Ki-woo to feel comfortable in lying to her about his education to get the job. In getting the job, Ki-woo further learns that Mrs. Park is looking for an art therapist for the Parks' adolescent son, Da-song, Ki-woo quickly recommending his professional art therapist friend "Jessica", really Ki-jung who he knows can pull off the scam in being the easiest liar of the four Kims. In Ki-woo also falling for Da-hye, he begins to envision himself in that house, and thus the Kims as a collective start a plan for all the Kims, like Ki-jung using assumed names, to replace existing servants in the Parks' employ in orchestrating reasons for them to be fired. The most difficult to get rid of may be Moon-gwang, the Parks' housekeeper who literally came with the house - she Namgoong's housekeeper when he lived there - and thus knows all the little nooks and crannies of it better than the Parks themselves. The question then becomes how far the Kims can take this scam in their quest to become their version of the Parks.
- 5
The Hangover (2009)
Todd PhillipsDP Lawrence SherIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Angelenos Doug Billings and Tracy Garner are about to get married. Two days before the wedding, the four men in the wedding party - Doug, Doug's two best buddies Phil Wenneck and Stu Price, and Tracy's brother Alan Garner - hop into Tracy's father's beloved Mercedes convertible for a 24-hour stag party to Las Vegas. Phil, a married high school teacher, has the same maturity level as his students when he's with his pals. Stu, a dentist, is worried about everything, especially what his controlling girlfriend Melissa thinks. Because she disapproves of traditional male bonding rituals, Stu has to lie to her about the stag, he telling her that they are going on a wine tasting tour in the Napa Valley. Regardless, he intends on eventually marrying her, against the advice and wishes of his friends. And Alan seems to be unaware of what are considered the social graces of the western world. The morning after their arrival in Las Vegas, they awaken in their hotel suite each with the worst hangover. None remembers what happened in the past twelve or so hours. The suite is in shambles. And certain things are in the suite that shouldn't be, and certain things that should be in the suite are missing. Probably the most important in the latter category is Doug. As Phil, Stu and Alan try to find Doug using only what little pieces of information they have at hand, they go on a journey of discovery of how certain things got into the suite and what happened to the missing items. However they are on a race for time as if they can't find Doug in the next few hours, they are going to have to explain to Tracy why they are not yet back in Los Angeles. And even worse, they may not find Doug at all before the wedding.
- 6
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Steven SpielbergDP Janusz KamińskiIMDb 8.1TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →
A true story about Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor. An FBI agent makes it his mission to put him behind bars. But Frank not only eludes capture, he revels in the pursuit.
- 7
Return Of The Jedi (1983)
Richard MarquandDP Alec MillsIMDb 8.3TMDB 7.9See in full on FrameThrower →
Luke Skywalker battles Jabba the Hutt and Darth Vader to save his comrades in the Rebel Alliance and triumph over the Galactic Empire. Han Solo and Princess Leia reaffirm their love, and team with Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, the Ewoks, and droids C-3PO and R2-D2 to aid in the disruption of the Dark Side, and the defeat of the evil emperor.
- 8
Aquaman (2018)
James WanDP Don BurgessIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
Born upon the shores of the surface world, Arthur Curry discovers that he is only half human, with the other half of his blood being of Atlanteean descent, thus making him the rightful heir to the throne of the undersea kingdom of Atlantis. However, Arthur learns that Atlantis is being ruled by his malicious half-brother Orm, who seeks to unite the seven underwater kingdoms and wage war upon the surface. With aid from Nuidis Vulko and the gorgeous Mera, Arthur must discover the full potential of his true destiny and become Aquaman in order to save Atlantis and the surface from Orm's evil plot.
- 9
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Tim BurtonDP Dariusz WolskiIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →
Mia Wasikowskaas Alice Kingsleigh
Johnny Deppas Tarrant Hightopp / Mad Hatter
Anne Hathawayas Mirana / White Queen
Alice, an unpretentious and individual 19-year-old, is betrothed to a dunce of an English nobleman. At her engagement party, she escapes the crowd to consider whether to go through with the marriage and falls down a hole in the garden after spotting an unusual rabbit. Arriving in a strange and surreal place called "Underland," she finds herself in a world that resembles the nightmares she had as a child, filled with talking animals, villainous queens and knights, and frumious bandersnatches. Alice realizes that she is there for a reason--to conquer the horrific Jabberwocky and restore the rightful queen to her throne.
- 10
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
James CameronDP Russell CarpenterIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, learn the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.
How amused films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate amused from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 17%high keyvs 12% baseline
What breaks the pattern
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 9,045 frames from 107 films carrying the amused label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/amused
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