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Best Approving Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of approving cinema — measured across 1,687 indexed frames from 19 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Approving films over-index on girl, skin and necktie — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    L.A. Confidential (1997)

    Curtis HansonDP Dante SpinottiIMDb 8.2TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    1950's Los Angeles is the seedy backdrop for this intricate noir-ish tale of police corruption and Hollywood sleaze. Three very different cops are all after the truth, each in their own style: Ed Exley, the golden boy of the police force, willing to do almost anything to get ahead, except sell out; Bud White, ready to break the rules to seek justice, but barely able to keep his raging violence under control; and Jack Vincennes, always looking for celebrity and a quick buck until his conscience drives him to join Exley and White down the one-way path to find the truth behind the dark world of L.A. crime.

  2. 2

    Ali (2001)

    Michael MannDP Emmanuel LubezkiIMDb 6.7TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1964, a brash new pro boxer, fresh from his Olympic gold medal victory, explodes on to the scene, Cassius Clay. Bold and outspoken, he cuts an entirely new image for African Americans in sport with his proud public self confidence with his unapologetic belief that he is the greatest boxer of all time. To his credit, he sets out to prove that with his highly agile and forceful style soon making him a formidable boxer who soon claims the heavyweight championship. His personal life is no less noteworthy with his allegiance to the Nation of Islam, his friendship with the controversial Malcolm X and his abandonment of his slave name in favor of Muhammad Ali stirring up controversy. Yet, at the top of his game, both Ali's personal and professional lives face the ultimate test with the military draft rules are changed, making him eligible for military induction during the Vietnam War. Despite the fact that he could easily agree to a sweetheart deal that would have meant an easy tour of duty for himself, Ali refuses to submit on principle to cooperate in an unjust war for a racist nation that treated his people so poorly. The cost of that stand is high as he finds himself unable to legally box in his own country while his case is contested in court. What follows is a battle for a man who would sacrifice so much for what he believes in and a comeback that would cement his legend as one of the great sports figures of all time.

  3. 3

    Apocalypto (2006)

    Mel GibsonDP Dean SemlerIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.

  4. 4

    The Dead Zone (1983)

    David CronenbergDP Mark IrwinIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Johnny Smith is a schoolteacher with his whole life ahead of him but, after leaving his fiancee's home one night, is involved in a car crash which leaves him in a coma for 5 years. When he wakes, he discovers he has an ability to see into the past, present and future life of anyone with whom he comes into physical contact.

  5. 5

    Mirrors (2008)

    Alexandre AjaDP Maxime AlexandreIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    In New York, the former NYPD detective Ben Carson is hired to work as night watch of the remains of the Mayflower Department Store that was partially destroyed by fire many years ago. Ben became alcoholic and was retired from the police force after killing a man in a shooting. His marriage was also destroyed and now he is living in the apartment of his younger sister Angie. However he has not been drinking for three months and sees the employment as a chance to rebuild his life. When he goes to the rounds in his first night, he finds that the mirrors are impeccably clean and his colleague explains that the former night watch was obsessed with the mirrors. After a couple of nights, Ben sees weird images in the mirrors, but due to the lack of credibility of his past, his ex-wife Amy believes he has hallucinations as a side effect of his medication. When Angie is found brutally murdered in her bathtub, Ben discovers that there is an evil force in the mirror that is chasing him and jeopardizing his family.

  6. 6

    The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004)

    Stephen HillenburgDP Jerzy ZielińskiIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    There's trouble brewing in Bikini Bottom. Someone has stolen King Neptune's crown, and it looks like Mr. Krab, SpongeBob's boss, is the culprit. Though he's just been passed over for the promotion of his dreams, SpongeBob stands by his boss, and along with his best pal Patrick, sets out on a treacherous mission to Shell City to reclaim the crown and save Mr. Krab's life.

  7. 7

    The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

    Stephan ElliottDP Brian J. BrehenyIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Two drag-queens (Anthony/Mitzi and Adam/Felicia) and a transgender woman contract to perform a drag show at a resort in Alice Springs, a resort town in the remote Australian desert. They head west from Sydney aboard their lavender bus, Priscilla. En route, it is discovered that the woman they've contracted with is Anthony's wife. Their bus breaks down, and is repaired by Bob, who travels on with them.

  8. 8

    Scream 2 (1997)

    Wes CravenDP Peter DemingIMDb 6.3TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Two years after the events of Scream, Sidney Prescott and Randy are attending Windsor college. They are trying to get on with their lives...Until a new Ghostface killing spree begins. With the help of Dewey and Gale, Sidney must find out who's behind the murders. As the body count goes up, the list of suspects goes down.

  9. 9

    Home (2015)

    Tim JohnsonIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    When Oh, a loveable misfit from another planet, lands on Earth and finds himself on the run from his own people, he forms an unlikely friendship with an adventurous girl named Tip who is on a quest of her own. Through a series of comic adventures with Tip, Oh comes to understand that being different and making mistakes is all part of being human. And while he changes her planet and she changes his world, they discover the true meaning of the word HOME.

  10. 10

    Ready or Not (2019)

    Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler GillettDP Brett JutkiewiczIMDb 6.9TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    All of us have made certain efforts so our in-laws will like us, but Grace is going to have to give it her all if she wants to fit in with her brand new husband's wealthy dynasty, who require her to follow a brutal tradition: for the bride to try to survive her wedding night while the rest of them hunt her down. The class struggle stuff hits the proverbial fan in this extremely black satire starring a brilliant Samara Weaving and including an uncommonly perverse Andie MacDowell.

What approving films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a approving frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — girl is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • girl2.0×
  • skin1.7×
  • necktie1.6×
  • microphone1.6×
  • blood1.6×
  • white shirt1.5×

How approving 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 approving from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 83%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Ammonite (2020) 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 1,687 frames from 19 films carrying the approving 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/approving

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These are real movie frames, shown at reduced resolution. All rights remain with their respective owners; they appear here for study, commentary and education under fair-use principles. How these are meant to be used