Best Awestruck Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of awestruck cinema — measured across 4,728 indexed frames from 61 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Awestruck films over-index on snow, boy and clouds — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
The Iron Giant (1999)
Brad BirdDP Steven WilzbachIMDb 8.1TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →
Jennifer Anistonas Annie Hughes (voice)
Harry Connick Jr.as Dean McCoppin (voice)
Vin Dieselas The Iron Giant (voice)
This is the story of a nine-year-old boy named Hogarth Hughes who makes friends with an innocent alien giant robot that came from outer space. Meanwhile, a paranoid U.S. Government agent named Kent Mansley arrives in town, determined to destroy the giant at all costs. It's up to Hogarth to protect him by keeping him at Dean McCoppin's place in the junkyard.
- 2
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)
Dean DeBloisDP Gil ZimmermanIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →
It's been five years since Hiccup and Toothless successfully united dragons and vikings on the island of Berk. While Astrid, Snotlout and the rest of the gang are challenging each other to dragon races (the island's new favorite contact sport), the now inseparable pair journey through the skies, charting unmapped territories and exploring new worlds. When one of their adventures leads to the discovery of a secret ice cave that is home to hundreds of new wild dragons and the mysterious Dragon Rider, the two friends find themselves at the center of a battle to protect the peace. Now, Hiccup and Toothless must unite to stand up for what they believe while recognizing that only together do they have the power to change the future of both men and dragons.
- 3
Just Friends (2005)
Roger KumbleDP Anthony B. RichmondIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Chris Brander has always been friends with Jamie Palamino, but now decides it is time to take his relationship to the next step. The problem is that Jamie still wants to be 'Just Friends'. When he runs away and moves to L.A., he becomes an attractive music manager, whom everyone wants. When his jet catches fire and is forced to land, when flying to Paris with his newest singing sensation, Samantha James, he ends up back home. To his surprise, he encounters Jamie again, and sets out to be more than 'Just Friends' this time.
- 4
Vivarium (2019)
Lorcan FinneganDP MacGregorIMDb 5.9TMDB 6.0See in full on FrameThrower →
A young couple is thinking about buying their starter home. And to this end, they visit a real estate agency where they are received by a strange sales agent, who accompanies them to a new, mysterious, peculiar housing development to show them a single-family home. There they get trapped in a surreal, maze-like nightmare.
- 5
Mary Poppins (1964)
Robert StevensonDP Edward ColmanIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
When Jane and Michael Banks are faced with the prospect of a new nanny, they are pleasantly surprised by the arrival of the magical Mary Poppins. Embarking on a series of fantastical adventures with he and her Cockney performer friend, Bert, they try to pass on some of her sunny attitude to their preoccupied parents.
- 6
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.
- 7
Zack SnyderDP Zack SnyderIMDb 5.6TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →
When a peaceful settlement on the edge of a distant moon finds itself threatened by a tyrannical ruling force, a stranger living among its villagers becomes their best hope for survival.
- 8
The Lorax (2012)
Chris RenaudIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →
In the walled city of Thneed-Ville, where everything is artificial and even the air is a commodity, a boy named Ted hopes to win the heart of his dream girl, Audrey. When he learns of her wish to see a real tree, Ted seeks out the Once-ler, a ruined old businessman outside of town in a stark wasteland. Upon hearing of how the hermit gave into his greed for profits and devastated the land over the protests of the Lorax, Ted is inspired to undo the disaster. However, the greedy Mayor of Thneed-Ville, Aloysius O'Hare, has made his fortune exploiting the environmental collapse and is determined to stop the boy from undermining his business.
- 9
The Fountain (2006)
Darren AronofskyDP Matthew LibatiqueIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
Hugh Jackmanas Tomás / Tom Creo / Tommy
Rachel Weiszas Isabel / Izzi Creo
Ellen Burstynas Dr. Lillian Guzetti
Three stories - one each from the past, present, and future - about men in pursuit of eternity with their love. A conquistador in Mayan country searches for the tree of life to free his captive queen; a medical researcher, working with various trees, looks for a cure that will save his dying wife; a space traveler, traveling with an aged tree encapsulated within a bubble, moves toward a dying star that's wrapped in a nebula; he seeks eternity with his love. The stories intersect and parallel; the quests fail and succeed.
- 10
Steven SpielbergDP Vilmos ZsigmondIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Two parallel stories are told. In the first, a group of research scientists from a variety of backgrounds are investigating the strange appearance of items in remote locations, primarily desert regions. In continuing their investigation, one of the lead scientists, a Frenchman named Claude Lacombe, incorporates the Kodály method of music education as a means of communication in their work. The response, in turn, at first baffles the researchers, until American cartographer David Laughlin deciphers the meaning of the response. In the second, electric company lineman and family man Roy Neary and single mother Jillian Guiler are among some individuals in Muncie, Indiana who experience some paranormal activity before some flashes of bright lights in the sky, which they believe to be a UFO. Roy becomes obsessed with what he saw, unlike some others, especially in some form of authority, who refuse to acknowledge their belief that it was a UFO in not wanting to appear crazy. That obsession both for Roy and Jillian is ratcheted up a notch when they begin to have a vision of a mound with vertical striations on its side as a key to what is going on. While the obsession negatively affects Roy's life as he knows it in its entirety, Jillian knows she has to find the answer as to its meaning, especially as it relates to her only child, three year old Barry Guiler, who may be more attuned to what is happening than the adult figures around him. These two stories have the potential to intersect if Roy and Jillian can discover where they've seen that mound before, and if they can overcome what they believe to be the lies perpetrated by those in authority in covering up what is going on.
What awestruck films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a awestruck frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — snow is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- snow1.8×
- boy1.8×
- clouds1.5×
What breaks the pattern
Birth of a Nation (1915) 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 4,728 frames from 61 films carrying the awestruck 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/awestruck
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