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Best Complex Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of complex cinema — measured across 3,468 indexed frames from 50 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Complex films over-index on chair, hat and child — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    There Will Be Blood (2007)

    Paul Thomas AndersonDP Robert ElswitIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    The intersecting life stories of Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday in early twentieth century California is presented. Miner turn oilman Daniel Plainview is a driven man who will do whatever it takes to achieve his goals. He works hard but he also takes advantage of those around him at their expense if need be. His business partner is his son H.W., who in reality he "acquired" when H.W.'s biological single father, who worked on one of Daniel's rigs, got killed in a workplace accident. Daniel is deeply protective of H.W. if only for what H.W. brings to the partnership. Eli Sunday is one in a pair of twins, whose family farm Daniel purchases for the major oil deposit located on it. Eli, the local preacher and a self-proclaimed faith healer, wants the money from the sale of the property to finance his own church. The lives of the two competitive men often clash as Daniel pumps oil off the property and tries to acquire all the surrounding land at bargain prices to be able to build a pipeline to the coast, and as Eli tries to build his own religious empire.

  2. 2

    La La Land (2016)

    Damien ChazelleDP Linus SandgrenIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.

  3. 3

    8 1/2 (1963)

    Federico FelliniDP Gianni Di VenanzoIMDb 8.0TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    Guido is a film director, trying to relax after his last big hit. He can't get a moment's peace, however, with the people who have worked with him in the past constantly looking for more work. He wrestles with his conscience, but is unable to come up with a new idea. While thinking, he starts to recall major happenings in his life, and all the women he has loved and left. An autobiographical film of Fellini, about the trials and tribulations of film making.

  4. 4

    I’m Not There (2007)

    Todd HaynesDP Edward LachmanIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Six incarnations of Bob Dylan: an actor, a folk singer, an electrified troubadour, Rimbaud, Billy the Kid, and Woody Guthrie. Put Dylan's music behind their adventures, soliloquies, interviews, marriage, and infidelity. Recreate 1960s documentaries in black and white. Put each at a crossroads, the artist becoming someone else. Jack, the son of Ramblin' Jack Elliott, finds Jesus; handsome Robbie falls in love then abandons Claire. Woody, a lad escaped from foster care, hobos the U.S. singing; Billy awakes in a valley threatened by a six-lane highway; Rimbaud talks. Jude, booed at Newport when he goes electric, fences with reporters, pundits, and fans. He won't be classified.

  5. 5

    Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

    Martin ScorseseDP Rodrigo PrietoIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one - until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.

  6. 6

    Dolemite Is My Name

    Craig BrewerDP Eric SteelbergIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Eddie Murphy portrays real-life legend Rudy Ray Moore, a comedy and rap pioneer who proved naysayers wrong when his hilarious, obscene, kung-fu fighting alter ego, Dolemite, became a 1970s Blaxploitation phenomenon.

  7. 7

    Super 8 (2011)

    J.J. AbramsDP Larry FongIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    SPOILER: In the summer of 1979, a group of friends in a small Ohio town witness a catastrophic train crash while making a super 8 movie and soon suspect that it was not an accident. Shortly after, unusual disappearances and inexplicable events begin to take place in town, and the local Deputy tries to uncover the truth - something more terrifying than any of them could have imagined.

  8. 8

    Rushmore (1998)

    Wes AndersonDP Robert D. YeomanIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Max Fischer is a precocious 15-year-old whose reason for living is his attendance at Rushmore, a private school where he's not doing well in any of his classes, but where he's the king of extracurricular activities - from being in the beekeeping society to writing and producing plays, there's very little after school he doesn't do. His life begins to change, however, when he finds out he's on academic probation, and when he stumbles into love with Miss Cross, a pretty teacher of the elementary school at Rushmore. Added to the mix is his friendship with Herman Blume, wealthy industrialist and father to boys who attend the school, and who also finds himself attracted to Miss Cross. Max's fate becomes inextricably tied to this odd love triangle, and how he sets about resolving it is the story in the film.

  9. 9

    The Pianist (2002)

    Roman PolanskiDP Paweł EdelmanIMDb 8.5TMDB 8.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    In this adaptation of the autobiography "The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945," Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jewish radio station pianist, sees Warsaw change gradually as World War II begins. Szpilman is forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, but is later separated from his family during Operation Reinhard. From this time until the concentration camp prisoners are released, Szpilman hides in various locations among the ruins of Warsaw.

  10. 10

    Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

    Drew GoddardDP Seamus McGarveyIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    Six strangers, (Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Cailee Spaeny and Lewis Pullman) each with their own secrets, meet at the El Royale hotel of Lake Tahoe. Taking place over one night, alliances are made and secrets are revealed.

What complex films are made of

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

  • chair1.9×
  • hat1.8×
  • child1.8×
  • boy1.8×
  • suit1.8×
  • fedora1.6×
  • neon sign1.5×
  • streetlamp1.5×

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

  • 24%widevs 20% baseline

What breaks the pattern

The Passion of the Christ (2004) 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 3,468 frames from 50 films carrying the complex label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 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/complex

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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