Best Cowardliness Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of cowardliness cinema — measured across 1,001 indexed frames from 15 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Cowardliness films over-index on hat, stone wall and child — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
Victor FlemingDP Harold RossonIMDb 8.1TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →
When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto, are whisked away in their house to the magical Land of Oz. They follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and on the way they meet a Scarecrow who wants a brain, a Tin Man who wants a heart, and a Cowardly Lion who wants courage. The Wizard asks them to bring him the Wicked Witch of the West's broom to earn his help.
- 2
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Federico FelliniDP Otello MartelliIMDb 8.0TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →
In 1959/1960 Rome, Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) is a writer and journalist, the worst kind of journalist--a tabloid journalist. His job is to try to catch celebrities in compromising or embarrassing situations. He tends to get quite close to his subjects--especially when they're beautiful women. Two such subjects are local heiress Maddalena (Anouk Aimee), and Swedish superstar-actress Sylvia (Anita Ekberg), with both of whom he has affairs despite being engaged to Emma (Yvonne Furneaux), a clingy, insecure, nagging, melodramatic woman. Despite his extravagant, pleasure-filled lifestyle, he is wondering if maybe a simpler life wouldn't be better.
- 3
Werner HerzogDP Jörg Schmidt-ReitweinIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Jonathan Harker is sent away to Count Dracula's castle to sell him a house in Wismar where Jonathan lives. But Count Dracula is a vampire, an undead ghoul living off of men's blood. Inspired by a photograph of Lucy Harker, Jonathan's wife, Dracula moves to Wismar, bringing with him death and plague... An unusually contemplative version of Dracula, in which the vampire bears the curse of not being able to get old and die.
- 4
Shrek the Third (2007)
Chris MillerIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →
When King Harold (John Cleese) of Far, Far Away dies, the clumsy Shrek (Mike Myers) becomes the immediate successor of the throne. However, Shrek decides to find the legitimate heir Artie (Justin Timberlake) in a distant kingdom with his friends Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) to be able return to his beloved house in the swamp with the pregnant Fiona (Cameron Diaz). Meanwhile, the envious and ambitious Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) joins the villains of the fairytales plotting a coup d'état to become the new King.
- 5
Andrew DominikDP Roger DeakinsIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Taking place in Missouri in the early 1880s, the film dramatizes the last seven months in the life of famed outlaw Jesse James, beginning with the Blue Cut train robbery of 1881 and culminating in his assassination at the hands of Robert Ford the following April. In the time between these two fateful events, the young and jealous Ford befriends the increasingly mistrustful outlaw, even as he plots his demise.
- 6
Force Majeure (2014)
Ruben ÖstlundDP Fredrik WenzelIMDb 7.2TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
A Swedish family travels to the French Alps to enjoy a few days of skiing. The sun is shining and the slopes are spectacular but, during a lunch at a mountainside restaurant, an avalanche turns everything upside down. With diners fleeing in all directions, mother Ebba calls for her husband Tomas as she tries to protect their children. Tomas, meanwhile, is running for his life... The anticipated disaster failed to occur, and yet the family's world has been shaken to its core, a question mark hanging over their father in particular. Tomas and Ebba's marriage now hangs in the balance as Tomas struggles desperately to reclaim his role as family patriarch.
- 7
The Sixth Sense (1999)
M. Night ShyamalanDP Tak FujimotoIMDb 8.2TMDB 7.9See in full on FrameThrower →
Malcom Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a child psychologist who receives an award on the same night that he is visited by a very unhappy ex-patient. After this encounter, Crowe takes on the task of curing a young boy with the same ills as the ex-patient (Donnie Wahlberg) . This boy "sees dead people". Crowe spends a lot of time with the boy much to the dismay of his wife (Olivia Williams). Cole's mom (Toni Collette) is at her wit's end with what to do about her son's increasing problems. Crowe is the boy's only hope.
- 8
The Omen (1976)
Richard DonnerDP Gilbert TaylorIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Robert and Katherine Thorn seem to have it all. They are happily married and he is the US Ambassador to Great Britain, but they want nothing more than to have children. When Katharine has a stillborn child, Robert is approached by a priest at the hospital who suggests that they take a healthy newborn whose mother has just died in childbirth. Without telling his wife he agrees. After relocating to London, strange events - and the ominous warnings of a priest - lead him to believe that the child he took from that Italian hospital is evil incarnate.
- 9
Halloween (2007)
Rob ZombieDP Phil ParmetIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →
The residents of Haddonfield don't know it yet... but death is coming to their small sleepy town. Sixteen years ago, a ten year old boy called Michael Myers brutally kills his step father, his elder sister and her boyfriend. Sixteen years later, he escapes from the mental institution and makes his way back to his hometown intent on a murderous rampage pursued by Dr Sam Loomis who is Michael's doctor and the only one who knows Michael's true evil. Elsewhere a shy teenager by the name of Laurie Strode is babysitting on the night Michael comes home... is it pure coincidence that she and her friends are being stalked by him?
- 10
Duel (1971)
Steven SpielbergDP Jack A. MartaIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
While traveling through the desert for an appointment with a client, the businessman David Mann from California passes a slow and old tanker truck. The psychotic truck driver feels offended and chases David along the empty highway trying to kill him.
What cowardliness films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a cowardliness frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — hat is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- hat2.5×
- stone wall1.8×
- child1.8×
- boy1.7×
How cowardliness 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 cowardliness from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 85%eye levelvs 69% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Gremlins 2: The New Batch 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 1,001 frames from 15 films carrying the cowardliness 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/cowardliness
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