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Best Enthusiastic Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of enthusiastic cinema — measured across 1,730 indexed frames from 21 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Enthusiastic films over-index on computer monitor, teenager and neon sign — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    The Intern (2015)

    Nancy MeyersDP Stephen GoldblattIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    A retired 70-year-old widower, Ben (played by Robert De Niro), is bored with retired life. He applies to a be a senior intern at an online fashion retailer and gets the position. The founder of the company is Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway), a tireless, driven, demanding, dynamic workaholic. Ben is made her intern, but this is a nominal role - she doesn't intend to give him work and it is just window dressing. However, Ben proves to be quite useful and, more than that, a source of support and wisdom.

  2. 2

    The Terminal (2004)

    Steven SpielbergDP Janusz KamińskiIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Victor Navorski reaches JFK airport from a politically unstable country. Due to collapse of his government, his papers are no longer valid in the airport, and hence he is forced to stay in the airport until the war cools down. He makes the airport his home and develops a friendship with the people who work there until he can leave.

  3. 3

    Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

    Justin K. Thompson, Kemp PowersIMDb 8.5TMDB 8.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    After reuniting with Gwen Stacy, Brooklyn’s full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is catapulted across the Multiverse, where he encounters the Spider Society, a team of Spider-People charged with protecting the Multiverse's very existence. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must set out on his own to save those he loves most.

  4. 4

    Hackers (1995)

    Iain SoftleyDP Andrzej SekulaIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    A young boy is arrested by the U.S. Secret Service for writing a computer virus and is banned from using a computer until his 18th birthday. Years later, he and his new-found friends discover a plot to unleash a dangerous computer virus, but they must use their computer skills to find the evidence while being pursued by the Secret Service and the evil computer genius behind the virus.

  5. 5

    Back to the Future II (1989)

    Robert ZemeckisDP Dean CundeyIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    Marty and Doc are at it again as the time-traveling duo head to 2015 to nip some McFly family woes in the bud. But things go awry thanks to bully Biff Tannen and a pesky sports almanac. In a last-ditch attempt to set things straight, Marty finds himself bound for 1955 and face to face with his teenage parents -- again.

  6. 6

    One Hour Photo (2002)

    Mark RomanekDP Jeff CronenwethIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Middle aged Sy Parrish works as a technician at a one hour photo lab located in a SavMart store in a suburban mall. Sy is a lonely man, never having had any friends. He knows much about his customers through the photographs they have developed. But he knows more about the Yorkin family - specifically Nina Yorkin and her adolescent son Jake Yorkin, the two in the family who drop off and pick up the family's photofinishing - the family about whom he is obsessed, than anyone else. Nina's husband, Will Yorkin, is incidental to his obsession since Sy has only seen him in photographs. Sy's obsession includes fantasizing about being their favorite "Uncle Sy". He has even been making an extra set of prints for himself of all of their photographs since Jake was a newborn. After an incident at work and after Sy finds out more about the family through a set of photographs, he decides to right the injustices he sees in the only way he knows how. His actions demonstrate his true mental state.

  7. 7

    Demons (1985)

    Lamberto BavaDP Gianlorenzo BattagliaIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Art imitating art is the basis of this demonic tale of a group of invited guests to the screening of a horror film that brings naturalism to life. They are baited and penned, and their walled-in feeling quickly turns to screaming fear as those who are dead lust after the flesh of the living. In this full-scale cinema of hell, it's only a question of time before demons from the abyss are asking for second portions.

  8. 8

    Ichi The Killer (2001)

    Takashi MiikeDP Hideo YamamotoIMDb 6.9TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    When a Yakuza boss named Anjo disappears with 300 million yen, his chief henchman, a sadomasochistic man named Kakihara, and the rest of his mob goons go looking for him. After capturing and torturing a rival Yakuza member looking for answers, they soon realize they have the wrong man and begin looking for the man named Jijii who tipped them off in the first place. Soon enough Kakihara and his men encounter Ichi, a psychotic, sexually-repressed young man with amazing martial arts abilities and blades that come out of his shoes. One by one Ichi takes out members of the Yakuza and all the while Kakihara intensifies his pursuit of Ichi and Ichi's controller Jijii. What will happen as the final showdown happens between the tortured and ultra-violent Ichi and the pain-craving Kakihara?

  9. 9

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

    Jeff RoweIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    After years of being sheltered from the human world, the Turtle brothers set out to win the hearts of New Yorkers and be accepted as normal teenagers through heroic acts. Their new friend April O'Neil helps them take on a mysterious crime syndicate, but they soon get in over their heads when an army of mutants is unleashed upon them.

  10. 10

    Blended (2014)

    Frank CoraciDP Julio MacatIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    Recently divorced mom Lauren and widowed dad Jim let their friends push them into a blind date, which goes disastrously wrong. Unsurprisingly, neither wants to see the other ever again. However, fate intervenes when both Jim and Lauren, unbeknownst to each other, purchase one-half of the same vacation package at a South African resort for families, during spring break. They and their children are forced to share the same romantic suite and participate in a slew of family activities together.

What enthusiastic films are made of

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

  • computer monitor3.3×
  • teenager3.0×
  • neon sign2.5×
  • glasses2.0×
  • tie1.8×
  • suit1.8×

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

  • 10%low anglevs 5% baseline
  • 22%high keyvs 12% baseline
  • 32%naturalvs 44% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Sea Fever (2019) 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 1,730 frames from 21 films carrying the enthusiastic 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/enthusiastic

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