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Best Ex-girlfriend Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of ex-girlfriend cinema — measured across 1,110 indexed frames from 15 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Ex-girlfriend films over-index on sunglasses, sofa and blazer — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Ocean’s Twelve (2004)

    Steven SoderberghDP Steven SoderberghIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    They pulled off one of the biggest heists ever and now they have another job to complete. Ocean's Eleven, which consisted off Danny Ocean (Clooney), Rusty Ryan (Pitt) and Linus Caldwell (Damon) and others, all thought they would be able to enjoy their money, but someone has other plans. Terry Benedict (Garcia) is still fuming after losing his money and wants it back. The team now have the job of getting all the money they spent back, or risk being thrown in jail. How are they going to get it all back? By pulling off another amazing plan.

  2. 2

    Broken Flowers

    Jim JarmuschDP Frederick ElmesIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    The resolutely single Don Johnston has just been dumped by his latest lover, Sherry. Don resigns himself to being alone yet again and left to his own devices. Instead, he is compelled to reflect on his past when he receives by mail a mysterious pink letter. It is from an anonymous former lover and informs him that he has a 19-year-old son who may now be looking for his father. Don is urged to investigate this "mystery" by his closest friend and neighbor, Winston, an amateur sleuth and family man. Hesitant to travel at all, Don nonetheless embarks on a cross-country trek in search of clues from four former flames. Unannounced visits to each of these unique women hold new surprises for Don as he haphazardly confronts both his past and, consequently, his present.

  3. 3

    Chungking Express (1994)

    Wong Kar-WaiDP Christopher DoyleIMDb 7.9TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Wong Kar-Wai's movie about two love-struck cops is filmed in impressionistic splashes of motion and color. The first half deals with Cop 223, who has broken up with his girlfriend of five years. He purchases a tin of pineapples with an expiration date of May 1 each day for a month. By the end of that time, he feels that he will either be rejoined with his love or that it too will have expired forever. The second half shows Cop 663 dealing with his breakup with his flight attendant girlfriend. He talks to his apartment furnishings until he meets a new girl at a local lunch counter.

  4. 4

    Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (2010)

    Edgar WrightDP Bill PopeIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Scott Pilgrim plays in a band which aspires to success. He dates Knives Chau, a high-school girl five years younger, and he hasn't recovered from being dumped by his former girlfriend, now a success with her own band. When Scott falls for Ramona Flowers, he has trouble breaking up with Knives and tries to romance Ramona. As if juggling two women wasn't enough, Ramona comes with baggage: seven ex-lovers, with each of whom Scott must do battle to the death in order to win Ramona.

  5. 5

    Drive-Away Dykes (2024)

    Ethan CoenDP Ari WegnerIMDb 5.4TMDB 5.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Jamie, an uninhibited free spirit bemoaning yet another breakup with a girlfriend, and her demure friend Marian desperately needs to loosen up. In search of a fresh start, the two embark on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee, but things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals along the way.

  6. 6

    Shiva Baby (2020)

    Emma SeligmanDP Maria RuscheIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    College student Danielle must cover her tracks when she unexpectedly runs into her sugar daddy at a shiva - with her parents, ex-girlfriend and family friends also in attendance.

  7. 7

    The Social Network

    David FincherDP Jeff CronenwethIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history... but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications.

  8. 8

    Half Nelson (2006)

    Ryan FleckDP Andrij ParekhIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Young Caucasian Dan Dunne teaches history and coaches the girls basketball team at a Brooklyn high school populated primarily by black and Hispanic students. To the chagrin of his superiors, Dan bucks the outlined curriculum of historical facts in favor of the philosophy of historical events, generally discussing the concept of dialectics. As such, he captures the imagination of his students, at least in the classroom. Outside of the classroom, Dan's life is in shambles. He has a distant but cordial relationship with his family. He uses illicit drugs rampantly. Although his former girlfriend Rachel was able to clean up her drug habit, Dan believes that rehab will not work for him. Due to a combination of these issues, he treats women poorly. Thirteen-year-old Drey is a student in his class and a player on his basketball team. Drey has her own problems. Her parents are divorced, with her father a virtually non-existent figure in her life and her EMT mother generally absent as she is always working to provide for Drey. Her older brother Mike is incarcerated for selling drugs for a local dealer named Frank. Mike took the fall for Frank, who in turn protects Drey whether she wants to be associated with him or not. Dan and Drey's relationship changes when Drey catches Dan, believing he is alone, smoking crack in the girl's locker room bathroom. He is totally stoned. Their resulting friendship, which is seen as inappropriate by the few who know, is based on each being unable to deal with their own life, but feeling like they can be at least a minor salvation in the other's life.

  9. 9

    Strange Days (1995)

    Kathryn BigelowDP Matthew F. LeonettiIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1999, Los Angeles is racial war zone with the army and LSPD and SWAT officers fighting Afro-American people. The former cop Lenny Nero is a dealer of illegal recording in CDs that gives the memories and sensations of the recorder to the user. He buys the recordings from the supplier Tick; he misses his former mistress Faith, who was a hooker and now is a singer; his best friend is the private eye Max Peltier and the limousine driver Lornette 'Mace' Mason, who has unrequited love for him. Two days before the turn of the century, the black rapper Jeriko One is murdered. The hooker Iris seeks Lenny out but there is an incident and they do not talk to each other. However she drops a recording into Lenny's car while he unsuccessfully tries to meet Faith at a night-club. However her boyfriend Philo Gant does not let them talk. When Lenny learns that Iris was sadistically raped and killed, he gets involved in a sick scheme and discovers dirty hidden secrets.

  10. 10

    Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

    Taika WaititiDP Barry IdoineIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Thor's retirement is interrupted by a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher, who seeks the extinction of the gods. To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie, Korg and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster, who - to Thor's surprise - inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor. Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher's vengeance and stop him before it's too late.

What ex-girlfriend films are made of

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

  • sunglasses2.5×
  • sofa2.3×
  • blazer2.1×
  • neon sign2.0×

How ex-girlfriend 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 ex-girlfriend from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 84%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Zookeeper (2011) 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 1,110 frames from 15 films carrying the ex-girlfriend 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/ex-girlfriend

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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