Best Friends Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of friends cinema — measured across 2,884 indexed frames from 41 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Friends films over-index on t-shirt, plaid shirt and sofa — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
Edgar WrightDP David M. DunlapIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Shaun (Simon Pegg) doesn't have a very good day, so he decides to turn his life around by getting his ex to take him back, but he times it for right in the middle of what may be a zombie apocalypse. But for him, it's an opportunity to show everyone he knows how useful he is by saving them all. All he has to do is survive, and get his ex back.
- 2
Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
Kimberly PeirceDP Jim DenaultIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Based on actual events. Brandon Teena is the popular new guy in a tiny Nebraska town. He hangs out with the guys, drinking, cussing, and bumper surfing, and he charms the young women, who've never met a more sensitive and considerate young man. Life is good for Brandon, now that he's one of the guys and dating hometown beauty Lana; however, he's forgotten to mention one important detail. It's not that he's wanted in another town for GTA and other assorted crimes, but that Brandon Teena was actually born a woman named Teena Brandon. When his best friends make this discovery, Brandon's life is ripped apart.
- 3
Friends: The Reunion (2021)
Ben WinstonDP Chloe WeaverIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →
For the first time after seventeen years, and their last appearance on The Last One (2004), the final episode of the TV series, Friends (1994), Jennifer Aniston; Courteney Cox; Lisa Kudrow; Matt LeBlanc; Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer, find themselves under the same roof for a reunion special. Hosted by James Corden, and produced by the show's co-creators, Marta Kauffman, David Crane, and Kevin Bright, the show's main cast feels at home in the original sets of Friends (1994), taking a trip down memory lane while sitting on Central Perk's couch. Brimming with emotion, laughter, and tears of joy, "Friends: The Reunion" sheds light on ambivalent endings, the casting process, and many more, as the main cast re-enacts older Friends episodes and meets with a plethora of celebrity guests, including Maggie Wheeler, the show's Janice Litman-Goralnik; Justin Bieber; Cindy Crawford; Cara Delevingne; Lady Gaga; David Beckham; Tom Selleck, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai.
- 4
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Jared HessDP Munn PowellIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →
Preston, Idaho's most curious resident, Napoleon Dynamite, lives with his grandma and his 32-year-old brother (who cruises chat rooms for ladies) and works to help his best friend, Pedro, snatch the Student Body President title from mean teen Summer Wheatley.
- 5
Grown Ups (2010)
Dennis DuganDP Theo van de SandeIMDb 6.0TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →
In 1978, five 12-year-olds win a CYO basketball championship. Thirty years later, they gather with their families for their coach's funeral and a weekend at a house on a lake where they used to party. By now, each is a grownup with problems and challenges: Marcus is alone and drinks too much. Rob, with three daughters he rarely sees, is always deeply in love until he turns on his next ex-wife. Eric is overweight and out of work. Kurt is a househusband, henpecked by wife and mother-in-law. Lenny is a successful Hollywood agent married to a fashion designer with three kids and his two sons take their privilege for granted. Can the outdoors help these grownups rediscover connections or is this chaos in the making?
- 6
Alfonso Gomez-RejonDP Chung Chung-hoonIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia.
- 7
Swiss Army Man (2016)
Daniel Kwan, Daniel ScheinertDP Larkin SeipleIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
Alone on a tiny deserted island, Hank has given up all hope of ever making it home again. But one day everything changes when a dead body washes ashore, and he soon realizes it may be his last opportunity to escape certain death. Armed with his new “friend” and an unusual bag of tricks, the duo go on an epic adventure to bring Hank back to the woman of his dreams.
- 8
The Departed (2006)
Martin ScorseseDP Michael BallhausIMDb 8.5TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →
In this crime-action tour de force, the South Boston state police force is waging war on Irish-American organized crime. Young undercover cop Billy Costigan is assigned to infiltrate the mob syndicate run by gangland chief Frank Costello. While Billy quickly gains Costello's confidence, Colin Sullivan, a hardened young criminal who has infiltrated the state police as an informer for the syndicate, is rising to a position of power in the Special Investigation Unit. Each man becomes deeply consumed by their double lives, gathering information about the plans and counter-plans of the operations they have penetrated. But when it becomes clear to both the mob and the police that there is a mole in their midst, Billy and Colin are suddenly in danger of being caught and exposed to the enemy - and each must race to uncover the identity of the other man in time to save themselves. But is either willing to turn on their friends and comrades they've made during their long stints undercover?
- 9
Before Midnight (2013)
Richard LinklaterDP Christos VoudourisIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
It has been nine years since we last met Jesse and Celine, the French-American couple who once met on a train in Vienna. They now live in Paris with twin daughters, but have spent a summer in Greece on the invitation of an author colleague of Jesse's. When the vacation is over and Jesse must send his teenage son off to the States, he begins to question his life decisions, and his relationship with Celine is at risk.
- 10
Thesis (1996)
Alejandro AmenábarDP Hans BurmannIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Why is death and violence so fascinating? Is it morally correct to show violence in movies? If so, is there a limit to what we should show? That's the subject of Ángela's examination paper. She is a young student at a film school in Madrid. Together with the student Chema (who is totally obsessed with violent movies) they find a snuff movie in which a young girl is tortured and killed. Soon they discover that the girl was a former student at their school...
What friends films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a friends frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — t-shirt is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- t-shirt2.2×
- plaid shirt2.2×
- sofa1.9×
- leather jacket1.6×
- brick wall1.6×
- glasses1.5×
- tree1.5×
How friends 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 friends from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 16%high keyvs 12% baseline
- 87%eye levelvs 69% baseline
What breaks the pattern
The Descent (2005) 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 2,884 frames from 41 films carrying the friends 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/friends
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