Best Loving Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of loving cinema — measured across 793 indexed frames from 13 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Loving films over-index on neon sign and water — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Good Will Hunting (1997)
Gus Van SantDP Jean-Yves EscoffierIMDb 8.4TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →
A touching tale of a wayward young man who struggles to find his identity, living in a world where he can solve any problem, except the one brewing deep within himself, until one day he meets his soul mate who opens his mind and his heart.
- 2
Paterson (2016)
Jim JarmuschDP Frederick ElmesIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Exactly one week in the life of a young man named Paterson of Paterson, New Jersey is presented. He lives an extremely regimented and routinized life, that routine perhaps most vividly displayed by the fact that he is able to wake up at exactly the same time every day without an alarm. That life includes eating Cheerios for breakfast, walking to work carrying his brown bag lunch packed in his lunch pail by his wife Laura, having a casual chat with his colleague Donny before he begins his shift driving the #23 Paterson bus for the local public transit company, walking home where he straightens out the exterior mailbox which somehow during the day gets knocked crooked, eating dinner with Laura and listening to her goings-on of the day, taking Laura's English bulldog Marvin - who he would admit to himself he doesn't much like - out for a walk to his neighborhood bar where he has one and only one beer before walking home with Marvin. There are day to day variations which are often the result of how certain other routines associated to him manifest themselves, such as what drama will occur in the relationship of Marie and Everett who are always at the bar together despite her always saying that they are no longer together, or in what form Laura's unique and distinctive design sense will affect Paterson's life directly or indirectly. Paterson's keen observances of what happens around him are largely the bases for the poems he writes, he constantly thinking of these and writing them in his secret notebook whenever he has a spare moment during his day. He is influenced by among others Paterson natives such as William Carlos Williams and his epic poem "Paterson". Paterson's writing are largely for himself, although Laura would like him to share more with her and the rest of the world. Something that happens to Paterson this week has the potential to knock his routinized world into a tailspin.
- 3
Starman (1984)
John CarpenterDP Donald M. MorganIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
Jenny Hayden never did get over the death of her husband, so when an alien life form decides to model "himself" on the husband, Jenny is understandably confused if not terrified. The alien, or Starman, as he is called, has a deadline to meet and kidnaps Jenny in order to meet it.
- 4
Mr. Nobody (2009)
Jaco Van DormaelDP Christophe BeaucarneIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →
'Nemo Nobody' is recounting his life story to a reporter. He's less than clear, often times thinking that he is 34 years of age, others, well over 100. But his story becomes more confusing after he does focus on the fact of his current real age.
- 5
Tarsem SinghDP Colin WatkinsonIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →
Lee Paceas Roy Walker
Justine Waddellas Nurse Evelyn / Sister Evelyn
Daniel Caltagironeas Sinclair / Governor Odious
At a Los Angeles hospital in the 1920s, Alexandria is a child recovering from a broken arm. She befriends Roy Walker, a movie stunt man with legs paralyzed after a fall. At her request, Roy tells her an elaborate story about six men of widely varied backgrounds who are on a quest to kill a corrupt provincial governor. Between chapters of the story, Roy inveigles Alexandria to scout the hospital's pharmacy for morphine. As Roy's fantastic tale nears its end, Death seems close at hand.
- 6
Sea Fever (2019)
Neasa HardimanDP Ruairí O'BrienIMDb 5.7TMDB 6.1See in full on FrameThrower →
The crew of a West of Ireland trawler, marooned at sea, struggle for their lives against a growing parasite in their water supply.
- 7
Amelie (2001)
Jean-Pierre JeunetDP Bruno DelbonnelIMDb 8.3TMDB 7.9See in full on FrameThrower →
At a tiny Parisian café, the adorable yet painfully shy Amélie accidentally discovers a gift for helping others. Soon Amelie is spending her days as a matchmaker, guardian angel, and all-around do-gooder. But when she bumps into a handsome stranger, will she find the courage to become the star of her very own love story?
- 8
Daniel Scheinert, Daniel KwanDP Larkin SeipleIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →
With her laundromat teetering on the brink of failure and her marriage to wimpy husband Waymond on the rocks, overworked Evelyn Wang struggles to cope with everything, including a tattered relationship with her judgmental father and daughter. And as if facing a gloomy midlife crisis wasn't enough, Evelyn must brace herself up for an unpleasant meeting with an impersonal bureaucrat: Deirdre, the shabbily dressed IRS auditor. However, as the stern agent loses patience, an inexplicable multiverse rift becomes an eye-opening exploration of parallel realities. Will Evelyn jump down the rabbit hole? But how many stars are in the universe? Can weary Evelyn fathom the irrepressible force of possibilities, tap into newfound powers, and prevent an evil entity from destroying the thin, countless layers of the unseen world?
- 9
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
Rob MarshallDP Dion BeebeIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →
In the 1920s, 9-year-old Chiyo gets sold to a geisha house. There, she is forced into servitude, receiving nothing in return until the house's ruling hierarchy determines if she is of high enough quality to service the clientele -- men who visit and pay for conversation, dance and song. After rigorous years of training, Chiyo becomes Sayuri, a geisha of incredible beauty and influence. Life is good for Sayuri, but World War II is about to disrupt the peace.
- 10
The Dead Zone (1983)
David CronenbergDP Mark IrwinIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
Johnny Smith is a schoolteacher with his whole life ahead of him but, after leaving his fiancee's home one night, is involved in a car crash which leaves him in a coma for 5 years. When he wakes, he discovers he has an ability to see into the past, present and future life of anyone with whom he comes into physical contact.
What loving films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a loving frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — neon sign is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- neon sign2.7×
- water1.9×
How loving 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 loving from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 25%widevs 20% baseline
- 38%mediumvs 48% baseline
- 26%closeupvs 21% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Wild At Heart (1990) 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 793 frames from 13 films carrying the loving 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/loving
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