Best Parent child relationship Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of parent child relationship cinema — measured across 7,347 indexed frames from 97 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Parent child relationship films over-index on girl, child and boy — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Matilda (1996)
Danny DeVitoDP Stefan CzapskyIMDb 7.0TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Matilda Wormwood is an exquisite and intelligent little girl. Unfortunately, Matilda is misunderstood by her family because she is very different from their ways of life. As time passes, Matilda finally starts school that has a kindly teacher, loyal friends and a sadistic principal. As she gets fed up with the constant cruelty, Matilda begins to realize that she has a gift of telekinetic powers. After some days of practice, Matilda suddenly turns the tables to stand up to her parents and outwit the principal.
- 2
The Florida Project (2017)
Sean BakerDP Alexis ZabéIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Halley lives with her six year old daughter Moonee in a budget motel along one of the commercial strips catering to the Walt Disney World tourist clientele outside Orlando, Florida. Halley, who survives largely on welfare, has little respect for people, especially those who cross her, it an attitude that she has passed down to Moonee, who curses and gives the finger like her mother. Although the motel's policy is not to allow long term rentals, Bobby, the motel manager, has made arrangements for people like Halley to live there while not undermining the policy as he realizes that many such tenants have no place to go otherwise. Halley, Moonee and Moonee's friends, who live in the motel or others like it along the strip and who she often drags into her disruptive pranks, are often the bane of Bobby's existence, but while dealing with whatever problem arises, Bobby has a soft spot especially for the children and thus, by association, their parents, as he knows that Moonee and others like her are just children acting like a children under whatever guidance they have, Moonee who has less guidance than most. Although there are some lines which he will not tolerate to be crossed, Bobby lets most of the disruptive things that they do go, largely as long as it does not affect the bread and butter of the motel, namely the tourist trade. The summer in this collective is presented, when Moonee and her friends, such as Scooty, are out of school and are left largely to their own devices while self-absorbed Halley does whatever she wants, often just staying in the room watching TV. Halley is supposed to look after Scooty, the son of Halley's friend Ashley, they who live in the unit immediately underneath Halley and Moonee's, while Ashley is at work at a local diner. In turn, Ashley pilfers cooked meals from the diner to feed Halley, Moonee and Scooty. Over the course of the summer, Halley systematically begins to alienate one by one the people who are her unofficial support by responding with that disrespect to anything she feels is against her. As such, Halley begins to take more and more extreme measures to maintain the life she leads with Moonee.
- 3
The Croods (2013)
Kirk DeMicco, Chris SandersDP Yong Duk JhunIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
The prehistoric Croods family live in a particularly dangerous moment in time. Patriarch Grug, his mate Ugga, teenage daughter Eep, son Thunk, and feisty Gran gather food by day and huddle together in a cave at night. When a more evolved caveman named Guy arrives on the scene, Grug is distrustful, but it soon becomes apparent that Guy is correct about the impending destruction of their world.
- 4
Spirited Away (2001)
Hayao MiyazakiDP Atsushi OkuiIMDb 8.6TMDB 8.5See in full on FrameThrower →
The fanciful adventures of a ten-year-old girl named Chihiro, who discovers a secret world when she and her family get lost and venture through a hillside tunnel. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, Chihiro must fend for herself as she encounters strange spirits, assorted creatures and a grumpy sorceress who seeks to prevent her from returning to the human world.
- 5
Mary Poppins (1964)
Robert StevensonDP Edward ColmanIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
When Jane and Michael Banks are faced with the prospect of a new nanny, they are pleasantly surprised by the arrival of the magical Mary Poppins. Embarking on a series of fantastical adventures with he and her Cockney performer friend, Bert, they try to pass on some of her sunny attitude to their preoccupied parents.
- 6
Richard KellyDP Steven PosterIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →
Donnie Darko doesn't get along too well with his family, his teachers, and his classmates; but he does manage to find a sympathetic friend in Gretchen, who agrees to date him. He has a compassionate psychiatrist, who discovers hypnosis is the means to unlock hidden secrets. His other companion may not be a true ally. Donnie has a friend named Frank, a large bunny which only Donnie can see. When an engine falls off a plane and destroys his bedroom, Donnie is not there. Both the event, and Donnie's escape, seem to have been caused by supernatural events.
- 7
Despicable Me (2010)
Chris Renaud, Pierre CoffinIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
In a happy suburban neighborhood surrounded by white picket fences with flowering rose bushes, sits a black house with a dead lawn. Unbeknownst to the neighbors, hidden beneath this house is a vast secret hideout. Surrounded by a small army of minions, we discover Gru (Steve Carell), planning the biggest heist in the history of the world. He is going to steal the moon. Gru delights in all things wicked. Armed with his arsenal of shrink rays, freeze rays, and battle-ready vehicles for land and air, he vanquishes all who stand in his way. Until the day he encounters the immense will of three little orphaned girls who look at him and see something that no one else has ever seen: a potential Dad. The world's greatest villain has just met his greatest challenge: three little girls named Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Elsie Fisher).
- 8
Dark Water (2002)
Hideo NakataDP Junichiro HayashiIMDb 6.7TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →
In the final stages of a messy divorce, Yoshimi struggles to build a new life for herself and her daughter. Unfortunately, the challenges of single parenting and an ongoing custody battle are further complicated when they move into an apartment plagued by mysterious water leaks and haunted by the apparition of a little girl.
- 9
Forrest Gump (1994)
Robert ZemeckisDP Don BurgessIMDb 8.8TMDB 8.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Forrest Gump is a simple man with a low I.Q. but good intentions. He is running through childhood with his best and only friend Jenny. His 'mama' teaches him the ways of life and leaves him to choose his destiny. Forrest joins the army for service in Vietnam, finding new friends called Dan and Bubba, he wins medals, creates a famous shrimp fishing fleet, inspires people to jog, starts a ping-pong craze, creates the smiley, writes bumper stickers and songs, donates to people and meets the president several times. However, this is all irrelevant to Forrest who can only think of his childhood sweetheart Jenny Curran, who has messed up her life. Although in the end all he wants to prove is that anyone can love anyone.
- 10
The Tree Of Life (2011)
Terrence MalickDP Emmanuel LubezkiIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →
The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.
What parent child relationship films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a parent child relationship frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — girl is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- girl2.1×
- child1.8×
- boy1.6×
How parent child relationship 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 parent child relationship from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 84%eye levelvs 69% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Pusher II (2004) 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 7,347 frames from 97 films carrying the parent child relationship 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/parent-child-relationship
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