27 Best Introspective Movies You Should Watch on Your Own
I’ve always been perfectly content watching movies alone. Watching a movie with an audience is great if it’s an action or comedy, but there are some movies that demand more attention and reward close attention—and frankly, having kids, partners, and even friends in the room can be helpful. very distracting.
Below are 27 of the best movies you can watch alone and get lost in. They’re all relatively quiet and generally thoughtful, which isn’t to say boring – not that there’s anything wrong with a slightly dull film .
(Note: There are a lot of American films here, partly because quiet introspection is more innovative in Hollywood; the list of introspective Swedish films, for example, would be much longer.)
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Charlie Kaufman’s film about a theater director (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who lives his life within the context of a theatrical model is seen as either pushy and pretentious or completely life-changing. Much of the film’s appeal lies in the desire realized here to break free from your miserable life and look at it from a more objective point of view.
Where to watch: digital rental.
Waking Life (2001)
I’m not sure Waking Life ‘s experimental animation style is strictly necessary – especially given the rotoscoping required the physical presence of the actors – but there’s enough in the film’s discussions of free will and existentialism to make for an enjoyable and thoughtful film about the man. a man on the verge of a full-blown existential crisis. However, the ambitious visual style does add to the dreamlike quality, making it harder to perceive as some sort of cinematic bull session.
Where to watch: digital rental.
Arrival (2016)
There have been quiet, brooding alien invasion films before, but that’s not quite the style we’ve come to associate with the form. The film, which cemented Denis Villeneuve’s reputation as a maker of smart, heady genre films, explores the universal challenges and benefits of communication, topped with a unique sci-fi twist.
Where to watch: Paramount+ , digital rental.
Man from Earth (2007)
Written by sci-fi legend Jerome Bixby on his deathbed, this (very) low-budget film is appropriately mournful and follows a man who may or may not be 14,000 years old. David Lee Smith plays John Oldman (*wink*), a professor who invites his friends to his farewell party. During the meeting, he revealed his secret, which sparked an evening of conversations in which fellow teachers questioned him about his life from their academic perspectives. Heady stuff.
Where to watch: Tubi, digital rental.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Marketed as the sexiest movie you’ll ever see in a major theater, Eyes Wide Shut is actually a fairy-tale stroll through the twilight world of joyless, mechanical sex: the message isn’t that “sex is bad” , but that sexual obsession can be as inhuman as anything else in a Stanley Kubrick film.
Where to watch: digital rental.
Pi (1998)
Slightly more intense than some of the others here, Darren Aronofsky’s feature-length directorial debut follows a mathematician who becomes obsessed with the idea that mathematics can fully explain the underlying meaning of the world, even as his own mental health struggles as an imperfect and the irreducible person makes this search more and more intense. quixoticism.
Where to watch: digital rental.
Paterson (2016)
Idiosyncratic indie director Jim Jarmusch takes “contemplativeness” to a new level in this film, which follows a week in the life of a New Jersey transit driver played by Adam Driver (hmmm). During breaks from work, Paterson writes short poems with the support of his wife (Golshifteh Farahani), but his dreams of publishing them disappear when a dog chews his notebook. Featuring impressive performances from its two leads, this quiet and rather touching film explores seemingly small events that can upend our own little universes.
Where to watch: Prime Video
My Dinner with Andre (1981)
Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre has a fan base to rival many of the more obvious cult classics in American film history; What’s fascinating is that it’s a film about two actors playing themselves (they have the same names, anyway) chatting in a café for almost two hours. However, people watch it again and again. The material ranges from funny to desperate, but it’s always surprising as the two actors sell their stories at least as well as any of the special effects.
Where to watch: Max , The Criterion Channel, digital rental.
Sitting Elephant (2018)
There is very little solace to be found in writer Hu Bo’s first and only film, which tells the anecdote of an elephant in a circus in Manchuria who remains absolutely motionless under any provocation: perhaps feeling at peace, perhaps simply surviving without living. The film’s characters decide to visit the elephant, and their stories together speak of isolation from life and disappointment in it.
Where to watch: digital rental.
Werkmeister of Harmony (2000)
Werkmeister Harmonies , directed by Béla Tarr and Agnes Granicki, is perhaps the most accessible of Tarr’s film projects. Admittedly, that’s not saying much considering his previous film, Satan’s Tango, is over seven hours long. Here we take a long, languid and beautifully filmed tour of a small village in Hungary, following its inhabitants as a slightly sinister circus comes to town. The film isn’t particularly interested in plot or incident, preferring instead to languidly observe its characters.
Where to watch: The Criterion Channel, digital rental.
George Washington (2000)
On one hand, “George Washington” is the story of a schoolboy’s unintentional murder and attempts to cover up the evidence… but that synopsis in no way captures the feel of this carefully crafted and beautifully shot tone poem.
Where to watch: The Criterion Channel, digital rental.
Lobster (2015)
As far as unusual dark comedies go, it doesn’t get any more unusual than this: In Yorgos Lanthimos’ dystopian dark comedy, single people are given exactly 45 days to find romantic partners or else they’ll be turned into animals. It’s definitely weird, but no weirder than the modern courtship rituals it satirizes.
Where to watch: Max , digital rental
Be There (1979)
Hal Ashby’s film, on the one hand, is a particularly biting satire featuring a (very) simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) whose every corny plant-related utterance is taken as wisdom by a world desperate for meaning. While he pokes fun at our willingness to see what we want to see, he focuses on the gentle presence of Chance the gardener and invites us to question whether his innocent view of the world is really all that bad.
Where to watch: digital rental.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Remember His Past Lives (2010)
Slow-paced and sometimes bewildering, Uncle Boonmee is also a funny and beautiful meditative story about a man’s final days and the literal and figurative ghosts that haunt our lives.
Where to watch: digital rental.
Stalker (1979)
After the apocalypse, a guide, along with a writer and scientist, set off through a strange and highly stylized wasteland in search of the Chamber, the only place on earth where one’s wishes can still be granted. There are elements of political and religious metaphor, but neither sense is satisfying, and it’s that slipperiness that makes it so gripping.
Where to watch: Max , The Criterion Channel, digital rental.
Valhalla Rising (2009)
Our main character here is a silent, one-eyed ex-con (played by Mads Mikkelsen) who begins a long, hypnotic journey across the sea when a Norwegian encounters Christian crusaders in a nasty, violent Middle Ages. There is blood and battle, but the idiosyncratic director is more interested in the silence between them.
Where to watch: Shudder, AMC+, digital purchase.
Only Yesterday (1991)
Not many of the films on this list topped the box office at the time of their release, but the anime directed by Isao Takahata (from Studio Ghibli) became the highest-grossing film of its year in Japan. Twenty-seven-year-old Taeko Okajima works in the city but takes the train to the countryside to visit relatives and escape the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. The journey brings back memories of her life, some good, some less so, forcing her to reconcile her present with everything she left behind.
Where to watch: Max , digital rental
Ghost Story (2017)
The Phantom (Casey Affleck) returns to the house he shared with his wife (Rooney Mara), only to discover that he is not anchored in time or space, forced to view events in a seemingly random order. Desperate to find contact, he can only watch.
Where to watch: Max , digital rental
Country of Nomads (2020)
After Fern (Frances McDormand) loses her job at a plaster factory, she sells everything and buys a van to live and travel while she looks for work (including at an Amazon warehouse). Affections come and go along her travels, as writer-director Chloe Zhao’s funny, elegiac film examines life within America’s increasingly unstable capitalist system while also exploring broader themes of permanence and impermanence.
Where to watch: Hulu , digital rental.
Whales of August (1987)
At or near the end of the careers of Lillian Gish, Bette Davis, Ann Sothern, and Vincent Price, The Whales of August finds two elderly and very different sisters spending another summer in the same Maine seaside house in which they lived. visited since childhood. Davis’ bitter Libby is ready to give up on life, while Gish’s Sarah is tired of being a caretaker and increasingly excited about the prospect of a romance with local widower Price. The tender film explores the potential for dignity and vitality of these octogenarians.
Where to watch: Prime Video
Tree of Life (2011)
Although early reviewers found it pretentious, one can’t help but notice the quiet ambition of Terence Malick’s superbly rendered exploration of the meaning of life itself, with a stop in 1950s Texas. This is probably the closest any director has come to the scale and scope of the 2001 film since that film’s 1968 release.
Where to watch: digital rental.
Russian Ark (2002)
What starts out as a novelty gradually develops into something exciting as director Alexander Sokurov follows a mysterious narrator through the walls of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, encountering various moments and historical characters from the building’s history along the way. It’s basically a film about philosophical conversation, but Sokurov shot the film in one continuous montage, without false cuts, choreographing a cast that eventually numbered in the thousands.
Where to Stream: Hoopla, Kanopy, Plex
Wild Strawberry (1957)
Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries has some of the most nightmarish imagery, but is ultimately the most human of all his works. The story of an old man remembering his past is as sad as it is sweet, but approaches something almost celebratory.
Where to watch: Max , The Criterion Channel, digital rental.
Pariah (2011)
There are strong emotions in Dee Rees’ semi-autobiographical coming out story Pariah , and in that sense it is not the quietest of quiet dramas. However, in its performance and visual style, it is completely hypnotic, creating a world in which, despite all its turmoil, I could get lost forever.
Where to watch: Prime Video
Under the Skin (2013)
An alien seduces men on the side of the road in this languid and elusive exploration of the relationship between sex and power. With a vibrant visual style that’s reminiscent of Blade Runner (a little), Under the Skin is as exciting as it is hard to define.
Where to watch: Max , digital rental
Last Year in Marienbad (1961)
Strikingly dreamlike but so beautiful it’s hard to care for, Alain Resnais’s masterpiece is set in a luxury hotel and features two main characters who seem completely unmoored in time and space and may have already met once in Marienbad. It’s very much like a ghost story, minus the horror movie trappings.
Where to watch: The Criterion Channel, digital purchase.
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring (2003)
The story of Kim Ki-duk follows a Buddhist monk (Oh Yeon-soo) from a young student to old age, with the different seasons representing the phases of life and the circular nature of existence. It’s quite meditative, without extraneous or overdramatic drama or even much dialogue. It’s (almost) as quiet as film production, but quite pleasant and rewarding.
Where to watch: digital rental.