Sad melancholy films
by Kookyburra | created - 23 Feb 2013 | updated - 16 Nov 2013 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Breaking the Waves (1996)
R | 159 min | Drama
Oilman Jan is paralyzed in an accident. His wife, who prayed for his return, feels guilty; even more, when Jan urges her to have sex with another.
Director: Lars von Trier | Stars: Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård, Katrin Cartlidge, Jean-Marc Barr
Votes: 71,543 | Gross: $4.04M
2. The End of the Affair (1999)
R | 102 min | Drama, Romance
A desperate man tries to find out why his beloved left him years ago.
Director: Neil Jordan | Stars: Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore, Stephen Rea, Heather-Jay Jones
Votes: 23,926 | Gross: $10.66M
3. All or Nothing (2002)
R | 128 min | Drama
In a poor working class London home, Penny's love for her partner, taxi driver Phil, has run dry. When an unexpected tragedy occurs, they and their local community are brought back together.
Director: Mike Leigh | Stars: Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen, Alison Garland
Votes: 11,452 | Gross: $0.12M
4. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
R | 139 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
In late 1950s New York, a young underachiever named Tom Ripley is sent to Italy to retrieve Dickie Greenleaf, a rich and spoiled millionaire playboy. But when the errand fails, Ripley takes extreme measures.
Director: Anthony Minghella | Stars: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett
Votes: 241,993 | Gross: $81.30M
5. Mystic River (2003)
R | 138 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
The tragic murder of a 19-year-old girl reunites three childhood friends still living in Boston--the victim's gangster father, a detective, and the disturbed man they both suspect of killing her.
Director: Clint Eastwood | Stars: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Emmy Rossum
Votes: 485,686 | Gross: $90.14M
6. Withnail & I (1987)
R | 107 min | Comedy, Drama
In 1969, two substance-abusing, unemployed actors retreat to the countryside for a holiday that proves disastrous.
Director: Bruce Robinson | Stars: Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths, Ralph Brown
Votes: 47,878 | Gross: $1.54M
7. Elle s'appelle Sabine (2007)
Not Rated | 85 min | Documentary
A sensitive portrait of Sabine Bonnaire, the autistic sister of the french actress Sandrine Bonnaire.
Director: Sandrine Bonnaire | Stars: Sabine Bonnaire, Sandrine Bonnaire
Votes: 486
8. Sarah's Key (2010)
PG-13 | 111 min | Drama, War
In modern-day Paris, a journalist finds her life becoming entwined with a young girl whose family was torn apart during the notorious Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in 1942.
Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner | Stars: Kristin Scott Thomas, Mélusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup, Frédéric Pierrot
Votes: 17,921 | Gross: $7.69M
9. Atonement (2007)
R | 123 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
Thirteen-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.
Director: Joe Wright | Stars: Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Brenda Blethyn, Saoirse Ronan
Votes: 299,697 | Gross: $50.93M
10. Never Let Me Go (2010)
R | 103 min | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi
The lives of three friends, from their early school days into young adulthood, when the reality of the world they live in comes knocking.
Director: Mark Romanek | Stars: Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Izzy Meikle-Small
Votes: 153,204 | Gross: $2.43M
11. The Dreamlife of Angels (1998)
R | 113 min | Drama
The lives of two dissimilar girls turned out in different ways.
Director: Erick Zonca | Stars: Élodie Bouchez, Natacha Régnier, Grégoire Colin, Patrick Mercado
Votes: 7,765 | Gross: $1.73M
12. The Remains of the Day (1993)
PG | 134 min | Drama, Romance
A butler who sacrificed body and soul to service in the years leading up to World War II realizes too late how misguided his loyalty was to his lordly employer.
Director: James Ivory | Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, John Haycraft, Christopher Reeve
Votes: 84,387 | Gross: $22.95M
13. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
PG-13 | 94 min | Drama, War
Through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a German concentration camp, a forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.
Director: Mark Herman | Stars: Asa Butterfield, David Thewlis, Rupert Friend, Zac Mattoon O'Brien
Votes: 246,255 | Gross: $9.03M
14. Lantana (2001)
R | 121 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
The relationships of four couples unravel after the discovery of a young woman's body in Lantana bush in suburban Sydney.
Director: Ray Lawrence | Stars: Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Rachael Blake, Kerry Armstrong
Votes: 20,222 | Gross: $4.46M
15. Shadowlands (1993)
PG | 131 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
C.S. Lewis, a world-renowned Christian theologian, writer and professor, leads a passionless life until he meets spirited poet Joy Gresham from the U.S.
Director: Richard Attenborough | Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Julian Fellowes, Roddy Maude-Roxby
Votes: 20,438 | Gross: $25.84M
16. Things Behind the Sun (2001)
R | 120 min | Drama, Music
A young music journalist's dark memories are awakened when he goes to interview a female rock singer, and both are forced to confront troubling secrets from their pasts.
Director: Allison Anders | Stars: Kim Dickens, Gabriel Mann, Aria Alpert Adjani, Ruben Anders
Votes: 1,496
17. The Elephant Man (1980)
PG | 124 min | Biography, Drama
A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man who is mistreated while scraping a living as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of kindness, intelligence and sophistication.
Director: David Lynch | Stars: Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud
Votes: 258,333
18. The Reader (2008)
R | 124 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.
Director: Stephen Daldry | Stars: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz, Jeanette Hain
Votes: 259,739 | Gross: $34.19M
19. The Hairdresser's Husband (1990)
R | 82 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Antoine has always been fascinated by a hairdresser's delicate touch, the beguiling perfume and the enticing figure of a woman with an opulent bosom. After all, he always knew he would marry one, completing his idealised love fantasy.
Director: Patrice Leconte | Stars: Jean Rochefort, Anna Galiena, Roland Bertin, Maurice Chevit
Votes: 10,360 | Gross: $1.16M
20. A Single Man (2009)
R | 99 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
An English professor, one year after the sudden death of his boyfriend, is unable to cope with his typical days in 1960s Los Angeles.
Director: Tom Ford | Stars: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode, Nicholas Hoult
Votes: 117,729 | Gross: $9.17M
21. The Deer Hunter (1978)
R | 183 min | Drama, War
An in-depth examination of the ways in which the Vietnam War impacts and disrupts the lives of several friends in a small steel mill town in Pennsylvania.
Director: Michael Cimino | Stars: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Cazale, John Savage
Votes: 362,027 | Gross: $48.98M
22. Inception (2010)
PG-13 | 148 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a C.E.O., but his tragic past may doom the project and his team to disaster.
Director: Christopher Nolan | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elliot Page, Ken Watanabe
Votes: 2,549,317 | Gross: $292.58M
23. Shutter Island (2010)
R | 138 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule, two US marshals, are sent to an asylum on a remote island in order to investigate the disappearance of a patient, where Teddy uncovers a shocking truth about the place.
Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Emily Mortimer, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley
Votes: 1,455,575 | Gross: $128.01M
24. Bright Star (2009)
PG | 119 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
The three-year romance between 19th-century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne near the end of his life.
Director: Jane Campion | Stars: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox
Votes: 28,687 | Gross: $4.44M
25. The Green Mile (1999)
R | 189 min | Crime, Drama, Fantasy
A tale set on death row, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the lead guard, Paul Edgecombe, recognizes John's gift, he tries to help stave off the condemned man's execution.
Director: Frank Darabont | Stars: Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan, David Morse, Bonnie Hunt
Votes: 1,406,487 | Gross: $136.80M
26. Ghost World (2001)
R | 111 min | Comedy, Drama
Two eccentric best friends graduate high school and respond to a man's romance-seeking newspaper ad as a gag, only to find their lives becoming increasingly complicated.
Director: Terry Zwigoff | Stars: Steve Buscemi, Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Brad Renfro
Votes: 126,800 | Gross: $6.22M
27. Lost in Translation (2003)
R | 102 min | Comedy, Drama
A faded movie star and a neglected young woman form an unlikely bond after crossing paths in Tokyo.
Director: Sofia Coppola | Stars: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris
Votes: 488,569 | Gross: $44.59M
28. Mary and Max (2009)
Not Rated | 92 min | Animation, Comedy, Drama
In 1976 Melbourne, a lonely 8-year-old girl strikes up a correspondence with an unlikely pen pal: a severely obese 44-year-old New Yorker with Asperger's syndrome.
Director: Adam Elliot | Stars: Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Eric Bana, Barry Humphries
Votes: 186,741
29. Up (2009)
PG | 96 min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy
78-year-old Carl Fredricksen travels to Paradise Falls in his house equipped with balloons, inadvertently taking a young stowaway.
Directors: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson | Stars: Edward Asner, Jordan Nagai, John Ratzenberger, Christopher Plummer
Votes: 1,124,280 | Gross: $293.00M
30. Rocky (1976)
PG | 120 min | Drama, Sport
A small-time Philadelphia boxer gets a supremely rare chance to fight the world heavyweight champion in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect.
Director: John G. Avildsen | Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers
Votes: 628,147 | Gross: $117.24M
31. Rocky II (1979)
PG | 119 min | Drama, Sport
Rocky struggles in family life after his bout with Apollo Creed, while the embarrassed champ insistently goads him to accept a challenge for a rematch.
Director: Sylvester Stallone | Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers
Votes: 231,149
32. City of Angels (1998)
PG-13 | 114 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance
An angel on Earth, a doctor unable to believe, a patient with a secret, a love story made in Heaven.
Director: Brad Silberling | Stars: Nicolas Cage, Meg Ryan, Andre Braugher, Dennis Franz
Votes: 127,731 | Gross: $78.69M
33. Sophie's Choice (1982)
R | 150 min | Drama, Romance
Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found a reason to live with Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust.
Director: Alan J. Pakula | Stars: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol, Rita Karin
Votes: 52,723 | Gross: $30.04M
34. Sunshine (1999)
R | 181 min | Drama, History, Romance
The fate of a Hungarian Jewish family throughout the 20th century.
Director: István Szabó | Stars: Ralph Fiennes, Rosemary Harris, Rachel Weisz, Jennifer Ehle
Votes: 15,790 | Gross: $5.10M
35. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
PG-13 | 105 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance
The solitary life of an artificial man - who was incompletely constructed and has scissors for hands - is upended when he is taken in by a suburban family.
Director: Tim Burton | Stars: Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Anthony Michael Hall
Votes: 523,607 | Gross: $56.36M
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