AllMoviesForYou: drama movies for every mood, from Roman Holiday, Rain Man and A Beautiful Mind to The Social Network, Lion, Wonder and CODA, and where to watch them

What a drama is for

A comedy sets out to make you laugh and an adventure to make your pulse quicken. A drama has a quieter aim: to make you care what happens to somebody. That is all the word means here. The films on this guide have their share of jokes, songs, races and journeys, and what unites them is that the people at their centre are treated as real, with choices that matter and feelings that carry weight.

This guide also has a particular taste. It prefers dramas that leave the viewer better for having watched: stories of effort rewarded, families mended, talent recognised and kindness returned. There is sadness in many of them, since a story needs something at stake to hold its audience, and the sadness is there to give the happiness its value. A film such as Hachi: A Dog's Tale or Wonder may draw tears; they are the good kind.

Because people come to drama for the performances, the site puts the names up front. Where other guides show a poster and a title, the cards on AllMoviesForYou also give the director and the first members of the cast, so that you can follow an actor you admire from one film to the next. The finding titles page lists every route into the catalogue.

When you want something true

Forty-nine films are drawn from real lives, and they are the natural place to begin. The most watched is The Social Network, the story of a website built in a university bedroom and of the friendships it strained, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher with a speed and bite that have kept it fresh. A Beautiful Mind follows the mathematician John Nash from the brilliance of his student years through decades of illness to a Nobel Prize, and Russell Crowe makes every stage of that road believable.

The builders and inventors have a shelf to themselves. Steve Jobs and Jobs study one founder; The Founder another, the salesman who made a hamburger stand into an empire. Joy follows a single mother with an idea for a mop. Air is about the deal that put a young basketball player's name on a shoe, BlackBerry about the engineers who put email in a pocket, and Flamin' Hot about a factory janitor with a recipe.

Some true stories are about a single remarkable journey. In Lion, a boy of five is carried a thousand miles across India by a train he boarded by mistake, grows up in Australia, and as a man searches satellite pictures for the station where he was lost. In Togo, a musher and his lead dog cross the ice of Norton Sound in a storm. The 33 waits with the miners trapped beneath the Chilean desert, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind builds a windmill from a bicycle and scrap, and Arthur the King follows a stray dog who adopts a team of adventure racers.

Others are portraits of people whose gifts were nearly overlooked. The Man Who Knew Infinity takes a self-taught Indian clerk to Cambridge. Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story follows a boy from Detroit to the operating theatre. Big Eyes restores a painter's name to her own pictures, Florence Foster Jenkins celebrates a singer whose joy outran her pitch, and Radioactive retraces the work of Marie Curie. The true stories page arranges the shelf by theme.

When you want a love story

Seventy films are romantic dramas. The oldest is Roman Holiday of 1953, in which a princess escapes her duties for one day in Rome and a reporter decides that some stories are better kept. Audrey Hepburn won the Academy Award for it, and eight years later stood before a jeweller's window in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Somewhere in Time, from 1980, sends a playwright back to 1912 by force of will to meet the actress in an old photograph.

Three films form a small masterpiece of their own. Before Sunrise introduces an American and a French student who leave a train together in Vienna and talk until dawn. Before Sunset finds them nine years later with one afternoon in Paris. And Past Lives, by a different director with a similar patience, follows two childhood friends from Seoul who meet again across twenty-four years and an ocean. All three trust conversation to do the work that plot does elsewhere.

Time is the favourite subject of the modern love story. One Day visits a pair of friends on the same date for two decades. The Longest Ride and The Best of Me, both from novels by Nicholas Sparks, set a young romance beside an old one. Like Crazy keeps its lovers apart with a visa. In Your Eyes connects two strangers who can see through each other's eyes, and Love at First Sight gives an airport meeting the weight of fate.

The lighter romances belong here too, because they take their characters seriously. Four Weddings and a Funeral made a generation fall for a hesitant Englishman. Hitch, Maid in Manhattan, Life As We Know It and My Big Fat Greek Wedding are comedies with real feeling underneath, and Enough Said, Hope Springs and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel prove that love stories carry on well past thirty. The love stories page sorts them by mood.

When you want a story about family

Sixty-four films turn on the ties between parents and children or brothers and sisters, and they include some of the best loved on the site. Rain Man is the model of the form. A young car dealer learns at his father's funeral that he has an older brother with autism, and what begins as a scheme to claim an inheritance becomes, over six days on the road, the first real bond of his life. Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise carry it between them, and the film won the Academy Award for best picture.

CODA won the same award thirty-three years later. Its heroine is the only hearing member of a deaf fishing family, their interpreter since childhood, and her wish to study singing asks them to imagine a part of her life they are unable to share. Wonder follows a ten-year-old with a facial difference through his first year at school and gives equal attention to his sister, who has grown up in his shadow. I Am Sam is about a father with a learning disability and the seven-year-old daughter who is beginning to outpace him.

Fathers have a strong showing. King Richard plans two tennis careers before his daughters can hold a racquet. We Bought a Zoo moves a widowed father and his children into a run-down wildlife park. Jersey Girl hands a publicist a baby and a new life in New Jersey, Trouble with the Curve sends a daughter on the road with her ageing baseball-scout father, and C'mon C'mon lends an uncle a nephew of nine for a trip across America.

Then there are the gatherings. The Family Stone and Love the Coopers assemble three generations for Christmas, with every old quarrel in attendance. Parenthood, directed by Ron Howard, follows four grown siblings and their children through one eventful summer. Steel Magnolias is about a mother and daughter and the friends who hold them up, and Little Miss Sunshine crams six relatives into a yellow van for eight hundred miles. The family dramas page lists the shelf.

Finding a home

A particular kind of family story is about people who have to assemble their own. Hunt for the Wilderpeople gives a city boy in foster care a gruff uncle and a whole forest to hide in. Secondhand Lions leaves a shy boy with two eccentric great-uncles on a Texas farm. The Peanut Butter Falcon puts a young man with Down syndrome and a fisherman on the run together on a raft, and by the end they are brothers in everything but name.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green grows a child in a garden for a couple who had given up hope. Hachi: A Dog's Tale is about a professor who brings home a lost puppy and is repaid with a loyalty that outlasts him. The Terminal makes a family of airport staff around a stranded traveller, and The Way Way Back gives a lonely teenager a second household at a water park. These are among the most consoling films on the site, and they sit on the Families shelf with the rest.

When you want to cheer

Twenty-five films are sporting dramas, and they are built to lift the viewer out of the chair. The team stories come first. Miracle assembles college players to face the finest ice hockey side in the world at the Winter Olympics of 1980. Glory Road takes a small Texas college to the national basketball title of 1966. We Are Marshall rebuilds a football programme after a tragedy, and McFarland, USA turns the sons of farm workers into state champions at cross-country running.

The lone competitors are as stirring. Seabiscuit is an undersized horse with a half-blind jockey. Eddie the Eagle is a ski jumper with thick glasses and boundless nerve. Invincible is a bartender of thirty who wins a place with his city's football team at an open trial, and Cool Runnings sends four Jamaicans down an ice track in a borrowed sled. Goal! and Goal II: Living the Dream follow a young player from Los Angeles to the great clubs of Europe.

Some of the best sporting films take place away from the field. Moneyball is set largely in offices, where a manager with a small budget decides to trust arithmetic. Draft Day spends twelve hours with a team executive on the telephone. Air is a basketball film with hardly a basket in it, and The Damned United studies the pride of a football manager across forty-four difficult days. The sport page arranges them by game.

When you want a song

Twenty-three dramas have music at their centre. Four are lives of famous performers: Ray, with Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles; Elvis, told at the pace of a fairground ride; Selena, the story of the Tejano star and her family band; and A Complete Unknown, which follows Bob Dylan through his first four years in New York. One Night in Miami... imagines an evening in 1964 shared by four friends, one of them the singer Sam Cooke.

Others are about discovering a voice. Sing Street starts a band in a Dublin school to impress a girl and finds real songs along the way. August Rush believes that music can lead a child to his parents. The Soloist finds a trained cellist on the streets of Los Angeles, Ricki and the Flash sends a bar-band singer home to her family, and tick, tick... BOOM! and In the Heights carry the energy of the modern stage musical to the screen. The music page suggests where to begin.

When you want to remember being young

Twenty-four dramas are set at school or on campus. Three from the 1980s still set the standard. The Breakfast Club locks five very different pupils in a library for a Saturday and lets them talk their way to understanding. Pretty in Pink follows a girl who sews her own clothes to a prom on the other side of town. Say Anything... is about an earnest boy whose only ambition is to be good to the cleverest girl in his year, and it contains one of cinema's most imitated images, a raised stereo beneath a window.

Modern school dramas are gentler and more observant. Eighth Grade records the last week of middle school with a truthfulness that makes adults wince in recognition. Wonder is a whole school year seen from several desks. The Kings of Summer follows three boys who build a house in the woods, Chemical Hearts is a first love told with full respect for its young characters, and Tall Girl, The Perfect Man and To All the Boys: Always and Forever bring a lighter touch.

Campus life has The Social Network, where a dormitory becomes a company, and Larry Crowne, in which a man of middle age enrols at a community college and finds, to his surprise, that he enjoys it. Teachers matter in Radio, Glory Road, Take the Lead and Pay It Forward, whose plot begins with an assignment written on a blackboard. The school days page lists the shelf.

When you want a good book on screen

Thirty-nine dramas began on the page. Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd gives Carey Mulligan a farm, three suitors and the rolling country of Dorset. The Secret Garden opens a locked door in a Yorkshire manor for three lonely children. Truman Capote wrote the short novel behind Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Nick Hornby the one behind About a Boy.

Memoirs supply many of the true stories: Lion, We Bought a Zoo and Julie & Julia, which stitches together two of them, a cook's and a blogger's, fifty years apart. Bestselling novels lie behind Wonder, One Day, Water for Elephants, Everything, Everything, The Art of Racing in the Rain, Where'd You Go, Bernadette and both The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants films. Steel Magnolias and The Lady in the Van were plays, the second written by Alan Bennett about the woman who lived in his drive. The from books page groups them by kind.

When you want to visit the past

Twenty-eight dramas have a historical setting. The Young Victoria shows a queen of eighteen learning whom to trust. Downton Abbey prepares a great house for a royal visit in 1927. Belfast is a child's view of a single street in 1969, filmed in black and white by a director remembering his own boyhood. Goodbye Christopher Robin and Stan & Ollie look at fame from behind the scenes, in the 1920s and the 1950s.

Hugo rebuilds a Paris railway station of 1931 and, inside it, the lost studio of a pioneer of film. Cinderella belongs to a storybook past, Seabiscuit and Water for Elephants to the America of the Depression, and The Majestic to a small town of the 1950s with a shuttered cinema waiting to be reopened. Hitchcock and Being the Ricardos recreate the studios of old Hollywood. The history page orders them by period.

When you want to smile as well

Seventy-one films are comedy dramas, and for many viewers they are the heart of the catalogue: stories that take life seriously and still find it funny. Little Miss Sunshine is the best known. Up in the Air gives George Clooney a man who lives in airports and is proud of it, until a young colleague and a fellow traveller make him wonder what he has been avoiding. The Terminal strands a visitor in an arrivals hall and watches him turn it into a neighbourhood.

Work is a rich subject for the form. Morning Glory hands a failing breakfast show to a producer who refuses to be discouraged. In Good Company makes a veteran salesman report to a boss half his age. Working Girl, from 1988, follows a secretary with better ideas than her employer, The Company Men finds dignity in starting again, and The Nanny Diaries studies the rich of Manhattan from the nursery.

The coming-of-age comedy drama may be the most reliable pleasure of all. The Way Way Back and The Kings of Summer each give a boy one summer in which to become himself. About a Boy gives the same chance to a man of thirty-eight. Whip It finds a small-town teenager her tribe on a roller-derby track, and Big, in which a twelve-year-old wakes in an adult body, is both a fantasy and one of the truest films ever made about childhood. The comedy dramas page picks a dozen.

When you want a classic

Thirteen films were made before 1990. All About Eve, from 1950, is the oldest and perhaps the wittiest film on the site: a Broadway star takes a devoted young admirer under her wing and slowly discovers what the admirer wants. It was nominated for fourteen Academy Awards. Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's follow, and then the catalogue leaps to the 1980s.

That decade is represented by Rain Man, Big, Working Girl, Parenthood, Steel Magnolias, Footloose, Somewhere in Time and the three school films already mentioned. They share a warmth and a confidence in star performers that later decades have found harder to match. The before 1990 page sets them out, and the shelf holds all thirteen.

When you want a story with an animal

Thirteen dramas give a leading part to a creature, and they should be approached with a handkerchief. Hachi: A Dog's Tale is the most affecting: an Akita walks his owner to the station each morning and returns each evening to meet the train, and goes on returning. It holds one of the highest ratings on the site. Togo honours a sled dog who was thought too small and too wild to lead. A Dog's Purpose and A Dog's Way Home are told from the dog's point of view, and The Art of Racing in the Rain from that of a retriever with a philosophical turn of mind.

Horses have Seabiscuit and The Horse Whisperer, in which a patient trainer helps an injured girl and her frightened horse to trust again. Dolphin Tale is the true story of a dolphin fitted with an artificial tail, Water for Elephants joins a travelling circus, and We Bought a Zoo has lions, bears and a very old tiger. The animal stories page has the full list.

Era by era

The shelves by date show how the drama has changed. The films of the 1950s and 1960s are built on dialogue and star presence. Those of the 1980s add youth and popular music. The 1990s, with ten films, bring Before Sunrise, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Cool Runnings, The Sandlot, Selena, The Secret Garden and The Horse Whisperer.

The 2000s, with forty-nine, are the decade of the inspirational true story and the mid-budget romance: A Beautiful Mind, Seabiscuit, Ray, Little Miss Sunshine, Up in the Air, Julie & Julia and Hachi: A Dog's Tale. The 2010s are the largest group, with seventy-six, from The Social Network and Moneyball to Lion, Wonder and Togo. The 2020s already contribute twenty-four, among them CODA, King Richard, Belfast, Past Lives, Air and A Complete Unknown. The era by era page picks four from each period.

The people on the cards

Since every card names its director and cast, a few of those names are worth following. Ron Howard directed A Beautiful Mind and Parenthood. Richard Linklater made the two films of one long conversation and Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Lasse Hallström has three, Hachi: A Dog's Tale, A Dog's Purpose and The Hundred-Foot Journey. Kenneth Branagh made Cinderella and Belfast, Cameron Crowe Say Anything... and We Bought a Zoo, and John Hughes wrote the two great school films of the 1980s.

Among the actors, Tom Hanks appears in Big, The Terminal, Larry Crowne, Elvis and Here. Meryl Streep leads Julie & Julia, Hope Springs, Florence Foster Jenkins and Ricki and the Flash. Dev Patel is in Lion, The Man Who Knew Infinity and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Reese Witherspoon, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Jamie Foxx and Russell Crowe each have two or more. Type any name into the search field and the films appear at once.

The top-rated shelf

Eighty-eight of the 172 films hold an average of seven or higher, which makes the Top rated shelf unusually long. Its leaders are Wonder, Togo, All About Eve, The Art of Racing in the Rain, Lion, Hachi: A Dog's Tale, Flipped and Before Sunrise. One of those was made more than seventy years ago and four in the last ten, which says something about how well a good drama keeps. The Top rated shelf lists them in order.

Using AllMoviesForYou

The home page opens with one featured film: its poster, its title, a line of figures, and the Director, Genre and Cast set out as on a programme, with a red button that leads to its page. Beneath come seven lists, each under a heading with a red underline. The films in them are shown as horizontal cards, a small poster on the left and the credits on the right, two cards to a row on a wide screen and one on a telephone. A View all button at the head of each list shows the size of its shelf.

A film page shows the poster, the title, the year, the running time and the rating, then the director, the leading cast, the genres and the summary. Choose your country, press Watch now, and JustWatch opens with the services that offer the film there. The Add to My List button keeps a film for later; My List, reached from the dark bar, shows what you have saved, each with a Remove button. The shortlist lives in your own browser on your own device, and the list page can save a copy as a file. The My List page describes each step.

A week of moods

For a first week, take one film for each mood. On Monday, something true: Lion. On Tuesday, a love story: Roman Holiday. On Wednesday, a family: CODA. On Thursday, a reason to cheer: Miracle. On Friday, something to make you smile: Little Miss Sunshine.

Keep the weekend for two longer pleasures, A Beautiful Mind on Saturday and All About Eve on Sunday, the newest of the great biographies and the oldest of the great comedies of manners. Seven evenings will show you the range of the catalogue, and the lists on the home page will suggest the next seven.

Questions and answers

The questions below are those most often asked about AllMoviesForYou, with short answers. Fuller help is on the help pages named throughout this guide, including the how to watch page.

When you want a story about a second act

A good number of these dramas are about people who begin again. Larry Crowne loses his job at a superstore and enrols in a class on public speaking. The Company Men follows three executives through the year after their firm lets them go, and one of them rediscovers the satisfaction of building a house with his hands. The Hundred-Foot Journey moves a family of cooks from Mumbai to a French village, where they open a restaurant across the road from a celebrated rival. Julie & Julia is about two women, decades apart, who each find a purpose at the stove.

Later life has its own second acts. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel returns to a group of British retirees who have made a new home in Jaipur. Hope Springs sends a couple married for thirty-one years to a week of counselling in a small town in Maine. The Lady in the Van is about an unexpected friendship that lasted fifteen years, and Here watches several generations pass through a single living room.

These films appeal because nearly everyone has needed a fresh start at some point, or will. They are honest about the fear of it and generous about the reward. Phenomenon, Forever Young and The Majestic add a touch of the fantastic to the same idea, and Home Again and Morning Glory play it for warmth. A viewer facing a change of work, town or household will find good company on this shelf.

When you want to travel

A drama can be a way of going somewhere. Rome is at its loveliest in Roman Holiday, filmed entirely on location at a time when that was unusual: the Spanish Steps, the Mouth of Truth and a scooter ride past the Colosseum. Vienna at night is the third character of Before Sunrise, and Paris in the late afternoon belongs to Before Sunset. Eat Pray Love spends a year in Italy, India and Bali, and Julie & Julia shops in the markets of 1950s Paris.

Lion moves between the crowded stations of Calcutta and the quiet coast of Tasmania. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind was filmed in Malawi, in the language of the people whose story it tells. Hunt for the Wilderpeople disappears into the New Zealand bush, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty crosses Iceland on a skateboard, and Far from the Madding Crowd glows with the green and gold of the English south-west.

America is seen from many angles: the fishing docks of Massachusetts in CODA, the deserts between New Mexico and California in Little Miss Sunshine, the marshes of the Carolinas in The Peanut Butter Falcon, a dusty baseball field in The Sandlot, the ranch country of Montana in The Horse Whisperer and the streets of upper Manhattan in In the Heights. Each of these places shapes the people who live in it, which is one of the things drama does best.

Performances to watch for

Because the cards name the cast, it is worth saying what some of those actors achieve. In Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman builds a complete person out of routines, phrases and a way of looking past the camera, and the film's emotion comes from how little he changes while everyone around him does. In A Beautiful Mind, Russell Crowe ages forty years and lets the audience share his character's certainty before taking it away.

Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday was almost unknown when filming began; her co-star, Gregory Peck, insisted that her name appear beside his, predicting correctly that she would win the Academy Award. Bette Davis in All About Eve delivers some of the sharpest lines ever written with a tired warmth that makes her character lovable as well as formidable. Jamie Foxx in Ray plays the piano himself, and Troy Kotsur in CODA is funny, proud and tender in a performance given entirely in sign language.

Children give several of the finest performances on the site. Sunny Pawar, a small boy at the time, carries the first half of Lion almost alone. Jacob Tremblay acts through heavy make-up in Wonder. Abigail Breslin was nine during the filming of Little Miss Sunshine, and Dakota Fanning seven in I Am Sam. Watching what a young actor can do with a look is one of the particular pleasures of this catalogue.

Ten dramas worth discovering

The famous titles need little help, so this section is for films that deserve a larger audience. Flipped tells the story of a first love twice, once from each side of the street, and has become a quiet favourite. The Kings of Summer and The Way Way Back are two of the best films about being fourteen. Sing Street is a joy from its first song to its last. C'mon C'mon, filmed in black and white, listens to children with real attention.

Interstate 60 is an odd and charming road film through a string of fables. Secondhand Lions is a tall tale with two splendid old actors. Enough Said is a romance for grown-ups, written with a sharp ear. The World's Fastest Indian is about a stubborn New Zealander and his motorcycle, and The Damned United is gripping even for those with little interest in football. Each is a short search away, and most stand on the Top rated shelf.

When you are choosing for other people

Much of the time a film is chosen for a room rather than for one viewer. For a family with children of mixed ages, Wonder, Hugo, The Secret Garden, Dolphin Tale and Togo hold everyone. With teenagers, The Social Network, Sing Street, The Breakfast Club and Eighth Grade start conversations. For grandparents, Roman Holiday, Downton Abbey, Florence Foster Jenkins and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel are safe and good.

For a couple, the three conversation films are ideal on a quiet night, and Hitch or My Big Fat Greek Wedding on a lighter one. For friends, Little Miss Sunshine, Cool Runnings and Moneyball please nearly any group. And for a viewer alone with an evening to fill, Past Lives, Up in the Air and Belfast reward full attention. The search field will find any of them in a moment.

A word about endings

People sometimes ask whether a guide that favours uplifting films is avoiding the truth. The films themselves give the answer. An ending satisfies when it has been earned, and almost every drama here makes its characters pay for their happiness in effort, patience or loss. The reunion at the close of Lion follows twenty-five years of absence. The applause at the end of CODA comes after a family has learned to let a daughter go. Rain Man ends with a parting, and it is the right ending.

What the catalogue leaves out is cruelty for its own sake. The stories were chosen because they believe that people can change, that talent can be recognised and that kindness has consequences. Those beliefs are as true to life as their opposites, and rather more useful on a weekday evening. A viewer who wants to feel something real, and to feel better afterwards, is the person this guide was made for.

Dramas to watch in pairs

Some films illuminate each other. Watch All About Eve and then Being the Ricardos for two backstage stories set within a few years of each other, one invented and one true. Follow Steve Jobs with The Social Network, both written by the same hand, and compare two founders. Put Before Sunrise and Before Sunset on consecutive nights and feel nine years pass.

Miracle and Cool Runnings show two Winter Olympics, eight years apart, one ending in victory and one in a defeat that feels like one. The Breakfast Club and Eighth Grade are school films separated by a generation and by the arrival of the telephone in every pocket. Rain Man and The Peanut Butter Falcon are both road films about an unlikely pair of brothers, one by blood and one by choice. And Roman Holiday with Cinderella makes a fine double bill about young women, crowns and the wish for one ordinary day.

Honoured and loved

The catalogue contains a good share of prize winners. All About Eve, Rain Man, A Beautiful Mind and CODA each won the Academy Award for best picture, across seven decades. The Social Network won for its screenplay, its music and its editing, Little Miss Sunshine for its screenplay and its supporting actor, and Hugo for five of its crafts. Belfast won for its screenplay, and Julie & Julia, Up in the Air, Moneyball, Lion, Past Lives and A Complete Unknown were all nominated for the leading prizes.

Prizes are an imperfect guide, and some of the most cherished films here, Hachi: A Dog's Tale and Flipped among them, won very few. What matters more is that they have gone on being watched. A drama earns its place on this site when viewers recommend it to one another years after it was made, and by that measure every film on the shelves has already won.

Dramas built on talk

One strain of drama deserves a section of its own: the film in which the action is conversation. All About Eve is the grandest example, two hours of people in dressing rooms and at parties saying exactly what they mean in sentences other writers have envied ever since. The Social Network is its modern descendant. The opening scene, a couple arguing across a table in a student bar, required ninety-nine takes and sets the pace for everything that follows.

Steve Jobs is written as three long backstage scenes, each in real time. Moneyball finds its tension in a telephone call about a trade. Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are composed almost entirely of two voices, and One Night in Miami... of four. Up in the Air turns the language of the workplace into something close to poetry, and Enough Said catches the way people in middle age hedge and joke when they like someone.

Such films are ideal for home viewing, where every line can be heard and a favourite exchange can be played again. They also age well, because wit depends on writing and acting more than on effects. A viewer who enjoys one of them will usually enjoy the others, and the director and cast lines on each card make the trail easy to follow.

Dramas about kindness

If the catalogue has a single favourite subject, it is ordinary decency. Pay It Forward makes it a plan: help three people, and ask each to help three more. Wonder makes it a motto. Radio is about a coach who notices a young man watching practice from behind a fence and invites him in. The Upside is about a carer who refuses to treat his employer as fragile, and The Soloist about a journalist who stops for a gifted stranger and then has to learn what help really means.

The Terminal shows a whole airport won over by one patient man. The same gentleness runs through Hugo, where a lonely boy mends an old toymaker's heart along with his clockwork. The Lady in the Van is a comedy about the limits of charity and the stubborn humanity of the person receiving it. Dolphin Tale gathers a town around an injured animal, and McFarland, USA around a group of boys who had been overlooked.

These stories are sometimes dismissed as sentimental, but they describe something true: that most lives are changed by another person's attention. Watching them is a small encouragement to pay that attention oneself. The Top rated shelf holds most of them, since audiences reward a film that leaves them feeling generous.

If you are new to drama

Viewers who mostly watch comedies or adventures sometimes think of drama as hard work. The surest cure is to begin with films that move. Little Miss Sunshine is as funny as any comedy. Cool Runnings and Eddie the Eagle are as exciting as any adventure. Hugo is as beautiful as any fantasy. Big is all three at once.

From there, take a step towards the true stories with Lion or King Richard, and then towards the quiet films with Before Sunrise or Past Lives. By that point the word drama will have stopped sounding like a warning and started sounding like a promise: two hours in the company of people worth knowing. The seven lists on the home page are arranged with exactly that path in mind, lighter moods first.

A practical note to close this part. Dramas are the films most often abandoned in the first quarter of an hour, because they take time to introduce their people. Give each one twenty minutes before deciding. A Beautiful Mind opens on a lawn full of students and seems for a while to be a campus comedy. Lion begins with a child chasing butterflies. The Social Network starts with an argument that appears to be about very little. In each case the film is quietly laying out everything it will need later, and the patience is repaid many times over. Saving a title to My List, so that it is waiting on an evening when you have the time and the mood, is the best way to meet these films as they deserve. Good dramas are generous to the viewer who arrives ready to listen, and the catalogue holds enough of them to fill many such evenings across a year.

Questions