Reel Life
Films that stayed.
Not a watchlist — the few that did something and would not leave afterwards. Open one to read the lines worth keeping.
12 films · one sitting each
Swades
We, the People
Directed by Ashutosh Gowariker
Shah Rukh Khan · Gayatri Joshi · Kishori Ballal
A project manager at NASA comes home for a fortnight to find the woman who raised him, and cannot make himself leave again. It was met with shrugs and became a classic afterwards, which is its own kind of argument. Nothing in it is louder than the scene on the train with a cup of water.
Lines worth keeping
Taare Zameen Par
Like Stars on Earth
Directed by Aamir Khan
Darsheel Safary · Aamir Khan · Tisca Chopra · Vipin Sharma
An eight-year-old who cannot read is written off by everyone in turn until an art teacher works out why. It does the difficult thing of making the adults' failure the subject rather than the child's, and it does not let the parents off at the end either.
Lines worth keeping
Pay It Forward
Directed by Mimi Leder
Haley Joel Osment · Kevin Spacey · Helen Hunt
A boy is set a homework question — think of something that would change the world, then do it — and answers it with arithmetic: three favours, each repaid forward to three more. The idea escaped the film entirely and is still in use, which is either the point or the tragedy.
Lines worth keeping
Seven Pounds
Directed by Gabriele Muccino
Will Smith · Rosario Dawson · Woody Harrelson
A man works his way through seven strangers and the film refuses to say why for most of its length. It asks for a great deal of patience and only repays it at the very end, by which point it is difficult to shake off.
Lines worth keeping
Schindler's List
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Liam Neeson · Ben Kingsley · Ralph Fiennes
Shot in black and white so that one coat could be red, which is very nearly the whole film in a single decision. The list itself is almost the least of it; what it is about is a man discovering late, and against his own inclination, that he could.
Lines worth keeping
The Terminal
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Tom Hanks · Catherine Zeta-Jones · Stanley Tucci
A man's country stops existing while he is in the air, and he lands somewhere that can neither admit him nor send him back. Far lighter than that sounds, and the lightness is the argument: he simply gets on with living in the gap.
Lines worth keeping
The Prestige
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Hugh Jackman · Christian Bale · Michael Caine · Scarlett Johansson
Two magicians ruin each other over a trick, and the film is built as one: the pledge, the turn, the prestige, in that order. It tells you exactly what it is doing in the opening minute and you still do not watch closely enough.
Lines worth keeping
The Pursuit of Happyness
Directed by Gabriele Muccino
Will Smith · Jaden Smith · Thandiwe Newton
A salesman with a product nobody wants takes an unpaid internship he cannot afford, with his son in tow and nowhere to sleep. The misspelling in the title is from a mural outside a daycare and is the point: the promise is the pursuit, not the having.
Lines worth keeping
A Beautiful Mind
Directed by Ron Howard
Russell Crowe · Jennifer Connelly · Ed Harris
A mathematician who finds patterns nobody else can see, and then cannot tell which of them are there. What it does well is refuse the easy ending: he does not get better, he learns which of it to stop arguing with.
Lines worth keeping
12 Angry Men
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Henry Fonda · Lee J. Cobb · E. G. Marshall · Jack Klugman
One room, one table, twelve men and an afternoon. Nothing happens except talking, and it is as tense as anything ever filmed — because it is about how hard it is to say the unpopular thing first, and then to keep saying it.
Lines worth keeping
Rang De Basanti
A Generation Awakens
Directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
Aamir Khan · Siddharth · Soha Ali Khan · Kunal Kapoor · Atul Kulkarni
Students playing revolutionaries in somebody's documentary, until the part stops being a part. The turn from larking about to fury is handled so lightly you are most of the way through it before you notice, which is exactly how it would happen.
Lines worth keeping
A Walk to Remember
Directed by Adam Shankman
Mandy Moore · Shane West · Peter Coyote · Daryl Hannah
A boy serving a punishment and a minister's daughter with a list of things she means to do. It knows exactly what it is and never pretends otherwise, and the star is the only wish on the list that somebody else has to grant.
Lines worth keeping