Thought provoking movies and TV shows – page 2

List of thought provoking movies

Type:
Year:
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 7.4
 609K
Limitless (2011)
Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min.
Story: A paranoia-fueled action thriller about an unsuccessful writer whose life is transformed by a top-secret "smart drug" that allows him to use 100% of his brain and become a perfect version of himself. His enhanced abilities soon attract ...
Style: clever, thought provoking, philosophical, intellectual, captivating ...
Audience: teens, family friendly, chick flick
Plot: intelligence, success, drug, drug abuse, creativity, ambition, rags to riches, rise to the top, life turned upside down, prodigy, experimental drug, overnight success ...
Time: year 2011, future, 2010s, 21st century
Place: usa, new york, manhattan new york city
Is relevant ?
 7.2
 248K
The Fountain (2006)
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 97 min.
Story: Spanning over one thousand years, and three parallel stories, The Fountain is a story of love, death, spirituality, and the fragility of our existence in this world.
Style: surreal, melancholic, artsy, philosophical, atmospheric ...
Audience: teens, adult
Plot: metaphysics, spirituality, afterlife, cancer, buddhism, immortality, surrealism, multiple storylines, obsession, loneliness, love, death ...
Time: future, 2000s, year 2006, 16th century, 21st century
Place: spain, tibet, latin america, europe, central america ...
Is relevant ?
Peaceful Warrior (2006)
Genre: Drama, Romance, Sport
Country: USA, Germany
Duration: 120 min.
Story: A chance encounter with a stranger changes the life of a college gymnast.
Style: inspirational, philosophical, spiritual, thought provoking, sincere ...
Audience: teens
Plot: self discovery, mentor, teaching the ways of the world, wisdom of life, enlightenment, wise man, philosophy, human spirit, life philosophy, gymnastics, athlete and trainer, coach ...
Time: year 2006, 21st century
Place: tibet, california, usa
Is relevant ?
 6.4
 125K
The Giver (2014)
Genre: Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA, South Africa, Canada
Duration: 97 min.
Story: In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.
Style: thought provoking, futuristic, atmospheric, exciting, philosophical ...
Audience: teens, family friendly, date night, kids, family outing
Plot: distopia, youth, dystopia, community, utopia, post apocalypse, society, life is a bitch, humanity, memory, danger, rebelliousness ...
Time: future, 2010s, near future, year 2014, 2040s
Place: peru
Is relevant ?
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 9.3
 854K
Chernobyl (2019)
Genre: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: USA, UK
Duration: 330 min.
TV show
Story: A dramatization of the true story of one of the worst man-made catastrophes in history, the catastrophic nuclear accident at Chernobyl. A tale of the brave men and women who sacrificed to save Europe from unimaginable disaster.
Style: dark, atmospheric, rough, realistic, thought provoking ...
Plot: radiation, nuclear holocaust, radiation poisoning, nuclear power plant, nuclear reactor, disaster, save the day, nuclear explosion, salvation, scientist, nuclear radiation, nuclear threat ...
Time: year 1986, 2010s, 80s, 20th century
Place: chernobyl, ussr, soviet union, ukraine, moscow russia ...
Is relevant ?
 7.1
 387K
Snowpiercer (2013)
Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: South Korea, Czech Republic
Duration: 126 min.
Story: In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.
Style: suspenseful, futuristic, thought provoking, allegory, philosophical ...
Audience: chick flick, date night, family friendly, adult
Plot: post apocalypse, train, survival, distopia, dystopia, revolution, rebellion, end of the world, social differences, winter, capitalism, snow ...
Time: future, near future, 2010s, year 2013, year 2014 ...
Place: britain, south korea, east asia
Is relevant ?
 7.3
 35K
The Way (2010)
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain, USA
Duration: 123 min.
Story: When his son dies while hiking the famed Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in the Pyrenees, Tom flies to France to claim the remains. Looking for insights into his estranged child’s life, he decides to complete the 500-mile mountain trek to ...
Style: emotional, thought provoking, inspirational, uplifting, touching ...
Audience: adult
Plot: travel, road trip, journey, traveler, pilgrimage, death of son, self discovery, redemption, on the road, grief, wanderlust, father ...
Time: 21st century
Place: spain, france, iberian peninsula, europe
Is relevant ?
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 128 min.
Story: At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
Style: philosophical, inspirational, sentimental, uplifting, emotional ...
Audience: teens, family friendly, kids, family outing, teen drama ...
Plot: teacher, suicide, coming of age, friendship, poetry, poet, mentor, philosophy, teachers and students, literature, youth, teenager ...
Time: 50s, 20th century, 1950s, year 1989, year 1959
Place: vermont, new england, usa, harvard university
Is relevant ?
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: USA, UK
Duration: 146 min.
Story: A robotic boy, the first programmed to love, David is adopted as a test case by a Cybertronics employee and his wife. Though he gradually becomes their child, a series of unexpected circumstances make this life impossible for David. Without final ...
Style: thought provoking, philosophical, sentimental, fairy tale, captivating ...
Audience: kids, teens, family friendly, teen drama
Plot: artificial intelligence, cyberpunk, androids and robots, adoption, androids, robot, distopia, imagination, boy, dystopian future, outer space, destiny ...
Time: future, year 2001, distant future, 2000s, near future ...
Place: new york, persia, usa, coney island brooklyn new york city, manhattan new york city ...
Is relevant ?
 7.5
 547K
Source Code (2011)
Genre: Action, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA, Canada, France, Germany
Duration: 93 min.
Story: Decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens wakes up in the body of an unknown man, discovering he's involved in a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. He learns he's part of a top-secret experimental program that enables ...
Style: surprise ending, suspense, clever, mind bending, thought provoking ...
Audience: boys' night, teens, chick flick
Plot: time loop, time travel, train, alternate reality, parallel universe, memory, twists and turns, save the day, destiny, changing the past or future, bomb, terrorism ...
Time: future, year 2011, 2010s, 21st century
Place: chicago, usa, somalia, afghanistan, illinois
Is relevant ?
 6.5
 13K
Pretty Baby (1978)
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 110 min.
Story: Hattie (Susan Sarandon), a New Orleans hooker, meets a photographer named Bellocq (Keith Carradine) at her brothel one night and, after he photographs her, he befriends her 12-year-old daughter, Violet (Brooke Shields). When Violet is brought on as ...
Style: controversial, disturbing, sexy, atmospheric, melancholic ...
Audience: teens, teen drama
Plot: prostitution, virginity, child prostitution, innocence lost, photographer, loss of virginity, girl man relationship, world war one, nymphet, brothel, nudity, child prostitute ...
Time: 1910s, victorian era, year 1978, ancient times, 20th century ...
Place: new orleans, america, louisiana, usa
Is relevant ?
 7.2
 266K
Sunshine (2007)
Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 107 min.
Story: Fifty years into the future, the sun is dying, and Earth is threatened by arctic temperatures. A team of astronauts is sent to revive the Sun — but the mission fails. Seven years later, a new team is sent to finish the mission as mankind’s last ...
Style: futuristic, suspense, philosophical, psychological, thought provoking ...
Plot: space travel, outer space, end of the world, sun, earth, self sacrifice, spaceship, expedition, astronaut, heroic mission, space, danger ...
Time: future, year 2007, distant future, 2000s, 21st century
Is relevant ?
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6276
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9688
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4673
 7.2
 109K
Dogtooth (2009)
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: Greece
Duration: 97 min.
Story: Three teenagers are confined to an isolated country estate that could very well be on another planet. The trio spend their days listening to endless homemade tapes that teach them a whole new vocabulary. Any word that comes from beyond their family ...
Style: disturbing, art house, black comedy, atmospheric, surreal ...
Audience: teens, adult, teen drama
Plot: incest, dysfunctional family, isolated house, cat, child abuse, brother sister incest, eccentric family, overprotective father, confined, sexual awakening, perversion, greek ...
Time: 2000s, year 2010, year 2009, 21st century
Place: greece, europe
Is relevant ?
The Zero Theorem (2013)
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: UK, Romania, France, USA
Duration: 107 min.
Story: A computer hacker's goal to discover the reason for human existence continually finds his work interrupted thanks to the Management; this time, they send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him.
Style: surreal, thought provoking, philosophical, psychedelic, cerebral ...
Plot: computers and web, computer, computer system, virtual reality, loneliness, escape from reality, distopia, society, computer genius, hacker, dystopian future, existentialism ...
Time: future, distant future, year 2013, 2010s
Is relevant ?
 8.4
 51K
Utopia (2013)
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 50 min.
TV show
Story: The Utopia Experiments is a legendary graphic novel shrouded in mystery. When a group of strangers find themselves in possession of an original manuscript, their lives suddenly and brutally implode.
Style: surreal, thought provoking, mind bending, captivating, offbeat ...
Plot: conspiracy, danger, hidden truth, politician, who to trust, mysterious character, scientist, twists and turns, graphic violence, epidemic, life turned upside down, virus ...
Time: 2010s, 21st century
Place: england
Is relevant ?
In a Better World (2010)
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Denmark, Sweden
Duration: 118 min.
Story: The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.
Style: thought provoking, touching, bleak, harsh, gloomy ...
Audience: teens
Plot: bully, bullying, father son relationship, friendship, revenge, divorce, loneliness, childhood, youth, parenthood, society, alienation ...
Time: year 2010, 2010s, 21st century
Place: africa, sudan, scandinavia, denmark, europe ...
Is relevant ?
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Genre: Action, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA, UK, Canada, Spain
Duration: 164 min.
Story: Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard, ...
Style: futuristic, neo noir, tech noir, thought provoking, detective ...
Audience: boys' night, adult
Plot: cyberpunk, artificial intelligence, dystopia, investigation, robot, dark future, mission, police detective, flying car, violence, bounty hunter, memory ...
Time: future, 2040s, year 2017, near future, distant future ...
Place: california, san diego california, space western, los angeles, las vegas
Is relevant ?
 6.6
 54K
THX 1138 (1971)
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 86 min.
Story: People in the future live in a totalitarian society. A technician named THX 1138 lives a mundane life between work and taking a controlled consumption of drugs that the government uses to make puppets out of people. As THX is without drugs for the ...
Style: bleak, mindfuck, philosophical, futuristic, thought provoking ...
Plot: distopia, totalitarianism, dystopian future, cyberpunk, dystopia, prison, brainwashing, androids and robots, utopia, fighting the system, robot, post apocalyptic ...
Time: future, year 1971, distant future
Is relevant ?
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Schindler's List (1993)
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 195 min.
Story: The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
Style: touching, emotional, heartbreaking, realistic, thought provoking ...
Audience: date night, chick flick, adult
Plot: holocaust, world war two, genocide, nazi, war, wartime, storytelling, concentration camp, brutality, nazism, against humanity, survival ...
Time: 1940s, 20th century, year 1993, 90s, ancient times ...
Place: poland, germany, persia, iran, europe ...
Is relevant ?
 8.3
 235K
Euphoria (2019)
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 55 min.
TV show
Story: A group of high school students navigate love and friendships in a world of drugs, sex, trauma, and social media.
Style: captivating, thought provoking, realistic, depressing, serious ...
Audience: teens, teen drama
Plot: mental illness, teenager, drug addict, high school, addiction, sex, coming of age, youth, sexuality, lgbt, teenage life, friends ...
Time: 2020s, 2010s, 21st century
Is relevant ?
 6.0
 23K
The Room (2019)
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Country: France, Belgium, Luxembourg
Duration: 100 min.
Story: Kate and Matt discover that a part of their house can grant wishes. In the wake of several miscarriages, what they want most is a child.
Style: psychological thriller, thought provoking, mind bending, psychological, scary ...
Audience: boys' night, chick flick
Plot: wish fulfillment, life philosophy, miscarriage, child, children, danger, parents and children, incestuous sex, husband wife relationship, incest, couples, supernatural ...
Is relevant ?
 7.9
 77K
Being There (1979)
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: West Germany, USA
Duration: 130 min.
Story: A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television.
Style: political, thought provoking, philosophical, surreal, clever ...
Plot: politics, comedy of errors, lawyer, impotence, satire, president, fish out of water, wealth, secret service, innocence, television, eviction ...
Time: year 1979, 70s, 20th century
Place: washington d.c., north carolina, usa
Is relevant ?
 8.0
 819K
Black Swan (2010)
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min.
Story: A ballet dancer wins the lead in "Swan Lake" and is perfect for the role of the delicate White Swan - Princess Odette - but slowly loses her mind as she becomes more and more like Odile, the Black Swan.
Style: psychological, suspense, cerebral, atmospheric, surreal ...
Audience: chick flick, adult
Plot: ballet, mental illness, obsession, psychology, insanity, dancing, character study, surrealism, hallucination, mother daughter relationship, paranoia, showbiz ...
Time: 2010s, year 2010, 2000s, 21st century
Place: usa, new york, bolivia, manhattan new york city
Is relevant ?
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9443
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2585
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4360
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 134 min.
Story: Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.
Style: thought provoking, suspense, disturbing, psychological, surreal ...
Plot: dementia, suicide, high school, winter, farm, snow, relationships, estrangement, road trip, parents and children, haunted by the past, waitress ...
Time: 2020s, 21st century
Place: america
Is relevant ?
Sound of My Voice (2011)
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min.
Story: A journalist and his girlfriend get pulled in while they investigate a cult whose leader claims to be from the future.
Style: thought provoking, surreal, tense, cerebral, suspenseful ...
Plot: manipulation, cult leader, sect, religions or cults, brainwashing, amnesia, investigation, journalist, twists and turns, time travel, uncover truth, exploitation ...
Time: year 2011, distant future, future, 21st century
Place: los angeles, usa, california
Is relevant ?
 7.6
 100K
Dark Waters (2019)
Genre: Biography, Drama, History, Mystery
Country: USA
Duration: 126 min.
Story: A corporate defense attorney takes on an environmental lawsuit against the DuPont chemical company that exposes a lengthy history of pollution.
Style: serious, realistic, factual, thought provoking, political ...
Audience: adult
Plot: lawyer, courtroom drama, contamination, lawsuit, corruption, environmental, fighting the system, legal investigation, corporate crime, price of justice, investigation, uncover truth ...
Time: 2010s, 90s, year 2019, 2000s, 70s ...
Place: cincinnati ohio, ohio, columbus ohio, west virginia
Is relevant ?
 7.7
 448K
Crash (2004)
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA, Germany, Australia
Duration: 112 min.
Story: Los Angeles citizens with vastly separate lives collide in interweaving stories of race, loss and redemption.
Style: bleak, touching, thought provoking, sincere, emotional ...
Audience: adult
Plot: racism, police, prejudice, racial tension, multiple storylines, sexual harassment, racist, social injustice, redemption, interracial relations, class differences, city life ...
Time: year 2004, 2000s, 21st century
Place: los angeles, usa, california, persia, santa monica california ...
Is relevant ?
 7.7
 51K
The Past (2013)
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Country: France, Italy, Belgium
Duration: 130 min.
Story: After four years apart, Ahmad returns to his wife Marie in Paris in order to progress their divorce. During his brief stay, he cannot help noticing the strained relationship between Marie and her daughter Lucie. As he attempts to improve matters ...
Style: thought provoking, sincere, captivating, cerebral, art house ...
Plot: divorce, depression, dysfunctional family, coma, infidelity, parenthood, relationships, suicide, childhood, secret, love and romance, haunted by the past ...
Time: year 2013, 90s, year 2012, 21st century
Place: france, iran, middle east, persia, paris france ...
Is relevant ?
 8.8
 2.5M
Inception (2010)
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA, UK
Duration: 148 min.
Story: Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another ...
Style: psychological, mind bending, clever, cerebral, surreal ...
Audience: teens, date night, adult
Plot: dream, virtual reality, memory, alternate reality, twists and turns, imagination, subconscious, philosophy, existentialism, fictional reality, heist, puzzle ...
Time: year 2010, future, 2000s, 2010s, near future
Place: paris france, japan, los angeles, iran, tokyo ...
Is relevant ?
 6.7
 114K
Primer (2004)
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 77 min.
Story: Friends and fledgling entrepreneurs invent a device in their garage which reduces the apparent mass of any object placed inside it, but they discover that it has some highly unexpected capabilities - ones that could enable them to do and to have ...
Style: philosophical, surreal, independent film, confusing, mind bending ...
Plot: time travel, time loop, parallel universe, time machine, changing the past or future, changing the future, science, inventor, paradox, time traveler, twists and turns, scientist ...
Time: future, year 2004, distant future, 2000s, 21st century
Place: texas
Is relevant ?
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