10 Drama Movies That Are 10/10 but Nobody Remembers

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Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium's artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself.

Drama is the broadest and most flexible genre in film, which also makes it harder to sell and attract a wide audience. Rooted in classic literature and theater, drama can capture a variety of stories, ranging from all scopes and facets of life. Whether they're historical accounts of a real person or event or a morality tale about everyday people, drama is the most powerful genre when executed at the highest level. Because the genre is not designed as a commercial entity, it's easy for great dramas to slip through the cracks, even when they feature big-name stars and venerated directors. Not to mention, the select few dramas that receive mainstream attention are products of the spotlight from the Academy Awards. The 10 movies listed below did not light up the box office or awards campaign, but they represent the peak of the medium.

10 'Margot at the Wedding' (2007)

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black in Margot at the Wedding

Writer-director Noah Baumbach is known for his sharp tongue, but nothing in his filmography reached the level of cynicism and human nastiness as Margot at the Wedding. On the surface, Baumbach's 2007 film starring Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jack Black is your typical romantic comedy about an upcoming wedding and a turbulent relationship between sisters. From its opening frame, however, you'll learn that this familial gathering is no party.

Margot (Kidman) and her son travel to her sister Pauline's (Leigh) home in Long Island to celebrate her upcoming marriage to Malcolm (Black), a wannabe rockstar slacker reminiscent of Black's Dewey Finn from School of Rock, except for the fact that this character harbors a dark and disturbing secret that unravels everything. Baumbach delightfully deconstructs the elegance and romantic lifestyle of these upper-middle-class socialites. There’s a heightened intensity and bite to this film that most family dramas should learn from. Beneath the constant infighting and tension between the siblings, exes, and kids is a tortured soul that's been let down for generations. Margot at the Wedding underlines that life is punishing, even when love is in the air.

9 'Good One' (2024)

Sam (Lily Collias) in the woods with Chris (James Le Gros) and Matt (Danny McCarthy) in 'Good One'

One of the most promising and exciting directorial debuts in recent memory, India Donaldson came into her own as the writer-director of the overlooked indie drama Good One, about the loneliest and most melancholy vacation ever. The daughter of Hollywood filmmaker Roger Donaldson, director of hits like No Way Out, Cocktail, and Dante's Peak, India's film subverts all the sensibilities of glossy studio pictures by being deeply intimate, unflinchingly sad and tender, and offering no easy solutions.

Starring Lily Collias as Sam, a teenage girl embarking on a weekend-long camping trip in the Catskills with her father and his friend, Good One is a sophisticated and sympathetic study of adolescent ennui and the constant sense of alienation for queer people. Not only does she feel lost when expressing herself to her dad, Chris (James Le Gros), but she is also disturbed by Matt's (Danny McCarthy) inappropriate comments. Donaldson, using familiar traits of slow-burn cinema, makes the woods feel atmospherically lonely. She uses her camera to understand a character that seems so inscrutable, even though her disposition is wholly relevant to anyone living a life where they must pretend to be someone else.

8 'Mean Creek' (2003)

The cast of the 2004 indie drama 'Mean Creek'

A source of memes due to the uncanny casting of Josh Peck, playing a vulgar and hot-tempered teenager that shares little resemblance to his fun-loving character in Drake & Josh, Mean Creek surprises you from its opening moments. From there on out, you forget about the memes of Josh Nichols swearing and screaming at the top of his lungs. Most people may be inclined to watch this heartbreaking drama by Jacob Aaron Estes ironically, but the 2004 indie film is absolutely no laughing matter.

After being viciously bullied by George (Peck), Sam (Rory Culkin), his brother Rocky (Trevor Morgan), and his friends orchestrate a cruel prank on the bully as revenge. What begins as a stunt to get George to strip naked and abandon him in the woods devolves into a horrific tragedy. Mean Creek features no good or bad guys—only angry and angst-riddled teens inflicting their code of justice on a deeply immature but misunderstood kid. Estes never lets you categorize George in black or white boxes, even at his most sensitive or crass. The film's maturity and lack of patronization of its characters shows in its harsh consequences, which rejects any notions of this being an after-school special.

7 'Hereafter' (2010)

Matt Damon and Cecile de France in 'Hereafter'

Clint Eastwood has directed so many movies that it's hard to keep track of everything he's done for the last 50 years as a director. He's tackled every genre imaginable, and in 2010, he checked the fantasy genre off the box with Hereafter, an often peculiar but earnestly soulful film dismissed by critics upon release. Most directors would've gotten swallowed up by the ornate and prodigious themes of the film, tracking everything from the afterlife and mortality to destiny, but Eastwood grounds this story into an accessible character drama.

Hereafter is a triptych narrative following Matt Damon as an American factory worker with spiritual powers, Cecile de France as a French journalist longing for answers to a personal tragedy, and Frankie and George McLaren as a British boy wandering around the world reeling from another tragedy. Each unrelated character is attempting to get in touch with the afterlife and realm beyond our imagination, but the desire is clouded by melancholy. Reaching out to something profound and fantastical drives their alienation, but they take solace in each other's yearning. Eastwood's moving film dramatizes real-life disasters in the 2000s, including the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami and the 2005 London bombings, that serve as an allegory for post-9/11 grief and disillusionment.

6 'Armageddon Time' (2022)

Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway in 'Armageddon Time'

Of the slew of recent filmmaker autobiographies, tell-all films such as The Fabelmans and Aftersun, Armageddon Time is certainly the most cynical and bleak. James Gray's account of his coming-of-age in Queens in the 1980s is a rejection of the American Dream, and it prophesized what would infect American politics and society in the 21st century. Given a limited release in 2022, the film is due for a proper reclamation as one of the unsung gems of this decade.

Featuring a robust cast of Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Anthony Hopkins, Armageddon Time follows the perspective of Gray's younger avatar, Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), as he navigates the turbulence of growing up in a working-class household, intergenerational conflicts, and racism against his school friend, Johnny (Jaylin Webb). Paul's relationship to his parents is the backbone of this touching but unflinching portrait of pursuing the arts in the face of economic demands from his parents, who wish he would learn a trade to support a family. The film balances its scopes seamlessly, effective as a family drama and a treatise on class divides. Directed with enough emotional distance from being saccharine, but the right touch of personal sentimentality of a time that signaled the loss of innocence in America, Gray assuredly demonstrates how little we've changed in the last 40 years.

5 'Summer of Sam' (1999)

You can always count on Spike Lee to deliver a freewheeling, confrontational, and overall bonkers cinematic experience. Summer of Sam, one of the iconic director's most raw and expressive joints, deserves so much more attention due to its sheer unrelenting energy alone. The 1999 loose account of the Son of Sam killing spree ravaging New York City in the late 1970s is told from the perspective of paranoid and weary residents in an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx.

One of Lee's finest attributes is his creation of a lived-in and lively community that feels both pulled from real memories and incredibly heightened. Cribbing from Do the Right Thing, Summer of Sam depicts a passionate community on the brink of self-destruction due to the fear and distrust created by the Son of Sam's murders during the most brutal heatwave in the Big Apple. While the tensions flare between characters, portrayed by a rich ensemble cast including John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, and Mira Sorvino, Lee has so much love for New York that he imbues this psychological crime drama with warmth, humor, and sympathy. Lee's formalist touches and commitment to a fiery tone are the work of a true master in complete control of his idiosyncratic vision.

4 'Shattered Glass' (2003)

Peter Sarsgaard is angry with Haden Christensen in Shattered Glass.

Anyone who ever had a bad word to say about Hayden Christensen needs to check out Shattered Glass immediately. Much maligned for his controversial performance as Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Christensen has proven that, when given a sharp script, complex character, and room to breathe with other actors and real sets, he can be exceptional. Shattered Glass, a 2003 journalism docu-drama written and directed by Billy Ray, is the ultimate comeback to the haters.

Anyone who ever had a bad word to say about Hayden Christensen needs to check out Shattered Glass immediately.

Although the film, about New Republic reporter Stephen Glass (Christensen), who was exposed as a repeated fabulist, sounds like something you'd watch in school, it is surprisingly entertaining and grows in quality with every re-watch. The filmmaking and creative flourishes are limited, but Ray's propulsive momentum and insightful commentary on the evolution of journalism into the 21st century, when sensationalism and lurid content began to outweigh informative reporting, make Shattered Glass feel urgent. Glass' desperation for acclaim and self-pitying tendencies mirror what we see from our most outspoken social media influencers and tech billionaires. While Christensen pours his heart and soul into this vulnerable performance that adds clarity and nuance to Anakin's rebellious angst, Peter Sarsgaard steals the show as Glass' skeptical editor, Charles Lane, who sees through the lies.

3 'Scarecrow' (1973)

Al Pacino as Lion and Gene Hackman as Max walking together in 'Scarecrow'

If there was one movie that could define American cinema in the 1970s, Scarecrow could mount a case for being the Rosetta Stone for an entire generation. Released during the peak of the New Hollywood era in 1973, this road-trip dramedy starring Gene Hackman and Al Pacino is light on plot but heavy on atmosphere and mood. Jerry Schatzberg's film is all about character relations, meditative ruminations on morality, and making your way through the Wild West that is America.

Two vagrants, the short-tempered ex-con Max (Hackman) and the former sailor with a sense of arrested development, Lion (Pacino), band together to travel from California to Pittsburgh to start a car wash business. Of course, this voyage is not as easy as it sounds, as the pair gets mixed up in a series of hijinks involving Lion's previous life. Scarecrow doesn't rely too hard on overt setpieces and wacky scenarios to increase the drama. In line with other '70s downbeat character dramas, the film carries a tragic undertone thanks to the malaise of its characters, who are lost without a paddle. They are suffering from the plight of growing up as a working-class American who lost everything during this tumultuous period. Hackman and Pacino, two of the finest screen actors to ever live, display unbelievable chemistry and give some of their most charming and soulful work.

2 'Fearless' (1993)

Jeff Bridges sticking his head out of a moving vehicle in Fearless (1993)

One of the most profound dissections of life and death is sitting there without anyone even noticing. Peter Weir is responsible for many superb cinematic achievements, but Fearless just might be his most audacious, striking, and inspiring efforts as a director. The 1993 drama, starring Jeff Bridges, Rosie Perez, Isabella Rossellini, and John Turturro, takes a big bite out of a weighty concept, but Weir makes the process of consuming these matters streamlined.

After surviving a plane crash that killed all other passengers, Max Klein (Bridges) becomes obsessed with cheating death and exploring the depths of human immortality. At first, Max's re-awakening is invigorating, and we celebrate him for his devil-may-care approach to life, something that most people yearn to live for. Humans are restricted by fear, but Max seems like a savior to humanity by unlocking this new philosophical, if not supernatural, relationship with mortality. Channeling classic tales of tragic rise-and-fall sagas, Fearless is a harrowing cautionary tale about delusional thinking and unbridled egoism. Weir's direction of his accomplished cast is stellar, with each star giving a spellbinding performance with an understated tenor of an intimate character drama. Fearless will shake you to the core, and it's something that demands intense analysis and rewatches, but the experience is never grating.

1 'Nixon' (1995)

Anthony Hopkins as Richard Nixon in Nixon

Still perplexing to this day as to why this masterpiece was more or less dismissed upon release in 1995, Nixon is arguably Oliver Stone's most extraordinary achievement and a prescient text about our relationship with political leaders. This grand, Shakesperean tragedy about President Richard Nixon and his disgraced downfall in the White House echoes many of Stone's hallmarks established in JFK. With Nixon, starring Anthony Hopkins as the titular POTUS, Stone dampens his provocation for something shockingly emotional and understanding of one of America's most complicated figures.

Knowing Stone's political background, it would've been easy for him to portray Richard Nixon as a cartoonishly over-the-top supervillain. While he does not shy away from the President's paranoia and unethical wielding of power, the director explores him as a human being with ideal intentions who was poisoned by the American government and his own insecurity rooted back to his humble childhood. Nixon demonstrates that the 37th U.S. President represents America as a whole, a place defined by stark contradictions. Nixon, like America, can be both extremely vindictive and toxic and deeply sentimental. Stone's feverish direction underscores the mythical and haunted aura of the White House, an established home of bureaucracy that torments its inhabitants and draws the entire world into their psychology.