15. Trance (2013) Director Danny Boyle loves exploring the subconscious—whether that be the drug-induced nightmares of characters inTrainspottingor the starved hallucinations of Aron Ralston in127 Hours. WhileTrancemay not be his most famous film, it’s still a great movie about the fragility of memory. James McAvoy stars as Simon, an art auctioneer who steals a priceless Goya painting. Torture methods prove futile when his fellow thieves try to find out where he placed the masterpiece, given that Simon has lost all memory of it due to a head injury....

15. Shallow Hal (2001) The Farrelly brothers employed dramatic irony inShallow Halto make us laugh and teach a valuable lesson. That lesson—don’t judge a book by its cover—is pretty clichéd, but still important! Jack Black stars as the titular Hal, who’s far from being a prize pig himself but shamelessly continues to be extremely judgmental of how other people look. Especially women. After being stuck in an elevator with real-life motivational speaker Tony Robbins, Hal is unknowingly thrown into a hypnosis that makes him only see people’sinnerbeauty....

15. Ben Is Back (2018) When a person is an addict, they aren’t just hurting themselves—they’re also hurting their parents. Real tough love is needed to help a person out of addiction, forcing helpers to draw a fine line between supporting them and enabling them. Ben Is Backexplores the ripple effects of Ben’s (Lucas Hedges) addiction on his parents, namely his mother (Julia Roberts). Peter Hedges directs this grueling drama, which all unfolds over the Christmas period....

15. Blindness (2008) Based on the José Saramago’s novel,Blindnesscenters on a city stricken by an epidemic of blindness. At the cusp of its spread is an afflicted doctor (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife (Julianne Moore). Soon, she stumbles upon a conspiracy to manipulate and control the afflicted. Despite its overly safe execution, this Fernando Meirelles film shows the impact of an epidemic on the public. In following Moore’s character, we get a balance of political and social intrigue....

15. The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) “It was a time of heroes, daredevils, men who lived only to fly.” The time being WWI, when men fought and flew to glory. InThe Great Waldo Pepper, the titular Waldo Pepper (played by Robert Redford) misses out on crashing to his death, yet he can’t help but feel FOMO from being a flight instructor during the Great War. By 1926—almost a decade after the war’s end—pilot veterans had to settle on barnstorming and flying circuses to make a living....