Each of the movies listed here have some elements to tickle your life-sized funny bone.
You’ll find themes as large as life here. Click on the title of each movie to get to its IMDb page or follow the link to where you can stream it.
Then kick back, enjoy, and think more about life.
Enjoy!
***This collection is more of a catalog than a recommendation, per se. If you want the best of the best, go check out the shortlist of top/favorite movies and series in the top resources:
Documentaries
Origins: The Journey of Humankind
Our primal curiosity has sparked new inventions and revealed the mysteries of the universe. This eight-part miniseries strives to trace the pivotal innovations that make us modern. (Disney+)
In a word, “I’m Fine, Thanks” is a movie about complacency, or why so many settle for mediocrity in their everyday life at the expense of a greater passion. (Amazon)
A collection of stories about and images of our world, offering an immersion to the core of what it means to be human. (Free on Youtube)
Lives Well Lived celebrates the incredible wit, wisdom and experiences of adults aged 75 to 100 years old. (Amazon)
A documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the twenty-fourth of July, 2010. (Free on Youtube)
Shot by more than 40 filmmaking teams around the world, this film immerses the viewer in the daily use of faith and spiritual practice. At a time when religious hatreds dominate the world’s headlines, this film explores faith as primary human experience, and how people turn to ritual and prayer to navigate the milestones and crises of private life. (PBS)(Amazon)
This docu-series follows brave, terminally ill individuals as they live out their final days, supported by family, friends, healthcare teams, and hospice workers, who gently help guide the process.
This clip shows Cheyenne, suffering from ALS, possessing a powerful sense of spirit and optimism. (Amazon)
Filmmaker Roger Nygard roams the globe to the source of each of the world’s philosophies, religions, and belief systems. He interviews spiritual leaders, scholars, scientists, artists, … (Amazon)
Dying to Know is an intimate portrait celebrating two very complex controversial characters in an epic friendship that shaped a generation. (Amazon)
Why are we here? Are we alone? What is our future?
Brian Cox travels the world talking to experts about the how the human condition combines with our cosmic context. (Amazon)
Honorable Mention: Spinning Gold is a DVD-only conversation between two Jungian thinkers on self-awareness as a means of finding meaning in life.
Comedies
Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning of Life’
The comedy team takes a look at life in all its stages in their own uniquely silly way. (Amazon)
A comic allegory about a traveling Bushman who encounters modern civilization and its stranger aspects, including a clumsy scientist and a band of revolutionaries. (Amazon)
Surreal
Insightful and bewildering depictions of the absurdity of existence and the human experience.
A collection of expertly photographed phenomena with no conventional plot. The footage focuses on nature, humanity and the relationship between them. (Amazon)
An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them. (Amazon)
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence. (Amazon)
In a corrupt, greed-fueled world, a powerful alchemist leads a Christ-like character and seven materialistic figures to the Holy Mountain, where they hope to achieve enlightenment. (Amazon)
In a Chilean little town, the son of an uprooted couple, formed by a rigorous communist father and a loving but weak mother, tries to pave his own path in a society that does not understand their Jewish-Ukrainian origins. (Amazon)
Miscellaneous
An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed. (Amazon)
In an afterlife way station resembling a block of hotels, the lives of the recently-deceased are examined in a court-like setting. (Amazon)
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan. (Amazon)
Five medical students, obsessed by what lies beyond the confines of life, embark on a daring experiment: by stopping their hearts for short periods, each triggers a near-death experience – giving them a firsthand account of the afterlife. (Amazon)
In 2027, in a chaotic world in which women have become somehow infertile, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea. (Amazon)
When a group of ordinary people learn that an eight-mile-wide comet is on a collision course with Earth, they hunker beneath the town of Slough to watch the end of the world on television. (Amazon)
Two years after the afterlife is scientifically proven, a man attempts to help a young woman break away from her dark past. (Netflix)
Life After People
What would happen to planet earth if the human race were to suddenly disappear forever? Would ecosystems thrive? What remnants of our industrialized world would survive? (Amazon)
A group of seven former college friends gather for a week-end reunion at a South Carolina vacation home after the funeral of another of their college friends. (Amazon)
A little girl lives in a very grown-up world with her mother, who tries to prepare her for it. Her neighbor, the Aviator, introduces the girl to an extraordinary world where anything is possible, the world of the Little Prince. **Note that this is a completely different story than the original, or the earlier stop-motion film. (2016 version Amazon) (1974 version Amazon)