The Best Movies to Watch Alone (And Why Solo Is the Right Way)

Stanley Kubrick made a film that is closer to music than story. Watched alone, in the dark, with the sound up, it becomes the experience it was built to be. With other people it turns into a thing you talk over. Alone it can put you somewhere else for two hours. Give it that chance once in your life.

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro built the loneliest character in American movies. Travis Bickle talks to himself in a mirror because there is no one else. Watching alone you feel how close his isolation is to everyone's. Roger Ebert called it one of the great films about a lonely man. It is not comfortable, and it is not supposed to be.

Wong Kar-wai's film about two neighbors who fall for each other and refuse to act on it is all longing and restraint. It moves slow and lives in glances. Alone, with nothing pulling your eyes away, you catch what the film is really doing, which is breaking your heart very quietly.

Two strangers, both awake at the wrong hours in a Tokyo hotel, find each other for a few days. Sofia Coppola made the definitive film about being lonely in a crowd. If you have ever felt alone in a full room, watch this one by yourself. It will feel like it knows.

Spike Jonze made a love story between a lonely man and the voice of his computer, and somehow it is tender instead of silly. It is a film about how much we want to be known. Watching it alone, which is how its main character spends most of his life, is the honest way to see it.

Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry's film about a couple erasing each other from their memories is sad, funny, and built like a dream. It rewards close attention because the structure is part of the feeling. Alone, you can follow it all the way down without anyone asking what is going on.

Wim Wenders made a film about a man who walks out of the desert with no words left. It is patient and full of space. Roger Ebert loved it for its quiet.

The long scene near the end, two people talking through a one way mirror, is one of the best things ever filmed. Watch it alone and let it take its time.

Kubrick again, because horror works best when you are the only one who can hear the hotel. The Shining is slow, huge, and wrong in a way that gets under your skin. With a group it is a laugh and a jump. Alone, late, it is a different and better film. That is the point of watching alone. The film gets all of you.

Nicolas Winding Refn's film about a quiet stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway man is mostly mood, neon, and silence. Ryan Gosling barely speaks. The film is built for one viewer leaning in, not a room talking over the synth. Alone, the long quiet stretches become hypnotic instead of slow.

Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver, made this decades later about a priest losing his faith. It is austere and intense and asks hard questions about despair and hope. It is not a group movie. It is a sit alone in the dark and think about your life movie, and one of the best of its kind.

Barry Jenkins told one man's life in three chapters, quiet and close. It is about who you become when no one is helping you figure it out. Watched alone, the intimacy of it lands fully. You are right there with him, which is exactly where the film wants you.

Terrence Malick made a film that reaches from a 1950s childhood out to the beginning of time. It is less a story than a feeling, and it needs your full surrender. That is impossible with someone asking what it is about every five minutes. Alone, it can become overwhelming in the best way.

Charlie Kaufman's directing debut is about a theater director building a life sized model of his own life, and it is as sad and strange as that sounds. Roger Ebert named it the best film of its decade. It is dense and personal and asks a lot. Alone is the only way to really sit with it.