Slice of life is a depiction of mundane experiences in art and entertainment. In theater, slice of life refers to naturalism, while in literary parlance it is a narrative technique in which a seemingly arbitrary sequence of events in a character’s life is presented, often lacking plot development, conflict, and exposition, as well as often having an open ending.
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Lost in Translation has a lot of seemingly mundane moments.
Nomadland comes to mind. Something about the whole movie makes it so facinating.
So many options in Japanese cinema. It’s a more common genre there, or so it seems. Nobody Knows comes to mind.
Seconding this. Japanese cinema has this style figured out. A great recent example is Perfect Days. It’s a gorgeous slice of life film with a small but excellent cast. The main character is played by Yakusho Koji (a pretty famous Japanese actor) and he barely has any lines. There’s very little dialogue in the whole film, but it tells a tight and coherent story.
Perfect Days imitates the style of Yasujirō Ozu’s films. He pioneered this type of filmmaking in Japanese cinema.
Can’t believe Perfect Days didn’t pop to mind. On a personal level, a great example of how potent that genre can be
Been a while since I’ve watched it but Kids (1995) might qualify as fitting the category (not sure if it’d be a “best” though).
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) is often considered to be a prime example, I think.
Mike Leigh does movies like that. For instance: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100024/
Dogs In Space, an Australian film from 1986. Among the cast is Michael.Hutchence, former lead singer of INXS.
It’s about a bunch of young people sharing a house in the suburbs of Melbourne. It has no real story, although from memory it culminates in a big house party scene. It’s shot in a pretty unique way where the camera just wanders throughout the house and there are constantly things happening. Conversations sort of start and stop abruptly as the camera wanders around so you have to piece together the different snippets to develop an idea of who these different people are. Watching it sometimes feels like you’re a silent housemate of these people, just observing their chaotic lives.
It’s a cute movie about little boys refusing to speak because their parents won’t let them watch the neighbor’s TV. Set in a suburban Tokyo neighborhood in post-war Japan.
Would stranger than fiction count?
Jim Jarmusch’s movies (and Clerks) were the first thing I thought of too. Night on Earth and Mystery Train are my favorites.
The Castle (1997)
Yep, though it does have a through-line plot it’s very much in this genre.
Recently I loved Perfect Days which is mostly about a guy who just wants to clean toilets while people keep bothering him.
Its super cute and lovely and extremely extremely simple yet a really good watch.
Gummo. That movie confuses me still to this day how it got made.
One of my favorite movies ever!
EO. Bits of people’s lives in Poland, told through the eyes of a donkey
