Amélie (2001)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 2001 Paris fairy tale tells much of its story through pictures: a shy waitress's secret good deeds, close-ups of tiny everyday pleasures and her father's stolen garden gnome posing in snapshots from the Statue of Liberty to the Sphinx. A narrator keeps you oriented, so the subtitles rarely race ahead of you. It is whimsy rather than belly laughs, and its storybook Paris is deliberately unreal, but few movies make reading along feel so effortless. Audrey Tautou's mischievous glances carry whole scenes without a word.