What is the most cathartic movie?

In my opinion, V for Vendetta. What Evie Hammond was put through was inexcusable, but I feel like it was worth it in the end.
- Not sure if worth it, but it was definitely a cathartic movie.
  
  That's the beauty of it I think. We're left with this ambiguous feeling about whether the end actually justified the means.
  Maybe they did, but surely there was a better way, right? Or was there really not? We can't know.

Shawshank Redemption
- i was just talking with somebody about that fact yesterday
  edit: specifically it's Red's transformation for me that means a lot
- For when you’ve been crawling a river of shit, and need to come out clean
- Came here for this. Absolute masterpiece.

In a way, I think: Little Miss Sunshine.
A movie wherein everything, everything goes horribly wrong, and yet in the end you're left feeling absurdly good.
- One of my favorites
- Amazing movie. I took Greg Kinnear's 9 steps seriously for a time. I always loved his conviction.

Dredd (2012) would be somewhere at the top of my list. I don't think there are too many movies nowadays that have such a classic "mission accomplished"-style ending.
- This is one of my favourite movies. It did everything perfectly. It was exactly what I wanted.

The Big Lebowski.. The dude just wanted his rug back.
- Really tied the room together
  
  That's just like, your opinion, man.
  
  Did it not?

Vanilla Sky! It’s a mind bending movie about a lucky man’s life that many of us could only dream of. That life quickly turns into a waking nightmare when the man’s jealous lover takes her own life with him inside the moving car. His nightmare of a life then melds into an actual dream. That dream then slowly transforms into a nightmare. All the while the main character doesn’t know what is real and what isn’t.
This all leads to an absolutely spectacular cathartic release for the main character when he finally understands what’s happened to him in the last 10 minutes of the film.
Did I mention it was mind bending? One of my favorite movies by far.
- Wow - I've never heard this take on Vanilla Sky. My only recollection of it was how bored we all were when we first tried to watch it. Didn't it get panned by the critics?
  
  It's very hard for me to recommend this movie because most people do not have the patience for the slow burn! A few of my friends fell asleep while watching it with me. The kind of person who will enjoy this movie is what Vanilla Sky itself refers to as a "pleasure delayer". Someone who delays gratification until the absolute breaking point... which, ironically, is precisely what is necessary to fully experience the orgasmic conclusion to the film.
  This movie just resonates with my soul, I don't know how else to describe it!
  It hits so many chords which have been interesting to me throughout my life: consciousness, lucid dreaming, sci-fi, romance and the lack of it ("you will never know the exquisite pain of the guy who goes home alone"), etc.
  The soundtrack is also out of this world. Whenever a song plays during the movie the underlying visuals are in such perfect harmony that it starts to feel a bit like a music video.
- I've watched that movie atleast 4 times and even knowing how it ends I've bawled like a baby all 4 times
- i watched the original Spanish (Spain) version, that was fucking incredible. I would totally check that out too as Penelope Cruz is also in that one. It is called Abre Los Ojos

Shawshank Redemption.

My Cousin Vinny
- Did you say two Utes?

Fight Club
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Frodo in LOTR

Terry Gilliam's Brazil always does it for me. Depends heavily on which version you watch though, they're polarizing enough that you can play emotional Russian roulette with both versions.

Waking Life
- Nice to see someone else knows that one! I was coming here to suggest that
  
  Hell yeah! Great movie.

Bladerunner 2049

Cast Away

In big budget movies, protagonists facing unambiguous conflict and getting a clear, concise victory peaked in the 80s and early 90s. A lot of the other movies mentioned in this topic (V for Vendetta, Dredd 2012) have serious throwback vibes. Smaller movies usually have murkier conflict.
For a given value of, “through the ringer,” Karate Kid is my answer. It’s extremely easy to empathize with both Daniel and Mr Miyagi. I appreciate some movies that absolutely destroy the protagonist, but their larger than life troubles are more difficult to empathize with earnestly. Aliens fits well, too, the oppression of a faceless corporation may be heavier now than it was even on release. The Top Gun movies fit pretty well as long as you watched the original a long time ago.

Michael Clayton
- Tilda Swinton is just insanely good in that.. i mean she makes my hairs stand on end.. that character is a nightmare..
- Great one. The ending is SO good.
- Clooney's delivery of the line "I am Shiva, the god of death" gave me chills.

Seven or Man on Fire. Not what you'd call happy endings, but the movies would be ruined any other way.
Except for in Seven, if it ended in a blast of colored smoke for a gender reveal gift box. That could have been very touching. /s

Training Day, a movie about a rookie cop who gets paired with a corrupt senior on his first day who manipulates him from the beginning. ''I should have been a fireman"
Gattaca. I am not sure if you can call it an absolute ringer, but it does feel all the hard work pays off in the end.
- Agreed on Training Day.
  I totally forgot about Gattaca, I watched that in school in like 6th grade. Fantastic movie
  
  ''You know what i learned today? I'm not like you."
  You can have an Ethan Hawke catharsis marathon.

Kung Fu Panda 2. A funny panda movie about dealing with buried trauma.

Grave of the Fireflies...but make sure to watch My Neighbor Totoro right after as intended
- I see what you’re doing here
  Sure go ahead and watch out for the payoff on that one
  Also do keep Totoro at hand, you’re gonna need it.

I always found The Life Aquatic to be very cathartic.
- Second
- The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. This is one of my favorite movies. I re-watch it every few years to gain new perspective. Where's my red stocking cap?

Wristcutters
The main characters go to a hell/purgatory specifically for people who've committed suicide, where no one can smile. It's not a very action-y movie, but it's one of my favorites. Also, it has Shannyn Sossamon from A Knight's Tale, so that's a plus

Uncut Gems
- Except that movie had no catharsis only tension.
- Can never unhear

No joke. “Sing” It’s this silly kids cover song movie, but it ends up having a wonderful consistent optimism and a brilliant payoff. It’s not an improbable massive “pulled it off” win, it’s surviving through failure and loving the act of making art so much that you keep doing it anyway. It’s joyful and a masterclass in writing a classic story arc without torturing your characters and your audience to get there.
- Sing's decision to cast all of its black VAs as a crime family of gorillas is disgusting, though.
  
  Ah. Wow. Didn’t catch that previously. Agreed

Definitely not Das Boot
- Turn it off after they come back from being stuck on the bottom.
- Das Boot is the movie you show an engineer if you want them to be anti-war.
  The submarine itself is as much a character as the rest of the crew, and it fights alongside them through every struggle...
  ...only to die a pointless death at the end. A beautiful machine wasted on the cause of warfare.

I only saw it once a long time ago so I may remember it wrong, but "It's a Wonderful Life"? I recall being surprised because as a non American I'd heard so much about it as a Christmas movie and expected that genre but when I watched it, it was incredibly depressing and I never watched it again.

The original Robocop movie is an all-time favourite of mine, as far as violent revenge movies go.
It's a great blend with gratuitous violence - not to mention the story that puts the protagonist through the absolute ringer for it to all pay off in the end.