Movies for When You Can't Sleep: Six Films to Keep You Company at 3 A.M.

It's 2:47 a.m. You've flipped the pillow to the cool side twice. You've done the math on how many hours are left before the alarm, which never helps. The house makes noises it doesn't make in daylight, and your brain, which was half asleep all afternoon, is now running at full speed.

Nobody tells you this about insomnia: it's lonely, but it isn't rare. Somewhere right now a cab driver is starting a shift, a night-shift cook is wiping down a counter, and somebody in a hotel room on the other side of the world is staring at the same kind of ceiling. Movies understand this better than any sleep app. Some of the best films ever made take place in the hours when everyone else is out cold, and they're full of people who are awake for the same reasons you are: jet lag, heartbreak, a mind that won't switch off, or a night that simply refuses to end.

So here are six films for the wide-awake hours. A few are gentle enough to drift off to. One will make you glad you're safe in your own bed. Pick the one that matches the kind of awake you are, keep the volume low, and let somebody else's long night keep you company.

1. Lost in Translation (2003)

What it is: Sofia Coppola's quiet comedy about two Americans stranded in a Tokyo hotel. Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a fading movie star in town to shoot commercials for Suntory whiskey. Scarlett Johansson is Charlotte, a recent philosophy graduate whose photographer husband keeps leaving her alone in the room. Both are fighting jet lag and culture shock, and neither one can sleep.

Why it fits right now: This is the patron saint of insomnia movies. Coppola drew on her own time in Tokyo, where jet lag gave the city an otherworldly glow, and she set the film in the Park Hyatt Tokyo, the hotel where she stayed while promoting her first feature, The Virgin Suicides. Roger Ebert described the film as two lost souls "rattling around a Tokyo hotel in the middle of the night," and that's exactly the feeling: the hush of a hotel corridor at 3 a.m., the glow of a city that never quite goes dark, the strange closeness you can feel toward a stranger who's also awake. The film never hurries. Murray barely raises his voice. It's like being talked to softly by someone who gets it.

One scene to look for: One night, after TV and sake and still no sign of sleep, Bob and Charlotte lie side by side on a hotel bed, fully dressed and wide awake, talking about marriage and getting older. Watch his hand. Ebert wrote that there's "more truth in a little finger touching the side of a foot than a sex scene," and once you see that tiny gesture, you'll know what he meant.

2. Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

What it is: Nora Ephron's romantic comedy about a widowed architect, Sam (Tom Hanks), who moves to Seattle with his eight-year-old son, Jonah. On Christmas Eve, Jonah calls a late-night radio advice show and tells the host his wish: a new wife for his dad. Across the country, a Baltimore journalist named Annie (Meg Ryan) is listening in her car. When the host learns that Sam can't sleep, she gives him an on-air nickname: "Sleepless in Seattle."

Why it fits right now: Because it's a movie that literally began with an insomniac picking up the phone. Ephron understood that late-night radio is a kind of company, a voice in the dark that reminds you other people are up too. The film is warm, funny and low-stakes in the best way. You can watch it at half attention, doze off for ten minutes, wake up and still know exactly where you are. And here's a fitting bit of trivia from the AFI Catalog: a 1992 newspaper item reported that the production's month of night shooting in Seattle was keeping local residents awake.

One scene to look for: The radio call itself. Annie sits alone in the car, headlights on the highway, while Sam reluctantly tells a stranger on the air how much he loved his late wife and how it felt to hold her hand for the first time. Ryan plays most of it in near-silence, tears welling up, and you can watch her fall a little bit in love with a voice.

3. Chungking Express (1994)

What it is: Wong Kar-wai's giddy, neon-soaked double feature about two lovesick Hong Kong cops. In the first story, Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) has been dumped and keeps buying cans of pineapple that expire on May 1, his birthday, while a mysterious woman in a blonde wig (Brigitte Lin) tries to survive a drug deal gone wrong. In the second, Cop 663 (Tony Leung) is getting over a flight attendant, and the snack-bar girl Faye (Faye Wong) quietly falls for him to the sound of "California Dreamin'" played again and again.

Why it fits right now: This is a movie made by and for night owls. According to TCM, Wong shot it in about two weeks as a palate cleanser before editing his epic Ashes of Time, writing scenes during the day and filming them at night. He described it as a story about people in a lonely city who'd rather talk to themselves, or to objects, than reveal their feelings. If you've ever had a long conversation with your fridge at 3 a.m., you'll feel seen. And it has a restless, jittery energy that matches a brain that won't settle down.

One scene to look for: Cop 223 meets the woman in the blonde wig in a bar, and they end up in a hotel room where she, exhausted, falls asleep. He doesn't. He stays up watching TV and ordering food, and before he leaves, he polishes her shoes. It's one of the most tender scenes ever made about being the only person awake in the room.

4. Night on Earth (1991)

What it is: Jim Jarmusch's five-part anthology about five taxi rides happening on the same night in five cities: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki. Winona Ryder plays a chain-smoking LA cabbie who would rather be a mechanic than a movie star; Gena Rowlands is the casting agent in her back seat. In Paris, a driver from the Ivory Coast picks up a blind woman (Béatrice Dalle) who is sharper than he is. In Rome, Roberto Benigni delivers a deranged confession to a priest. Tom Waits wrote the gravelly score.

Why it fits right now: Each episode is stamped with its local time, from 7:07 p.m. in Los Angeles to 4:07 a.m. in Paris and Rome and 5:07 a.m. in snowy Helsinki, which is a weirdly comforting idea when you're lying awake: wherever you are on the planet, it's the middle of the night for somebody, and they're talking to a stranger to get through it. The episodes are self-contained, so you can watch one or two and stop. Jarmusch reportedly wrote the script in about eight days, choosing several of the cities based on the actors he wanted to work with, and that loose, hand-picked feel is all over it. The Criterion Channel calls it a mix of "uproarious comedy, nocturnal poetry, and somber fatalism," which is about as good a description of 4 a.m. as you'll find.

One scene to look for: The New York segment. Helmut (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a former clown from East Germany, is on his first night as a cab driver. He can't handle an automatic transmission and has no idea where Brooklyn is, so his passenger YoYo (Giancarlo Esposito) finally takes the wheel himself. Their mutual bafflement turns into something close to friendship, and it's the funniest, sweetest ride in the film.

5. Before Sunrise (1995)

What it is: Richard Linklater's romance about Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American, and Céline (Julie Delpy), a Frenchwoman, who meet on a train and impulsively get off together in Vienna. He has a flight home in the morning. They have one night, so they walk, and talk, and walk some more.

Why it fits right now: This is the movie for when you can't sleep because your head is too full: of big questions, half-formed ideas, the conversation you wish you were having. Linklater based it on a real night in 1989, when he met a woman in a Philadelphia toy shop and the two of them walked around the city talking deep into the night. The film captures the particular honesty that only shows up after midnight, when you say things you'd never say at lunch. It's 97 minutes of two people deciding the night is too good to waste on sleep.

One scene to look for: In a Viennese café, Jesse and Céline pretend to call their friends back home, each holding an imaginary phone and playing the other's confidant, so they can finally say out loud what they've been thinking about each other all night. Then watch for the record-store listening booth, where they can't quite look at each other at the same time, and the first kiss on the Prater's giant Ferris wheel as the sun goes down.

6. After Hours (1985)

What it is: Martin Scorsese's pitch-black comedy about Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne), a bored Manhattan word processor who heads downtown late one night to see a woman (Rosanna Arquette) he met in a café. Then everything goes wrong, one tiny catastrophe at a time, across a seemingly endless night in SoHo.

Why it fits right now: Put this one on when you're too wired for anything gentle. It's the nightmare version of being awake when you shouldn't be, and somehow that makes it the most reassuring film on this list: however bad your night is going, Paul's is worse. Roger Ebert called it "the tensest comedy I can remember," and noticed the clouds of steam rising from the SoHo streets, the same image Scorsese used in Taxi Driver. The director made it after Paramount pulled the plug on The Last Temptation of Christ, and he won the Best Director prize at Cannes for it. The cast of night creatures, including Teri Garr, Catherine O'Hara, Linda Fiorentino and Cheech and Chong, is a gallery of wonderfully strange people who all seem to be having a different night than Paul.

One scene to look for: The cab ride downtown. Paul's only $20 bill flies out the taxi window, leaving him broke and stranded before the night has even started. It's a tiny, perfect setup, and it pays off later in a way you won't see coming. After this, you'll be grateful the only thing keeping you up is your own thoughts.

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If none of these put you to sleep, at least you'll have spent the night with good company. And if one of them does, that's fine too. The movie will still be there tomorrow, waiting in the dark for the next time you can't sleep.