Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Barbie:
Asteroid City
Asteroid City works like a charm, each detail feeling firmly in place despite the layers and layers of artifice Wes Anderson plants around every corner. His detractors may despise it, but if you’ve ever been even a smidge interested in his work up to this point, it’s certainly worth seeing – because you won’t believe its contents otherwise.
Read our full review of Asteroid City
Everything Everywhere All at Once
To put into words how exhilarating Everything Everywhere All at Once is isn’t easy to do. A film unlike any other, it pushes every filmmaking possibility to the brink in 2022. Many films come and go with the wind, but Everything Everywhere All at Once will be in our culture for years – even decades. The phrase “modern classic” doesn’t apply to films very frequently, but this is one of those instances where it feels justified.
Read our full review of Everything Everywhere All at Once
Wonka
In a surprising turn of events, Wonka emerges as one of the standout success stories of 2023, defying initial skepticism surrounding its release. Helmed by director Paul King and starring Timothée Chalamet, this imaginative take on the world of Willy Wonka offers a refreshing and delightful experience that captivates audiences from the opening title sequence to the end.
No Hard Feelings
No Hard Feelings feels like a shot in the arm for studio comedies – a subgenre in desperate need of *something* to revive it. Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman both star, and carry with them completely different perspectives of maturing emotionally.
Read our full review of No Hard Feelings
Deadpool & Wolverine
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has faced challenges since its peak with Avengers: Endgame in 2019. Public interest has waned, and while Marvel continues striving to recapture that magic, it often comes at the expense of patience and character development. This trend is evident in Deadpool & Wolverine, which prioritizes cameos, quick laugh lines, and flashy action sequences over meaningful storytelling or fully realized characters.
Read our full review of Deadpool & Wolverine
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou may never be the most celebrated or critically lauded of Wes Anderson’s movies, but it’s undeniably one of his most distinctive. Over time, its stature has grown—not just as a quirky outlier, but as a poignant, unpredictable exploration of legacy, family, and self-reckoning. It’s a movie about a man who tries to film everything so he doesn’t have to feel anything, only to discover—too late—that the feelings are all that matter. For all its eccentricities, it sticks with you. That’s the mark of a great film, even a strange one.
Read our full review of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Wicked
Monetarily speaking, Wicked is shaping up to be the movie sensation of the fall. Each year, a few family-friendly blockbusters dominate the holiday season box office, drawing in swarms of extended families and raking in massive earnings. In 2024, Wicked is one such standout, serving as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz and kicking off a two-part franchise. The film explores the origins of the Wicked Witch of the West, framed through the eyes of her closest classmate from years prior.
Read our full review of Wicked
White Noise
Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise has often been considered unfilmable. The postmodern classic grows more and more timely by the year, which may be the exact reason why acclaimed auteur Noah Baumbach decided to try his own hand at it. The source material is rich – mostly commenting on consumerism and global warming amid a fractured landscape between the media and internal families. As you can imagine, some pretty weighty material that’s difficult to precisely package together in the span of two hours.
Read our full review of White Noise
The Marvels
The Marvels is a movie that, while not devoid of entertainment and laughs, is a muddled entry in the recent lackluster saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Brie Larson continues to stand out as Captain Marvel in a franchise filled with questionable plot choices and villains.
Read our full review of The Marvels
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Tim Burton didn’t need to revisit the Beetlejuice universe—but here we are. In an era when nearly every beloved classic is revived, it was only a matter of time before Burton reached into his own catalog, which includes hits like Batman, Edward Scissorhands, and Sweeney Todd.