Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Bound:
Love Lies Bleeding
There’s really nothing like Love Lies Bleeding. I don’t necessarily subscribe to the blanket notion that they don’t make movies like they used to anymore – but I will say, Hollywood hasn’t consistently made films as erotic and thrilling like this since the 1980s and 90s. Rose Glass directs the dynamic duo of Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart.
Nightmare Alley
Guillermo del Toro has built a career on finding beauty in darkness, crafting stories that, even in their bleakest moments, hold onto some sense of wonder, nostalgia, or hope. Movies like Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and his stop-motion Pinocchio remake all explore the perseverance of the human spirit, even in the face of terrible atrocities. That’s what makes Nightmare Alley such a striking outlier in his filmography—it’s a film almost entirely devoid of hope, a cynical neo-noir that suggests people are, at their core, selfish and opportunistic. Instead of offering redemption, Nightmare Alley leaves you with a sick feeling in your stomach, hammering home its central thesis: trust is a liability, and grifters will always find a way to exploit it.
Blood Simple
Nearly every time I revisit Blood Simple, I’m struck by how confident and precise Joel and Ethan Coen were right out of the gate. Released in 1984, Blood Simple is the Coen brothers’ debut film and still stands as one of the greatest first features ever made. A neo-noir steeped in paranoia, betrayal, and bloody miscommunication, it’s a film that knows exactly what it wants to be—lean, stylish, and razor-sharp.
Drive-Away Dolls
Despite Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls feeling like “lesser Coen brothers” at times, there are still some great lines and hilarious set pieces to make the movie worthwhile. Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan shine, and the noir elements hint at a style that the Coens have only ventured into a few times with their earlier films.
Black Bag
Black Bag is good—clean, confident, and technically sound—but it doesn’t quite rise to the level of Steven Soderbergh’s best recent work. What plays out in the film is less Mission: Impossible and more an anxious domestic drama cloaked in the sharp suits and icy exteriors of the spy genre. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett star as a couple with their relationship put to the ultimate stress test.
Miller’s Crossing
In the Coens’ filmography filled with bold tonal shifts and genre experiments, Miller’s Crossing sits as a reserved yet razor-sharp piece of storytelling. It may not wear its eccentricities on its sleeve like Barton Fink or O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but it reflects the Coens’ precision and intelligence with remarkable clarity. For most filmmakers, this would be a career-best. For the Coens, it’s just another strong chapter in a catalog that rarely misses.
The Batman
The Batman is a complete reimagining of superhero genre tropes. A moody noir piece backed by a haunting score and Robert Pattinson as the caped crusader, Matt Reeves’ 2022 blockbuster rewrites what’s possible for these genre films.
Infinity Pool
There are some real highlights in Brandon Cronenberg‘s newest art house horror movie, mainly the chemistry between Alexander Skarsgard and Mia Goth. But Infinity Pool struggles to build into anything beyond a set of shocking horror images and audacious scenes.
MaXXXine
MaXXXine has a handful of worthwhile moments, but the movie ultimately ricochets between two different sides of Ti West’s mind: the throwback B-movie auteur with a great taste for kills and the heady screenwriter with something to say about the industry he works in. It’s unfortunate that MaXXXine doesn’t strike that balance often, and it’s easy to tell when he’s switching from one gear to the next. Mia Goth reprises her scream queen role as the titular film star.
Babygirl
25 years after co-starring in Eyes Wide Shut, Nicole Kidman revisits similar thematic territory in Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, another holiday-set exploration of lust, power, and dissatisfaction. In Babygirl, she plays Romy, a high-powered tech CEO whose meticulously crafted life seems perfect on the surface. With a doting husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), two well-adjusted children, and a dreamlike home, Romy appears to have it all. Yet, beneath this pristine façade, she is deeply unfulfilled, yearning for something—or someone—to awaken her buried fantasies.
READ MORE: Bound (1996)
