Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Poor Things:
Saltburn
Emerald Fennell‘s sophomore movie, Saltburn, emerges from the rubble of her polarizing debut, Promising Young Woman, with a cast that elevates the material despite its endlessly convoluted and plainly put narrative. This comedy-drama-thriller hybrid film weaves a perplexing tale of obsession, deception, and tragedy within the confines of the aristocratic Catton family’s titular estate.
The Substance
A vaguely named, neon green liquid is at the center of The Substance, the sophomore effort from director Coralie Fargeat following her successful debut Revenge (2017). The titular substance is capable of delivering happiness to those desiring to look younger and more attractive. Accompanied by a strict list of rules involving when to take the substance and how to maintain the younger self the injection inevitably births, the chances of a user mishandling such a lethal experimental drug is absurdly high.
Anora
Anora is a film that announces Sean Baker as one of cinema’s pinnacle filmmakers. It’s a starry movie that puts you through the ringer and makes you feel just about every emotion possible. It’s grandiose filmmaking at a very high degree of execution. Baker likes to explore similar themes and character types with each of his films, and he’s never been so clear as to why he finds these particular stories so fascinating.
Barbie
Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie deliver one of 2023’s most colorful and sincere trips to the movies. Barbie is a movie that transcends style and set design, offering a visual feast with enough laughs along the way.
Beau Is Afraid
Ari Aster puts his career and positive public perception on the line to create his most singular and divisive piece of filmmaking yet. Although easily his least accessible and structured movie, Beau Is Afraid still manages to work due to Aster‘s distinct eye for jaw-dropping images and scenes and Joaquin Phoenix‘s committed performance.
The Favourite
The Favourite sees director Yorgos Lanthimos recontextualizing 18th-century British royalty. A searing dark comedy featuring many of 2018s’s best performances, including Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz.
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.
Punch-Drunk Love
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love is the rare romantic comedy that hums like a live wire. The movie finds Anderson collapsing love and rage into the same nervous system, paring down the sprawl of Magnolia to something smaller, stranger, and sharper. The film’s scale is modest compared with Boogie Nights or There Will Be Blood, but its voltage is unmistakable—an anxious fairytale painted in glowing blues and reds, propelled by Jon Brion’s jittery, percussive score and bursts of abstract color.
Kinds of Kindness
As a side project conceived during the creation of Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness is quite the undertaking for Yorgos Lanthimos. The movie is hefty and left with a lot of gristle. While the performances of the cast suggest a film trying to have a lot of fun, the lack of cohesion took me out of a movie overstaying its welcome.
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.
