Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Ballad of a Small Player:
The Card Counter
Paul Schrader has often explored the psychology of men trapped by their pasts, from Taxi Driver to Light Sleeper, and The Card Counter feels like a natural extension of that lineage. It’s a film that lingers—methodical, unrelenting, and quietly devastating. Perhaps not his flashiest work, but unquestionably one of his most powerful late-career efforts.
Uncut Gems
Uncut Gems compounds tension about as well as any movie made in the 2010s. Josh and Benny Safdie announce themselves as filmmakers to keep an eye on moving forward with this grisly thriller set in the world of high stakes sports gambling. Adam Sandler and Kevin Garnett co-star, along with a supporting cast for the ages.
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.
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.
Babylon
Damien Chazelle announces himself as the antichrist with Babylon – a film focused on the fake it til you make it side of the industry, and Chazelle might just be faking it after all. I’ll be tossing and turning in my head for months about whether he deserves the ending that he presents, because he’s having his cake and eating it to with that final montage, but at least along the way he also throws it up and laughs at you for thinking he’d do anything else. I love it.
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.
Everybody Wants Some!!
I can probably count on one hand the movies I’ve rewatched more often than Everybody Wants Some!!, and that’s because Richard Linklater’s secret masterpiece is one of the most endlessly watchable films of the 2010s. Its 117 minutes fly by with the kind of effortless charm that makes you want to live inside it, following a team of college baseball players during the final weekend before classes begin at a mid-sized Texas university in 1980. Freshmen move into the house, parties blur together, baseball practice tests egos, and friendships form so naturally you wish you were dropped right into the middle of it.
Magnolia
Magnolia might feel a bit like the film that got away from Paul Thomas Anderson (because it kinda is), but it’s the sort of big-budget passion project that up-and-coming filmmakers rarely get to make nowadays. The ensemble cast of Magnolia is littered with A-listers and common Paul Thomas Anderson players, from Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman to Tom Cruise and John C. Reilly, each actor adds their own weight to this shotgun blast of characters.
Challengers
Luca Guadagnino directs one of his best movies with Challengers, which pairs his interests in yearning, miscalculated protagonists to the competitive world of tennis. It’s exhilarating and wild, with three prophetic performances from Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor that’ll challenge many of 2024’s best efforts.
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.
READ MORE: Ballad of a Small Player (2025)
