Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like BlackBerry:
The Social Network
The Social Network might not be a “perfect” movie in a traditional sense, but it’s as close as any film has come in the 21st century. Directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, this 2010 masterpiece remains endlessly rewatchable, endlessly quotable, and deeply resonant in ways that continue to evolve with time. I’ve seen it more than any other movie—memorized its rhythm, its cutting dialogue, its thumping Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score that pulses through every moment. It’s a film that never loses its edge, no matter how many times you revisit it.
Air
Adequately titled Air, Ben Affleck‘s newest directing effort sits in the clouds as it enjoys rummaging through the events that led to Michael Jordan’s lucrative “Air Jordan” shoe deal with Nike. Told from the perspective of blazing Sonny Vaccaro, Air enjoys living in the small details of nostalgia and sports branding.
Mountainhead
Mountainhead is not a great film, but it is a good one—especially by the standards of streaming releases in 2025. It doesn’t reach the peaks of Jesse Armstrong’s earlier work (namely Succession), but it proves he’s still one of the sharpest satirists of our time. And in a year saturated with forgettable originals from Netflix, Apple TV+, and Hulu, a messy, mean-spirited morality tale with craft and intention feels like a breath of cold, rarefied mountain air.
Saturday Night
Saturday Night, directed by Jason Reitman, takes us back to the chaotic, unpredictable hours leading up to the first-ever episode of Saturday Night Live. Reitman’s film suggests that those 90 minutes before the show’s debut were more frenzied, uncertain, and downright messy than anything that’s aired in the decades since. It paints a vivid picture of a young Lorne Michaels, played with wide-eyed determination by Gabriel LaBelle, as someone who was deeply in over his head, unprepared to helm what would become one of television’s most iconic and enduring shows.
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.
Margin Call
Margin Call never gets talked about as loudly as some of the “best of the 2010s” heavy hitters, but it is one of the best chamber pieces of its era. It is lean, tense, sharply acted, and morally bracing without being preachy. A reminder that J.C. Chandor, at his best, can make corporate decision-making feel like a thriller where the weapon is arithmetic and the body count is everyone else.
Y2K
The best way to approach Y2K is to go in completely blind. Seriously, avoid trailers and marketing if you can. The film’s absurd twists and genuinely hilarious moments are what make it so enjoyable, and knowing too much beforehand could spoil the fun. Kyle Mooney makes his directorial debut here, and he nails it. Throughout the brisk 91-minute runtime, he keeps the pace sharp and entertaining. The movie is often exhilarating, always self-deprecating, and has just enough 1999 nostalgia to hit the right notes without feeling overdone or cheesy.
Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola‘s Megalopolis makes it crystal clear that the legendary director is disappointed in the trajectory of modern civilized life. To think that this passion project of his has been in the works for nearly four decades is astonishing considering how neatly it conveys modern anxieties about the fragility of social infrastructure.
Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer is undoubtedly one of the best movies directed by Christopher Nolan, who puts any doubt to rest that he wouldn’t be capable of capturing a story of this magnitude. Cillian Murphy gives an iconic performance that intensifies each moment rolling along this breakneck biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The Apprentice
The Apprentice works less as a serious drama and more as a stylistic detour into the underbelly of what makes the rich and famous churn. It’s nastiness ultimately works against it, as well as the current lens that the entire story is framed through (Make America Great Again is painfully alluded to several times throughout, as well as Donald Trump’s playful one-liner about running for president), but there is enough technical and stylistic work from Ali Abbasi and crew to make this some highly artistic, but trashy, melodrama. After all, I needed my fix of Succession 2.0.
READ MORE: BlackBerry (2023), Movies Like Margin Call, Movies Like The Social Network
