Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Love of Your Life:
The Sun Never Sets
The Sun Never Sets isn’t reinventing the rom-com, and I don’t think every detour in this love triangle lands with the same force, but there’s an honesty to its messiness that I really enjoyed. Swanberg understands that adult relationships are rarely clean enough to fit neatly into a romantic-comedy structure, especially when the people involved are still carrying around all the insecurities, bad habits, and unresolved shit that got them here in the first place. Dakota Fanning is the standout, but the chemistry between all three leads keeps the movie afloat even as the characters are actively trying to sink themselves.
Mile End Kicks
This generation’s closest thing to Almost Famous, and honestly, more coming-of-age movies in the vein of Cameron Crowe or Richard Linklater or even contemporaries like Cooper Raiff or Greta Gerwig, I’m all in for. The screenplay, which started life under the working title Anglophone as the winner of a competition for emerging women screenwriters back in 2016, is based in part on Chandler Levack’s own early adulthood before becoming a professional music critic and filmmaker. That autobiographical grounding should give the film the kind of lived-in specificity that separates the great hangout movies from the good ones.
Rye Lane
Few films in 2023 will reach the peaceful bliss that Hulu’s newest streamer Rye Lane does, a movie about two lost twenty-somethings recovering from painful breakups over the span of one eventful afternoon in South London. Told through an episodic lens that depicts the steps from heartbreak to a restored faith in relationships, Rye Lane is a cheerful reimagining of the romantic comedy.
Eternity
Eternity has a sweet, sentimental charm that fits David Freyne’s A24 rom-com mold, then asks a clever what-if of the afterlife. When you die, you enter a hub and choose where to spend forever. For Joan, played by Elizabeth Olsen, the question is less where than who. Freyne, working from a script co-written with Pat Cunnane, leans into humor and physical business rather than plumbing for deeper grief. The emotion largely comes from familiar highlight reels, meet cutes and proposal flashbacks that remind Joan what each love felt like in its best light. When the movie wants to go big, it does not hesitate.
Materialists
Materialists feels like a transitional work. It shows Celine Song experimenting with scale, ensemble dynamics, and new narrative textures—but it lacks the intimacy and precision that defined her first film. It’s a movie with moments that flirt with those same highs in small doses, but one that ultimately falls short. Still, it leaves me hopeful: the emotional territory Song wants to chart is rare in contemporary cinema, and while Materialists stumbles, it’s a sign that she’s aiming high. Her best films are likely still ahead.
Crossing Delancey
Crossing Delancey is the kind of romantic comedy that remembers what adulthood feels like. Joan Micklin Silver builds a world so specific that it becomes universal, a New York where bookstores, delis, and family kitchens carry as much weight as flirtations. The movie sits alongside the late eighties high points, close to Moonstruck and When Harry Met Sally…, yet it leans a little more serious and a little more tender.
Fly Me to the Moon
Rumor has it that Apple is stepping away from theatrical releases for their original movies, and the lukewarm reception of Greg Berlanti‘s Fly Me to the Moon may be a big reason why. Starring Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson, this romantic comedy set against the backdrop of the U.S.-Soviet space race seemed poised for success. It had all the ingredients for a financial hit: big stars, a pastiche-heavy style, and the kind of premise that could benefit from strong word-of-mouth. Yet, it never gained traction.
Past Lives
Celine Song‘s Past Lives is a revelation, despite a growing skepticism that romance movies are dead in the current streaming era. Every bit of emotion and rekindling romance is only strengthened by a nuanced approach to script and perfect casting. A real highlight of 2023.
Sentimental Value
Joachim Trier has earned enough goodwill at this point that even his “minor” films arrive with a sort of built-in reverence, especially after The Worst Person in the World became such an instant modern staple. Sentimental Value is a very different kind of Trier movie: less messy, less slippery, more refined, and more self-conscious about its own prestige. I liked it more the second time around, mostly because the first viewing had me fighting the weight of its reputation. It premiered in competition at Cannes with a lot of immediate hype swirling around it, and you can feel that aura baked into the framing.
The Baltimorons
The Baltimorons sits in that lovely corner of holiday movies where the season is cold, the people are messier than they want to admit, and the comfort comes not from miracles but from accidental connection. Jay Duplass directs it in a very classical, unfussy way, letting performers and place do most of the work rather than punching it up with big comic beats or needle drops. It is closer to the gentler rhythms of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers than to something broader like Love Actually, even if it never quite reaches the emotional heights of the former.
READ MORE: Movies Like Eternity, Movies Like Rye Lane
