Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Mile End Kicks:
Licorice Pizza
Licorice Pizza is a love letter to Paul Thomas Anderson’s childhood experience. The movie is overflowing with teenage emotional drama. One of 2021’s best films. Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman both give extraordinary first leading performances.
Didi
Didi is the debut film from writer/director Sean Wang, who is telling an autobiographical story of growing up Asian in the late 2000s. Izaac Wang plays the impressionable 13-year-old stand-in of the director, who navigates learning to flirt, skate, and live in a three-generation household of women.
Roommates
You could certainly do way worse when it comes to straight-to-streaming teenage comedies than Happy Madison’s latest Netflix release Roommates, Sadie Sandler’s first turn as a starring actress in a feature film following smaller roles and cameos in a handful of her father Adam Sandler’s movies over the last few years. Both Sadie and Sunny Sandler have had their shots at Netflix projects in recent years, and the results, while still leaning into cameos and low-hanging jokes that I usually roll my eyes at in both Netflix and Happy Madison movies, have been rather promising.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
There are four or five moments in Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie where my brain basically short-circuited, not because the movie is confusing, but because it feels borderline impossible that it exists at this scale with this kind of scrappy, “how did they pull that off?” energy. Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol have always had a particular talent for turning cringe into momentum and turning momentum into a full-on set piece. Here, they do it on a bigger canvas without sanding down what made Nirvanna the Band the Show special in the first place.
Read our full review of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
Dazed and Confused
There’s a short, short list of movies that, in the moment, feel like the greatest thing you’ve ever seen. Richard Linklater has somehow made a few of them across a decades-long career, and I’m not sure he’s ever been more locked-in than with Dazed and Confused. It drops you into 1976 on the last day of school, where the soon-to-be seniors are running the show and the incoming freshmen are about to take the brunt of hazing rituals that are passed down like some warped tradition. Then the sun goes down, the cars start cruising, the beer starts flowing, and the night stretches out into that specific kind of teenage summer freedom that feels infinite while you’re in it.
C’mon C’mon
With C’mon C’mon, Mike Mills continues his deeply personal exploration of familial relationships, following Beginners (about his father) and 20th Century Women (about his mother). This time, he turns inward, reflecting on his role as a father and the complexities of raising a child in an uncertain world. The result is a delicate, introspective film that is both heartfelt and deeply human, even if it doesn’t always hit the emotional highs of Mills’ previous work.
The Fabelmans
The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s latest movie, effectively mines through his childhood to examine his love for film. A complex set of ideas mixed in a way only the master filmmaker could pull together.
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.
Sacramento
Sacramento is a good-not-great entry into the buddy road trip genre. It won’t blow you away, but if you’re a fan of its cast—Michael Cera, Michael Angarano, and Kristen Stewart included—there’s enough charm here to make it worth the ride.
Nouvelle Vague
Nouvelle Vague may not feel strictly necessary, yet it is frequently absorbing and occasionally electric. It is a reminder that Richard Linklater keeps making movies because he likes to look closely, whether the subject is a barroom confession or the jittery birth of a classic. This one will not inspire a movement, and it does not try to, but it earns its place as a smart, modest riff on a seismic moment. By the time Breathless finally clicks into focus, you understand why the chaos mattered and why the gamble was worth it, even if the film around it plays as a minor, affectionate gloss.
READ MORE: Mile End Kicks (2026), Movies Like Sorry, Baby, Movies Like Dazed and Confused
