Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Nonnas:
The Daytrippers
Even if The Daytrippers struggles to evolve due to sluggish pacing and typical genre tropes, it’s still worth your time to see early Greg Mottola work his magic. Excellent direction, and a starry cast, manages to keep the movie afloat.
We Live in Time
A movie like We Live in Time really shouldn’t work. The overly sentimental cancer drama is a well-trodden path, with its fair share of genuinely touching entries but even more bogged down by predictability and melodrama. We Live in Time doesn’t completely avoid these familiar pitfalls, as it leans into some of the same cheesy tropes that often plague this subgenre.
Ratatouille
Ratatouille could only be as effective as it is with these voice actors and this concept and director, and it all comes together to make one of Pixar’s most unique and loveable movies. Brad Bird conceptualizes a ridiculous premise to perfection, delivering a meta story about the intersection of art and criticism.
Nebraska
In classic Alexander Payne fashion, the setup for Nebraska is equal parts funny, sad, and deeply personal. And the payoff is well worth the wait due to remarkably nuanced and layered performances from Bruce Dern and Will Forte as a complicated father-son duo.
Hit Man
Despite my love for nearly all things Richard Linklater and Glen Powell, I just couldn’t bring myself to fall for their newest release on Netflix – Hit Man, which tries its hardest to hide its superstar lead behind a thick layer of nerdy, undesirable heft that I saw right through from beginning to end.
The Menu
A mixed bag of ideas and food for thought, Mark Mylod‘s The Menu still excels with winking characters and great visual design. The movie struggles to establish much beyond its own genre beats, but that doesn’t take much away from the crowd-pleasing journey the film goes on.
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.
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Royal Tenenbaums not only stands as one of Wes Anderson’s best movies of his career, but also a defining work of the independent filmmaking scene in the early 2000s. It’s dripping with color and visual intensity, masking a story with deep themes of broken families.
Fountain of Youth
Fountain of Youth doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t even inflate the tires. But it doesn’t burst them either, and in a genre flooded with big-budget, charisma-sapping clunkers, that might be faint praise—but it’s praise nonetheless. It’s a forgettable but harmless addition to Apple TV+’s library, with just enough star power and personality from John Krasinski and Natalie Portman to make it mildly palatable.
Happy Gilmore 2
If Happy Gilmore 2 was trying to match the chaotic energy of its predecessor, it took the wrong lessons from the original. Rather than capturing the anarchic charm that made 1996’s Happy Gilmore such a cult classic, this long-gestating sequel trades in simplicity for excess, leaning hard into maximalist spectacle, celebrity cameos, and a softened version of Adam Sandler’s once-iconic character. The result? A bloated and misguided legacy sequel that feels more like a Netflix-branded content dump than a genuine continuation of a classic comedy.