Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Pressure:
Dunkirk
Dunkirk may just be Christopher Nolan’s most improbable and precise movie. A technical revelation that feels like the stretched out third act of a war epic. All this time later, nothing has aged poorly in this cinematic achievement.
Blitz
Steve McQueen’s Blitz is an ambitious and sprawling narrative that balances the intimacy of a personal journey with the grandeur of historical drama. Known for his ability to craft emotionally resonant stories on a massive scale, McQueen flexes his filmmaking brilliance this time around by placing the viewer in the chaos and heartbreak of wartime London. The film centers on George (Elliott Heffernan), a young boy determined to reunite with his mother amid the devastating Blitz, using his story to anchor a larger one of human resilience, fear, and hope.
Napoleon
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is an overtly ambitious cinematic endeavor, a sprawling historical drama that delves into the life and conquests of the iconic French military leader. Clocking in at well over two hours, the movie impresses with its visual grandeur, meticulous attention to detail, and breathtaking battle sequences reminiscent of many of Scott’s previous epics – most notably Gladiator or The Last Duel. The veteran director, now 86 years old, continues to demonstrate his mastery of the genre, particularly in capturing the ferocity and brilliance of Napoleon’s military campaigns.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Director Edward Berger and cinematographer James Friend come together to create 2022’s signature war epic All Quiet on the Western Front, which pushes stylistic boundaries for the genre not seen since before the pandemic. It is terrifying and riveting at its best moments, and slightly formulaic at its lesser ones. Combined with a saddening performance by Felix Kammerer, the film is one of Netflix’s best ones of 2022.
Black Hawk Down
Ridley Scott is arguably one of the best directors alive at exactly this kind of filmmaking. Movies that feel like reenactments, but reenactments so cinematic and overwhelming that – depending on my mood – it makes up for the fact that there’s often not a ton that emotionally clicks with me in his work, nor do I find much of his 21st century output to carry a lot of personality. I liked The Last Duel, Napoleon, and House of Gucci well enough, but I won’t argue that the dioramic recreation does a lot of the heavy lifting in each of those films compared to the thematic depths they don’t seem particularly interested in having. Black Hawk Down fits that mold pretty well too.
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.
Warfare
Warfare is the kind of war film that forgoes grandiosity in favor of raw, boots-on-the-ground immediacy, and the result is a lean, harrowing experience that feels startlingly real. Co-directed by Alex Garland and former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, the film comes just a year after Garland’s more polarizing and thematically ambiguous Civil War—a movie that aspired to be a socio-political reckoning but often buckled under the weight of its own ideas. In contrast, Warfare is stripped down and visceral in a way that’s much more effective.
Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
The Covenant effectively sandwiches two rescue missions back-to-back in a tightly controlled narrative. It’s a two hander, sneakily becoming an anthology of several strong stories and ideas working within one another. Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim headline the movie, and each get half of the film to take the lead.
Sisu
Sisu mostly capitalizes on the carnage that it promises – that Nazis won’t make it out of this thing. But outside of a few killer sequences, Sisu can’t quite match the stellar run of competing genre movies, resulting in one with clear influences.
Triple Frontier
J.C. Chandor delivers another remarkably succinct heist drama with Triple Frontier – with a cast about as strong as one can possibly get. Oscar Isaac and Ben Affleck lead a team of former special ops soldiers into South America to retrieve a large sum of money, and the events spiral from there. Chandor’s 2019 film stands among the best action movies of the late-2010s.
READ MORE: Movies Like Sisu, Movies Like Warfare
