Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Red Rocket:
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.
No Hard Feelings
No Hard Feelings feels like a shot in the arm for studio comedies – a subgenre in desperate need of *something* to revive it. Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman both star, and carry with them completely different perspectives of maturing emotionally.
Anora
Anora is a film that announces Sean Baker as one of cinema’s pinnacle filmmakers. It’s a starry movie that puts you through the ringer and makes you feel just about every emotion possible. It’s grandiose filmmaking at a very high degree of execution. Baker likes to explore similar themes and character types with each of his films, and he’s never been so clear as to why he finds these particular stories so fascinating.
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.
The Florida Project
The Florida Project isn’t just one of Sean Baker’s best films—it’s a modern indie masterpiece that has solidified itself as one of the defining movies of the 2010s. Released by A24 in 2017, it’s a stunningly poignant slice-of-life drama that immerses the audience in the sun-drenched but deeply flawed world of its characters. For me, this movie came at the perfect time, when I was just beginning to see film as more than entertainment and started engaging with it as an art form. It wasn’t just a gateway into Sean Baker’s career; it was a revelation that reshaped how I thought about storytelling on screen.
Poor Things
At the heart of Poor Things is Emma Stone‘s exceptionally dedicated performance, making a compelling case for her second Oscar for Best Actress. Her willingness to embrace daring characters and collaborate with auteurs like Yorgos Lanthimos reinforces her status as one of the industry’s leading performers.
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.
Rushmore
Although Wes Anderson’s career starts with Bottle Rocket and the short film that inspired that movie, I don’t think it really takes off into another stratosphere until Rushmore – a breakout hit worth every bit of praise that it gets. It may live a bit in the shadows of a few movies that come after it, but it’s undeniable that the motifs and thematic impulses Wes Anderson begins to lay out here are monumental in the works that would follow.
The Lost Daughter
Few debut movies have the level of care and precision that Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Lost Daughter has. An intimate film about fragile bonds between mother and daughter, The Lost Daughter relies on powerful performances from Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, and Jessie Buckley – all of whom exceed with flying colors.
Nightbitch
I get what Nightbitch is trying to do. This Amy Adams-led satirical drama movie digs deep into the physical and emotional transformations women experience during and after motherhood. Adams plays a new stay-at-home mother who feels trapped in her role, spending long, monotonous hours watching her child while grappling with a profound sense of loss.