Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Sacramento:
Splitsville
Splitsville is the better of Dakota Johnson’s two 2025 relationship comedies, a looser, livelier counterpoint to Celine Song’s Materialists. Directed by and co-starring Michael Angelo Covino with frequent collaborator Kyle Marvin, it plays like a pinball machine of modern romance, funny more often than not, rarely profound, yet consistently watchable. Covino and Marvin build a brisk farce around two couples whose ideas about fidelity collide, and the result is breezy and entertaining in the moment, and a little thin after.
Love, Brooklyn
Love, Brooklyn starts light on its feet and mostly stays that way. I liked watching André Holland drift through the borough as Roger, a writer dodging a commission about Black history and Brooklyn culture while splitting his time between two relationships. One is with his ex Casey, played by Nicole Beharie, and the other is with Nicole, played by DeWanda Wise. Everyone knows where they stand. There are no secrets. The dynamic feels modern and unusually honest for a romance, which gives the film a soft charge even when it keeps things quiet.
Sometimes I Think About Dying
Sometimes I Think About Dying has a distinct tone, but I was able to look past its understated delivery and find a lot to appreciate. Daisy Ridley and Dave Merheje share a unique chemistry that stands out among the early 2024 releases.
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.
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.
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.
Stardust Memories
Any filmmaker attempting their own version of Federico Fellini’s 8½ starts at a disadvantage. Fellini’s masterpiece is so personal—rooted in his creative anxieties and self-reflection—that anyone riffing on it has to either radically reinvent the premise or risk producing something that feels like an imitation. Some directors have pulled it off, finding ways to turn creative paralysis into great cinema—Joel and Ethan Coen’s Barton Fink (1991) tackled writer’s block with biting satire, while Wong Kar-Wai famously made Chungking Express during a break from editing Ashes of Time, turning personal restlessness into a defining work.
Players
Players is comfortable with just existing rather than flourishing and finding new territory to cover in this expansive romantic comedy genre of movies. Netflix’s latest film is just as light and unremarkable as nearly every other one that they’ve produced. Gina Rodriguez and Damon Wayans Jr. co-star in lackluster, windless entry.
One Fine Morning
One Fine Morning showcases Mia Hansen-Løve’s masterful ability to capture the bittersweet complexities of life in both the good and the bad. Léa Seydoux and Pascal Greggory star.
You Hurt My Feelings
You Hurt My Feelings is a movie tearing apart the artistic complex. A film that questions whether professionals can have their lives figured out in the twenties or thirties. It’s honest and personal, as if Nicole Holofcener is using Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a stand in for directors and creatives everywhere.
READ MORE: Sacramento (2025)
