Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like The Kidnapping of Arabella:
Tony
Tony opens with a fitting quote from its titular subject, Anthony Bourdain, describing himself before he found his calling as a cook and decades before becoming one of the world’s most famous chefs: “I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” It’s a pretty perfect mission statement for Matt Johnson’s film, which is less interested in the finished Anthony Bourdain than the deeply uncertain young man who had to become him first.
The Phoenician Scheme
The Phoenician Scheme finds Wes Anderson at perhaps his most emotionally direct since The Grand Budapest Hotel, yet without sacrificing the signature aesthetic and structural quirks that define his work. Where recent efforts like Asteroid City and The French Dispatch relied heavily on narrative framing devices, nested storytelling, and dense, text-heavy scripts, The Phoenician Scheme plays more like an emotional adventure story—a film that hits hardest on first viewing, even as it leaves behind layers to explore on rewatches.
The Christophers
The Christophers may not rank among Steven Soderbergh’s defining achievements, but it reminded me why his baseline remains so much higher than almost everyone else’s. It’s sharp, funny, surprisingly heartfelt, and has more to say about artistry, legacy, and the people who profit from both than most films on the subject ever attempt. Calling it “just another Soderbergh movie” sounds dismissive, but in practice, that’s still one of the stronger endorsements I can give.
A Poet
There’s a very specific subgenre of movie that lives and dies on how much time you can tolerate spending with a self-sabotaging mess of a person. The great ones make that discomfort feel like the point, while still giving you a rope to hold onto, whether it’s raw talent, an undeniable charisma, or a narrative engine that keeps the spiral from turning monotonous. Simón Mesa Soto’s A Poet wants to sit in that lane, and for stretches it absolutely does. It is dry, awkward, and often sharply observed about ego and obsession. It is also, for me, a tough hang in a way that never quite alchemizes into something I’d want to revisit.
Amanda
Forget what you thought you knew about coming-of-age stories. Carolina Cavalli‘s directorial debut, Amanda, throws the rulebook out the window and crafts a deadpan, charmingly oddball odyssey about a 24-year-old woman who, quite frankly, doesn’t give a damn about “figuring her life out.”
Friendship
Friendship is one of the more unique comedies of 2025—a weird, squirm-inducing, unexpectedly affecting film that feels true to its title in all the worst (and best) ways. It’s another feather in A24’s cap for championing daring, off-kilter voices in comedy. If you’re in tune with Tim Robinson’s specific wavelength, it’s a must-watch.
Blue Moon
Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke reunite for Blue Moon (2025), a compact character study that plays in similar fashion to their collaboration nearly 25 years ago Tape. Set almost entirely inside Sardi’s Bar in 1943, the film follows a single night in the life of lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) on the evening that his ex-creative partner Richard Rodgers’ Oklahoma! premieres to rapturous success nearby. Hawke’s Hart drinks, riffs and ricochets through memories and resentments, bending conversations to his own restless monologue whether the audience is Eddie the bartender (Bobby Cannavale), the much younger Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley), or Rodgers himself (Andrew Scott).
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.
Mile End Kicks
This generation’s closest thing to Almost Famous, and honestly, more coming-of-age movies in the vein of Cameron Crowe or Richard Linklater or even contemporaries like Cooper Raiff or Greta Gerwig, I’m all in for. The screenplay, which started life under the working title Anglophone as the winner of a competition for emerging women screenwriters back in 2016, is based in part on Chandler Levack’s own early adulthood before becoming a professional music critic and filmmaker. That autobiographical grounding should give the film the kind of lived-in specificity that separates the great hangout movies from the good ones.
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.
READ MORE: Movies Like Tony, Movies Like Mile End Kicks
