Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like The Only Living Pickpocket in New York:
The Card Counter
Paul Schrader has often explored the psychology of men trapped by their pasts, from Taxi Driver to Light Sleeper, and The Card Counter feels like a natural extension of that lineage. It’s a film that lingers—methodical, unrelenting, and quietly devastating. Perhaps not his flashiest work, but unquestionably one of his most powerful late-career efforts.
Light Sleeper
Now later in life, there’s clearly a resemblance in the characters of Taxi Driver and Light Sleeper that Paul Schrader identifies with. It could be the need to redefine oneself with age, or examine the decisions made at a younger stage of life. Willem Dafoe stars as a guilt-riddled, lonely man journaling his thoughts away in privacy.
Read our full review of Light Sleeper
Highest 2 Lowest
Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, his reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, proves how easily one of cinema’s greatest stories can be adapted to the modern era. The update doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but with Lee behind the camera and Denzel Washington in the lead, it’s both stylish and engrossing – one of the stronger Spike Lee movies of the century and one of the best Apple TV+ originals to date.
The Mastermind
Kelly Reichardt continues to be one of the most observant American filmmakers, and The Mastermind is a perfect fit for her patient, detail-driven gaze. Where Showing Up tracked an artist circling her own potential and Night Moves watched activists fumble toward consequence, this new film follows another of her quietly blinkered strivers. Josh O’Connor plays James Blaine “JB” Mooney, a small-town amateur who has mapped out an “easy” art-gallery heist, convinced meticulous lists can substitute for competence. He forgets the one variable he cannot control, the people he brings along, and the plan collapses in slow motion as his frequent gallery visits and affection for art make him an obvious suspect.
Jay Kelly
Jay Kelly is Noah Baumbach at his most openly sentimental, a movie about a movie star in late middle age looking back at the breaks that made him and the choices that cost him. For a filmmaker whose sweetness usually rides under acid, this is a different rhythm. The big emotional swells are front and center, sometimes moving, sometimes blunt, almost always unusual for Baumbach.
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.
Ocean’s Eleven
Ocean’s Eleven might just be the coolest heist movie ever made. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and featuring one of the most effortlessly charismatic ensembles in film history—George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Andy Garcia—it’s a masterclass in smooth, stylish entertainment. Decades later, it remains endlessly rewatchable, a perfect blend of clever plotting, sharp dialogue, and pure Hollywood star power.
The Secret Agent
The Secret Agent is not tidy. It leaves loose ends. It makes choices that are more interested in texture than clarity. But the payoff is a crime epic that feels rare in the current landscape, both serious and fun, both angry and seductive, both propulsive and reflective. Kleber Mendonça Filho turns political rot into genre electricity, and Wagner Moura anchors it with one of the best leading roles this decade. It is one of the most engaging films I have seen in years, the kind of thriller that gives you images you will carry around long after it’s over.
Roofman
Roofman is the kind of “they don’t make them like this anymore” adult caper that suits Channing Tatum better than almost anything. He dials down the movie-star wattage and leans into hangdog charm as Jeffrey Manchester, a serial McDonald’s robber who perfects the art of dropping through rooftops, then graduates to a more audacious escape-and-hide scheme after he is finally caught. Derek Cianfrance treats the true story with a straight face and a curious heart, finding room for procedure, romance, and the melancholy of a guy who is always one step from being found out.
Ballad of a Small Player
Edward Berger trades battlefield thunder and papal intrigue for the neon haze of Macau in Ballad of a Small Player, and the downsizing mostly helps. Where All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave felt airless in their importance, this Netflix noir drifts on smaller, grubbier currents. Colin Farrell plays the magnificently named Lord Doyle, a con man hiding in five-star purgatory, burning through stolen money while chasing baccarat streaks that never come. He wears “lucky” gloves, talks to himself like a man trying to will fortune into existence, and keeps sinking. Farrell leans into the hangdog glamour of a loser who still orders champagne. It is one of his better sad-cad turns.
READ MORE: Best John Turturro Movies, 10 Movies Like Roofman
