Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Tony:
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.
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.
BlackBerry
Zipping through the years of the rise and fall of the first texting cellphone, the aptly-titled BlackBerry serves as a fantastic tale of corporate greed and those incapable of dealing with the success and fame that comes with building new technology. Incredible acting and direction contributes to one of 2023’s best movies.
We Live in Time
A movie like We Live in Time really shouldn’t work. The overly sentimental cancer drama is a well-trodden path, with its fair share of genuinely touching entries but even more bogged down by predictability and melodrama. We Live in Time doesn’t completely avoid these familiar pitfalls, as it leans into some of the same cheesy tropes that often plague this subgenre.
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.
Didi
Didi is the debut film from writer/director Sean Wang, who is telling an autobiographical story of growing up Asian in the late 2000s. Izaac Wang plays the impressionable 13-year-old stand-in of the director, who navigates learning to flirt, skate, and live in a three-generation household of women.
The Drama
Kristoffer Borgli has quickly become one of the great conceivers of hooks for films. A single-sentence elevator pitch for each of his releases is enough to generate buzz and attract high-profile talent, from everyone in the world seeing Nicholas Cage’s character in their dreams on the same night in Borgli’s delirious Dream Scenario, to his latest Zendaya and Robert Pattinson-led The Drama, about a seemingly perfect couple’s life being uprooted mere days before their wedding because of an innocent enough game of “What’s the Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done?”
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
There are four or five moments in Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie where my brain basically short-circuited, not because the movie is confusing, but because it feels borderline impossible that it exists at this scale with this kind of scrappy, “how did they pull that off?” energy. Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol have always had a particular talent for turning cringe into momentum and turning momentum into a full-on set piece. Here, they do it on a bigger canvas without sanding down what made Nirvanna the Band the Show special in the first place.
Read our full review of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
Nonnas
Nonnas is a reminder that charm, good casting, and a touch of sincerity can elevate a standard script into something enjoyable, if not exactly essential. It’s not destined for rewatchability or critical acclaim, but for a streaming comedy in 2025, that’s probably enough.
READ MORE: Movies Like Mile End Kicks, Movies Like Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
