Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Wild at Heart:
Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde feels more and more definitive as the years pass from when it was released. Warren Beatty ushers in a new generation of movies that are aggressively violent and angry, expelling the moral compass as a bylaw of the film industry. Faye Dunaway co-stars in this 1967 mega-hit.
Read our full review of Bonnie and Clyde
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.
Read our full review of Poor Things
Bound
Bound is one of the great debut movies ever made, introducing the world to directing duo Lana and Lilly Wachowski. The Wachowskis have made a career of the slick and stylish, tying together high-octane action and violence with silky smooth characters.
Marmalade
Marmalade isn’t short on style and set pieces. Keir O’Donnell‘s directorial debut packs enough narrative turns and endless visual flourishes to last an entire career. Unfortunately, the final product feels overstuffed as a result. Joe Keery and Camila Morrone co-star in an occasionally fun, frustratingly complex crime movie.
Read our full review of Marmalade
Blue Velvet
If for nothing else, Blue Velvet serves as a key to unlock the filmography of David Lynch, as if every subsequent movie would take bits and pieces from Blue Velvet and expand them into their own ideas and themes. It’s cryptic, morally ambiguous, and set in the heart of a deep underbelly within small town life. The film is beguiling as hell, and even features many of Lynch’s recurring actors and actresses, led by Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern. The movie isn’t as nearly as cut-and-dry as its noir elements suggest and its contemporaries often were, and it seems that public consensus has only further improved since Blue Velvet‘s release in 1986.
Read our full review of Blue Velvet
Beau Is Afraid
Ari Aster puts his career and positive public perception on the line to create his most singular and divisive piece of filmmaking yet. Although easily his least accessible and structured movie, Beau Is Afraid still manages to work due to Aster‘s distinct eye for jaw-dropping images and scenes and Joaquin Phoenix‘s committed performance.
Read our full review of Beau Is Afraid
Bottle Rocket
There’s a looseness to Bottle Rocket that sets it apart from Wes Anderson’s later films. The plotting is messy, the pacing uneven, and the tone swings between comedy and melancholy without much warning. But it’s precisely that raw, unrefined energy that makes it feel authentic. While the meticulously crafted worlds of Anderson’s later films can sometimes feel like dioramas, Bottle Rocket feels like life — confusing, small-scale, and full of moments that don’t always go anywhere but still matter.
Read our full review of Bottle Rocket
Zola
Zola is an A24 film that fully embraces the chaotic, anything-goes energy of its source material—a viral Twitter thread detailing a Florida road trip gone terribly wrong. Directed by Janicza Bravo, the film blends Scorsese-like brashness with Sean Baker-style realism, offering a flashy, unfiltered look at the underground world of sex work. At times, it’s as glamorous as it is grimy, a fever dream that refuses to look away from its characters’ choices, even when things spiral out of control.
Strange Darling
Strange Darling wears its influences on its sleeve. Director JT Mollner isn’t ashamed to let his inspirations be known as his latest thriller delivers twists and turns around every corner, and is told in a nonlinear fashion that makes it really hard not to think of a few classics. The likes of James Wan and Quentin Tarantino come to mind for these reasons, but Mollner’s Strange Darling doesn’t feel nearly as fresh as Saw or Pulp Fiction felt decades ago.
Read our full review of Strange Darling
The Last Stop in Yuma County
Francis Galluppi’s The Last Stop in Yuma County probably won’t reinvent the wheel, but hopefully it’s a sign that we’ve found a new director that’ll do his best to keep slick, low-budget genre exercises alive. These down-the-middle genre movies (excluding horror) are hard to come by nowadays.