5 Movies Like Jennifer's Body (2009)

1. Never Look Away, 2018

It's impossible to describe this incredible movie as one thing or the other. It's an epic three-hour saga that takes you through the Nazi era, the communist era, the rise of capitalism, and the East and West German divide. But more than its historic value, it's a coming-of-age story, one that is based on the experiences of famed German artist Gerhard Richter. It's also a romance, following his experiences finding love and being hit with loss (in no particular order). If you liked the director's other work, the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others, you're sure to love this too.

Genre: Drama, History, Romance, Thriller

Actor: Andreas Nickl, Anton Rubtsov, Bastian Trost, Ben Becker, Cai Cohrs, Chris Theisinger, David Schütter, Evgeniy Sidikhin, Florian Bartholomäi, Franz Pätzold, Hannes Hellmann, Hanno Koffler, Hans-Uwe Bauer, Hinnerk Schönemann, Ina Weisse, Jörg Schüttauf, Jacob Matschenz, Jeanette Hain, Johanna Gastdorf, Johannes Allmayer, Jonas Dassler, Jorg Schuttauf, Lars Eidinger, Luc Feit, Lutz Blochberger, Manfred Möck, Mark Zak, Martin Bruchman, Martin Bruchmann, Michaela Caspar, Oliver Masucci, Paula Beer, Pit Bukowski, Rainer Bock, Rainer Reiners, Saskia Rosendahl, Sebastian Koch, Stefan Mehren, Tom Schilling, Ulrike C. Tscharre

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Rating: R

2. Adam, 2009

A simple and sweet movie about love, trust, and space. Adam is a 30-something year old with Aspergers syndrome, this film is about how he navigates his way through loneliness and love and all things in between. It is both humorous and slightly heart-breaking, and will leave you feeling that way as well. Maybe the reason we all belong together is that we don't, and this movie is a beautiful examination of that.

Genre: Drama, Romance

Actor: Adam LeFevre, Amy Irving, Andrew Patrick Ralston, Bill Dawes, Frankie Faison, Haviland Morris, Hugh Dancy, Hunter Reid, Jeff Hiller, John Rothman, Karina Arroyave, Luka Kain, Maddie Corman, Mark Doherty, Mark Linn-Baker, Mike Hodge, Peter Gallagher, Rose Byrne, Steffany Huckaby, Susan Porro, Terry Walters, Tyler Poelle, Ursula Abbott

Director: Max Mayer

Rating: PG-13

3. The Watermelon Woman, 1996

This drama was the first feature written and directed by an out Black lesbian, Cheryl Dunye, and it is an absolute joy: a cheeky faux-documentary that ingeniously blends lesbian dating life with a historical dive into Black actors in 30s Hollywood.

Dunye plays Cheryl, a self-effacing version of herself, an aspiring director working at a video store who begins to research an actress known as the Watermelon Woman for a documentary. The more Cheryl dives into her research, the more she sees parallels between her subject and her own relationship.

As incisive as it is funny, The Watermelon Woman shares some common ground with other major indie debuts of the era like Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It and funnily enough Kevin Smith’s Clerks, but Dunye’s style is wholly her own and a dazzling treat to experience.

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Actor: Brian Freeman, Camille Paglia, Cheryl Clarke, Cheryl Dunye, David Rakoff, Guinevere Turner, Irene Dunye, Lisa Marie Bronson, Sarah Schulman

Director: Cheryl Dunye

4. Lilya 4-ever, 2002

Not for the faint of heart, this Russian-language Swedish film doesn't actually display anything graphic on screen, but it still makes for a difficult and distressing viewing experience. Many films similar in spirit and subject matter have been released in the decades since Lilya 4-ever's own take on human trafficking and child sexual exploitation, which might make it less effective for new viewers. But its tone is still unique enough to set it apart—all thumping electronic/rock music blocking out the pain, and naturalistic direction that allows the film's young stars to be as authentically awkward and naively hopeful as possible.

Genre: Crime, Drama

Actor: Aleksandr Okunev, Artyom Bogucharsky, Bo Christer Hjelte, Elina Benenson, Jeff Norman, Johan Åkerblom, Lyubov Agapova, Madis Kalmet, Nikolai Bentsler, Oksana Akinshina, Oleg Rogatchov, Pavel Ponomaryov, Sten Erici, Tomasz Neuman, Tõnu Kark

Director: Lukas Moodysson

5. Bama Rush, 2023

If you’ve ever been puzzled by “Greek life”, this documentary will go some way to demystifying that somewhat baffling phenomenon of American college culture. Bama Rush follows four hopefuls as they “rush” the University of Alabama’s sororities, a TikTok-viral weeklong recruitment process so cutthroat some candidates spend months preparing for it. The documentary digs deep into why these young women put so much time, energy, and money into joining what the film hints is a largely unforgiving and reductive element of campus life. What it finds is pretty affecting: they’re really just looking for acceptance and belonging.

Threaded throughout are director Rachel Fleit’s reflections on her own history with those motivations, having grown up with alopecia. Though it does illustrate that rushing isn’t so dissimilar from other quests for acceptance, this parallel is sometimes clunkily drawn — and can seem somewhat self-indulgent in places, given the documentary’s comparatively surface-level exploration of more systemic issues. A late development shifts Bama Rush into an even deeper self-reflexive mode, as the film itself becomes a contentious issue in the process it’s documenting. Despite its flaws, turns like this — and its participants’ extraordinary candor — help make Bama Rush an often illuminating look into an opaque world.

Genre: Documentary, Drama

Director: Rachel Fleit