6 Movies Like ¿Quieres ser mi hijo? (2023)

Shot for only 20 days with a budget of a million dollars, The Last Stop in Yuma County is a small film, but it achieves significant feats, thanks in large part to first-time feature director Francis Galluppi’s strong vision. The set is stylish, the characters feel lived in, and the central mystery—will these robbers get away with it?—feels so taut and tense that it’s enough to fuel the entire film’s energy. There’s no need to look for backstories, motivations, or subplots; just waiting to see whether the finger will let go of the gun’s trigger, or if anyone will catch the hostage’s silent plea for help, is absorbing enough.

Genre: Crime, Thriller

Actor: Alex Essoe, Barbara Crampton, Connor Paolo, Faizon Love, Gene Jones, Jim Cummings, Jocelin Donahue, Jon Proudstar, Matt McVay, Michael Abbott Jr., Nicholas Logan, Richard Brake, Robert Broski, Robin Bartlett, Ryan Masson, Sam Huntington, Sierra McCormick

Director: Francis Galluppi

Rating: NR

Yu Katayama lives in a remote village with a garbage disposal business that's slowly turning into a landfill. When his childhood friend Misaki Nakai returns to the village, she encourages Yu to make a better life for himself despite his mother's gambling and the village ostracizing him. The Village is a slow-burning film interested in Yu's struggles as an outcast and in discussing the takeover of small villages for capitalistic industrial motives. The film is shot beautifully with dark, brooding visuals and lingering shots of Yu's quiet intensity throughout the film. Unfortunately, secondary characters are not fully developed outside of their interactions with Yu, causing the film to feel flat outside of pivotal moments. An evocative idea with parts more memorable than the whole.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Arata Furuta, Daiken Okudaira, Hana Kino, Haru Kuroki, Naomi Nishida, Ryusei Yokohama, Sakuma Ryuto, Shidô Nakamura, Tetta Sugimoto, Wataru Ichinose

Director: Michihito Fujii

Rating: R, TV-MA

Set in the capital of Peru, How to Deal with a Heartbreak is a follow-up to the mildly successful romantic comedy How to Get Over a Breakup. The titles are pretty self-explanatory, but where the first film is strictly about romance, the sequel experiments with more tender themes like family and friendship. It features everyday characters meant to seem relatable and endearing, but halfway through watching, one can’t help but wonder why any of this matters. The stakes are so low and the premise so ordinary, it feels like a huge effort to simply care about the movie. Some rom-coms are saved by a funny script or a charming cast, but this has none of that. The most rousing part of the film is when one character (I won’t divulge who) dies, and so Maria Fe is forced to grapple with the heaviness of death. It’s the one moment in the movie that feels real, but sadly it’s tossed aside to make way for more generic fare.

Genre: Comedy

Actor: Ana María Orozco, Carlos Carlín, Christopher Von Uckermann, Gisela Ponce de León, Jason Day, Jely Reategui, Karina Jordán, Norma Martínez, Salvador del Solar

Director: Joanna Lombardi

Rating: R

Unfortunately, it isn't enough to have cartoonishly attractive people do silly things in the name of love for an entire feature film. This premise is undeniably fun at first: the pace is snappy, the locations are pretty, and there are more than a few intentional laughs buried within the film's fast-paced dialogue. But the longer Love Tactics 2 goes on, the more idiotic its characters seem and the more it feels like they don't actually deserve the love they supposedly earned in the previous movie. It greatly underestimates how frustrating it is to watch people fail to communicate over and over again, not out of any goodwill, but out of pure pride and jealousy. Sure, the leads provide plenty of eye candy, but after seeing how little they actually get to work with, watching them becomes an act of secondhand embarrassment.

Genre: Comedy, Romance

Actor: Atakan Çelik, Bora Akkaş, Ceyhun Mengiroğlu, Demet Özdemir, Deniz Baydar, Hande Yılmaz, İpek Tuzcuoğlu, Kerem Atabeyoğlu, Melisa Döngel, Şükrü Özyıldız

Director: Recai Karagöz

Rating: PG-13