335 Movies Like Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) (Page 6)

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The sooner you adjust your expectations for Nomad—and realize that this isn't a travel documentary but Werner Herzog's own wonderfully offbeat way of remembering his dear friend—the better. Any uneven moments in this film's construction are smoothed over by the sheer authenticity of what Herzog puts on screen, from his own distinctive narration, to gorgeous excerpts from Bruce Chatwin's writings, to the sounds and images that make up the strange worlds that both men were fascinated in. No mysteries are solved here, but just being closer to the strange and surreal becomes a way for Herzog to come to terms with the strangest and most surreal of life's realities: death.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Bruce Chatwin, Elizabeth Chatwin, Karin Eberhard, Marcus Wheeler, Michael Liddle Pula, Nicholas Shakespeare, Petronella Vaarzon-Morel, Stefan Glowacz, Werner Herzog

Director: Werner Herzog

Rating: PG

Emily (Evanna Lynch), a strange, unique girl does not receive the long awaited letter from her father on her birthday. Sick of worrying, she decides to break away from home to visit him in the psychiatric institution where he stays. The plan requires the help of Arden (George Webster), a boy from school who is ready to drop everything and accompany her on a journey that quickly becomes as adventurous as it is heartfelt. In this film, director Simon Fitzmaurice take will take you on a trip through the beautiful Irish landscape to find nothing else but simple and true love.

Genre: Drama, Romance

Actor: Ali White, Ally Ni Chiarain, Barry McGovern, Catherine Walsh, Cathy Belton, Declan Conlon, Deirdre Mullins, Dónall Ó Héalai, Evanna Lynch, George Webster, John Travers, Martin McCann, Meghan Jones, Michael Hough, Michael Smiley, Millie Donnelly, Stella McCusker

Director: Simon Fitzmaurice

Rating: Not Rated

Alexander Sokurov might best be known for Russian Ark, his grand single-take jaw-dropper featuring over 2,000 actors. In a way, Mother and Son is the exact opposite, featuring only two, and instead of traversing hundreds of years of history, it wades through a singular moment in time. This intimate and hypnotic piece of slow cinema trails a son taking care of his dying mother out in the beautiful countryside.

Sokurov’s frames mirror impressionist paintings, while the mix of slow movement and sparse dialogue creates heartbreaking poetry. So many films casually employ death like a light-switch - on and off and out of mind. Sokurov instead confronts it as a corrosive force that bends time to its will and pulls both the dying and the grieving into its grasp.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Aleksei Ananishnov

Director: Aleksandr Sokurov

While based on the Mononoke series, which is in turn, a spin-off of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, it might seem that Mononoke The Movie: The Phantom in the Rain would require some background reading for people new to the story. Thankfully, there’s no need to do homework for this beautifully designed masterpiece, as the Medicine Seller takes on a new case with every installment. 2024’s Phantom in the Rain (also known as Paper Umbrella) unfolds its world with ease, with doors opening and closing to a select few for a high-pressure, hierarchical imperial household. Immediately, the visuals are stunning, with traditional ukiyo ink and paper mixed with modern kaleidoscopic fill and movement, but even without the gorgeous art, the first Mononoke movie works with its eerie horror, intense sound design, and a compelling mystery driven by court intrigue and vengeful spirits.

Genre: Animation, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery

Actor: Aoi Yuki, Haruka Tomatsu, Hiroshi Kamiya, Jun Fukuyama, Kana Hanazawa, Kenjiro Tsuda, Mami Koyama, Miyu Irino, Tomoyo Kurosawa, Yoko Hikasa, Yuhko Kaida, Yukana, Yuki Kaji

Director: Kenji Nakamura

There is so much simmering under the surface of Monica. When her mother Eugenia (Patricia Clarkson) falls gravely ill, the titular character (played by Trace Lysette) returns home for the first time since being turned out as a youngster for her transgender identity. But whatever illness Eugenia has has addled her brain, and she seemingly doesn’t suspect that the woman who has come to help care for her is the daughter she rejected all those years ago. 

Co-writer and director Andrea Pallaoro puts an understated spin on what could be an explosive scenario by letting much go unspoken, frequently framing Lysette’s face in long and wordless static shots. If the filmmaking edges towards being a little too patient at times, the naturally engaging Lysette keeps a firm hold of our attention with a vulnerable performance that expresses much without words. These infrequent wobbles aside, Monica’s restraint is to its credit: by not laying the drama on thick, all sorts of poignant nuances are allowed to bubble up, like the paradoxical difficulties and extraordinary intimacy that come with physically caring for a loved one. In choosing not to give Eugenia and Monica a direct confrontation or moment of revelation, too, the movie opens up to another beautiful possibility: acceptance, finally.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Adriana Barraza, Bryant Bentley, Emily Browning, Jean Zarzour, Joshua Close, Patricia Clarkson, Trace Lysette, Vladimir Perez

Director: Andrea Pallaoro

South African director John Trengove follows-up his debut The Wound with another take on masculinity, this time set in the States. Manodrome stars Jesse Eisenberg and Adrien Brody as a newbie and a veteran in a support group for men who have been emasculated by women and feminism. That's right, this is a film about incel culture, but one you haven't seen before. In tandem with Taxi Driver, Fight Club, or Joker, Manodrome represents a new era for the incel movie, as it confronts all the terror and aggression feeding into the community head on. Ralphie (Eisenberg) insists that his girlfriend Sal (Odessa Young) keeps their unplanned baby and deep down the rabbit hole he goes. Mental health struggles that have no outlet, worries, disappointment, alienation: all these facets of Ralphie's character come to the fore and bring him to the Manodrome clan, where Dad Dan (Brody) promises two miracles—absolution and acceptance—in exchange for celibacy. Trengove's sophomore feature is a blood-curdling psychological thriller that is not afraid to go to extremes (content warning!) to show that incels are not, in fact, a dorky online minority of youngsters, but a real wound in the body of our patriarchal world.

Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Actor: Adam Wade McLaughlin, Adrien Brody, Ben Smith-Petersen, Brian Anthony Wilson, Caleb Eberhardt, Ethan Suplee, Evan Jonigkeit, Garrett Richmond, Jesse Eisenberg, Jonah Wharton, Lamar Johnson, Matthew Lamb, Odessa Young, Philip Ettinger, Riley Keough, Sallieu Sesay, Zia Anger

Director: John Trengove

Rating: R

As one of the few animated Filipino films ever made, there’s a question as to why The Missing should use the animation in the first place. The animation here is much more rough than the ones from other countries, and while it’s a bit more pricey, the filmmakers could have filmed this in live action with practical SFX and CGI. But there’s a big reason why it was animated anyway– It’s because of the story. It’s not just because the protagonist Eric is an animator– it’s because animation, to that specific lead, was the way through which he was able to form a life after trauma, becoming the livelihood that allowed him to move out of his childhood home, and far far away from the trauma he faced. Writer-director Carl Joseph Papa also takes advantage of the medium by creating designs that match Eric’s current state of mind– regular, day-to-day life is rotoscoped, while the blank portions of his memory are traditionally drawn in the style Eric would have had during that age. It’s an unusual approach, but whether or not the story was adjusted to the budget, Iti Mapukpukaw is undeniably a touching and inventive drama that depicts the complexities of grief.

Genre: Animation, Drama, Science Fiction

Actor: Carlo Aquino, Christela Marquez, Dan Villegas, Dolly de Leon, Gio Gahol, Jeremy F. Mendoza

Director: Carl Joseph E. Papa

There's a remarkable harshness to every moment of I Have Electric Dreams, even if it doesn't seem like much is happening. Beautiful textures in its cinematography and the dreamlike movement of its editing can't mask the pain that protagonist Eva feels, as she drifts through the ruin of her own family in search of any shred of comfort or anything she can still call her own. There's tension in every interaction she has, as this messy divorce has torn down any divide between parent and child—revealing Eva to be both more mature and more naive than she realizes, and revealing her parents as still stuck in their own insecurities. It's frequently difficult viewing that gets surprisingly graphic, but the film's ear for character is undeniable.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Daniela Marín Navarro, José Pablo Segreda Johanning, Mayté Ortega, Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez, Vivian Rodríguez Barquero

Director: Valentina Maurel

Given the title, it isn’t surprising that Falling in Love Like in Movies would be a metanarrative with the main romance mirroring the filmmaking and the filmmaking reflecting the main romance. It’s a familiar approach, and at first, Falling seems to follow the inevitable ending where the couple falls in love, but right on time, in around Sequence Four, writer-director Yandy Laurens chooses a more honest, less chosen path– a path that plenty of previous romance films hasn’t examined– that still falls within the eight sequence screenplay structure Bagus talks about. While Bagus is pitching his film to Hana, and to his producer, Jatuh Cinta Seperti di Film-Film pitches a new way of thinking about love, grief, and of course, filmmaking.

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Actor: Abdurrahman Arif, Alex Abbad, Deni Kumis, Dion Wiyoko, Ernest Prakasa, Julie Estelle, Nirina Zubir, Ringgo Agus Rahman, Sheila Dara Aisha

Director: Yandy Laurens

, 2022

Dhuin is evidently influenced by the Iranian filmmaker whose work its characters discuss: Abbas Kiarostami. Featuring non-professional actors and full of long observational takes that center everyday conversations in the life of an aspiring actor in a small Northern Indian city, it’s guided by the same social realist impulses that shaped Kiarostami’s work. What’s more, it even ends on an explicit reference to Close-Up. 

But what elevates Dhuin above homage is the acute internal struggle it depicts. Set during COVID lockdown, the film follows Pankaj (Abhinav Jha) as he works on his acting in a bedroom adorned with images of Hollywood stars, chafing against the much less glamorous reality of the home he shares with his financially struggling parents. He's on the cusp of having enough money to fulfill his dream and move to Mumbai (where he hopes to advance his career), but several meetings with puffed-up filmmakers who are visiting from Mumbai give Pankaj a new perspective on the world he’s desperate to join. A testament to the torment of difficult choices, Dhuin also gently offers an alternative to the trope of abandoning home for the big city, suggesting that there might be greater beauty in the reality of where you’ve always been than the places you dream of.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Abhinav Jha, Prashant Rana

Director: Achal Mishra

Legendary Talking Heads frontman David Byrne returns with this enigmatic stage show, and with Spike Lee in tow, the film reaches for the heights of the iconic concert doc Stop Making Sense. For those unfamiliar, Stop Making Sense directed by Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) captured the Talking Heads’ invigorating live show in their early eighties prime, and is often considered one of the best concert films of all time.

Now nearly forty years later Byrne attempts a resurrection of that spirit or a form of it given his former bandmates notably absent from the project. His propellant energy is on full display as he goes through the ‘Heads catalog with a backing band that dances in intricately choreographed sequences around him. Most notable, however, is the sparseness of the stage production which brings to mind a dirge-like atmosphere. Byrne’s righteous thrashings against Reagan’s America carry renewed weight in the despondency of the Trump-era. So despite his attempts at optimism, aching futility runs through the heart of the show; most pointed when Byrne sings the famous lines from in Once In A Lifetime: “Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.”

Genre: Documentary, Drama, Music

Actor: Angie Swan, Bobby Wooten Iii, David Byrne, Jacqueline Acevedo, Mauro Refosco, Tendayi Kuumba

Director: Spike Lee

On one level, Alcarràs is a story about land, about how inextricable it is to livelihood, about how ownership of it has bred conflict since time immemorial. Director Carla Simón emphasizes this even more by hiring actual Catalan farmers as the leads. We’re not just watching the Solés sing and fight for their land, but Alcarràs natives who are also very much at risk of losing what’s theirs in real life. The acting comes off as natural because it is. But on another level, Alcarràs is also a story about family, in particular about how family ties run so deep, they’re bound to coil around each other under the ground they’re rooted in. Like a family portrait come to life, Alcarràs shows us the beauty and the peril of loving your family and the legacy they leave behind as much as the Solés do.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Ainet Jounou, Berta Pipó, Jordi Pujol Dolcet, Josep Abad, Xenia Roset

Director: Carla Simón

Somewhere near the border between Russia and Ukraine lies a shelter for kids coming from unstable homes. Their parents, either alcoholics or abusers, have nine months to prove that they’re fit to look after their children; otherwise, the kids are sent straight to the orphanage, with no chance of a goodbye. A House Made of Splinters is a documentary that quietly and closely follows the shelter’s occupants amid growing joys and pains, not to mention the ever-present danger of war.

Perhaps one of the most striking things about A House Made of Splinters is how attuned it is to the kids. It serves as a reminder of their immense sensitivity and observational skills (more than once, you’ll hear a child assess their home situation in the calmest of manners), as well as their clever ingenuity (there’s a lot of playing going on despite everything, which is heartwarming to watch.

Genre: Documentary, Drama

Director: Simon Lereng Wilmont

Given a budget from Netflix to make a documentary on Korean film, some would have chosen instead to make one for big Korean filmmaking personalities like Academy Award winner Bong Joon-ho, who is featured here. However, director Lee Hyuk-rae instead creates Yellow Door, a love letter to the ‘90s film club that inspired a generation. The warm way each member tries to remember the club made decades ago, and the handy, almost cheeky, animations makes it feel like we’re there in the club with them, just listening to friends reminisce about the way they obsessed about film, even if it wasn’t the major they were studying in. It’s so nostalgic and sentimental, and in shifting its focus, it celebrates the lovely experience of finding a community of like-minded people that’s just obsessed with film as you are.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Ahn Nae-sang, Bong Joon-ho, Choi Jong-tae, Ju Sung-chul, Kim Hong-joon, Kim Hye-ja, Kim Hyung-oak, Lee Hyuk-rae, Woo Hyeon

Director: Lee Hyuk-rae

Rating: PG-13

With truffle being so expensive, you would think that the world would eventually figure out how to get this tasty fungi in a more efficient way. Yet, the finicky nature of truffle eludes scientific research, improved cultivation, and strategic supply logistics, only allowing access to a select group of senior men and their very good dogs. The Truffle Hunters depicts the precariousness of this industry, how the entire endeavor can be easily lost to time, climate, and secrecy, but through delving into their lives, through unobstrusively capturing their day-to-day lives in gorgeous, meticulously framed shots that quietly celebrates their charming personalities, The Truffle Hunters becomes a small glimpse into a life that’s lost to urban living, a life that, perhaps, might be worth returning to.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Angelo Gagliardi, Aurelio Conterno, Carlo Gonella, Maria Cicciù, Sergio Cauda

Director: Gregory Kershaw, Michael Dweck

Rating: PG-13