4 Movies Like The Black Phone (2021)

A razor-sharp script and beautiful scenery make this one of the best road movies in recent memory. When their cynical best friend dies, Seph and Alex embark on a journey to scatter his ashes over four spots he wants to go back to. Tupperware of ashes in the glove-box, they start their big adventure. Burn Burn Burn, an expression their friend quotes from Kerouac, is a chance for the two friends to escape their hectic city life and to discover themselves. It’s a beautiful movie.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Alice Lowe, Alison Steadman, Chloe Pirrie, Eleanor Matsuura, Hannah Arterton, Jack Farthing, Jane Asher, Joe Dempsie, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Kyle Lima, Laura Carmichael, Matthew Kelly, Melanie Walters, Nigel Planer, Owen Findlay, Sally Phillips, Susan Wokoma

Director: Chanya Button

Rating: N/A

Like Someone in Love is a Japanese drama about identity and finding comfort. It tells the story of a young woman, Akiko, who leads two different lives, one she shares with her family and another which few know about. The movie opens in a restaurant where Akiko is hanging out with her friend, just as a man is trying to get her to leave, insisting that there is a really important “customer” she has to meet. Long taxi rides and Tokyo neon lights will accompany you as the story unfolds. One of the movie’s most evocative sequences involves Akiko seated in the backseat of a cab, listening to her grandmother's voicemails. Using very little dialogue, Like Someone in Love is a simple movie that captures loneliness, regret, and sorrow brilliantly as it depicts a woman and a man who are only trying to give and receive comfort from each other.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Denden, Koichi Ohori, Reiko Mori, Rin Takanashi, Ryō Kase, Seina Kasugai, Tadashi Okuno, Tomoaki Tatsumi

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

This movie is different from a Netflix release about the same events. Actually, it's different from any movie you've probably seen before. Depicting the terrorist attack that took 77 lives in 2011 in an island near Oslo, Norway, it's made to make you feel as if you were part of the attack. It's shot to resemble one take, and the time of the movie is the time it took the attack to unfold (so you're witnessing it in real-time). While closely based on the accounts of two survivors, it follows a fictional character called Kaja who looks for her sister during the attacks. Utøya: July 22 pushes the limits of what you can watch in a movie but serves as a terrifying testament to the atrocity of a terrorist attack of such nature.

Genre: Drama, History

Actor: Ada Eide, Aleksander Holmen, Andrea Berntzen, Brede Fristad, Daniel Sang Tran, Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne, Elli Rhiannon Müller Osbourne, Ingeborg Enes, Jenny Svennevig, Karoline Petronella Ulfsdatter Schau, Mariann Gjerdsbakk, Solveig Koløen Birkeland, Torkel D. Soldal, Yngve Berven

Director: Erik Poppe

Rating: Not Rated