Best movies like Barton Fink
What's in his head
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Barton Fink Starring John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, and more. If you liked Barton Fink then you may also like: Pi, 8MM, The Nines, The Woman in the Window, Naked Lunch and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A renowned New York playwright is enticed to California to write for the movies and discovers the hellish truth of Hollywood.
Barton Fink
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8MM
A small, seemingly innocuous plastic reel of film leads surveillance specialist Tom Welles down an increasingly dark and frightening path. With the help of the streetwise Max, he relentlessly follows a bizarre trail of evidence to determine the fate of a complete stranger. As his work turns into obsession, he drifts farther and farther away from his wife, family and simple life as a small-town PI.
The Woman in the Window
An agoraphobic woman living alone in New York begins spying on her new neighbors only to witness a disturbing act of violence.
Naked Lunch
Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill's pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work -- which he doesn't remember writing.
After Hours
An ordinary word processor has the worst night of his life after he agrees to visit a girl in Soho whom he met that evening at a coffee shop.
Altered States
A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from native American shamans, he explores these altered states of consciousness and finds that memory, time, and perhaps reality itself are states of mind.
Being John Malkovich
One day at work, unsuccessful puppeteer Craig finds a portal into the head of actor John Malkovich. The portal soon becomes a passion for anybody who enters its mad and controlling world of overtaking another human body.
The Big Lebowski
Jeffrey 'The Dude' Lebowski, a Los Angeles slacker who only wants to bowl and drink White Russians, is mistaken for another Jeffrey Lebowski, a wheelchair-bound millionaire, and finds himself dragged into a strange series of events involving nihilists, adult film producers, ferrets, errant toes, and large sums of money.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
A fading actor best known for his portrayal of a popular superhero attempts to mount a comeback by appearing in a Broadway play. As opening night approaches, his attempts to become more altruistic, rebuild his career, and reconnect with friends and family prove more difficult than expected.
Black Swan
A journey through the psyche of a young ballerina whose starring role as the duplicitous swan queen turns out to be a part for which she becomes frighteningly perfect.
Blood Simple
The owner of a seedy small-town Texas bar discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife. A chaotic chain of misunderstandings, lies and mischief ensues after he devises a plot to have them murdered.
Coffee and Cigarettes
Coffee And Cigarettes is a collection of eleven films from cult director Jim Jarmusch. Each film hosts star studded cast of extremely unique individuals who all share the common activities of conversing while drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
Memento
Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.
Mulholland Drive
Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.
Inception
Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
Shutter Island
World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.
The Truman Show
Truman Burbank is the star of The Truman Show, a 24-hour-a-day reality TV show that broadcasts every aspect of his life without his knowledge. His entire life has been an unending soap opera for consumption by the rest of the world. And everyone he knows, including his wife and his best friend, is really an actor, paid to be part of his life.
Sunset Boulevard
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
Adaptation.
Nicolas Cage is Charlie Kaufman, a confused L.A. screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual frustration, self-loathing, and by the screenwriting ambitions of his freeloading twin brother Donald. While struggling to adapt "The Orchid Thief," by Susan Orlean, Kaufman's life spins from pathetic to bizarre. The lives of Kaufman, Orlean's book, become strangely intertwined as each one's search for passion collides with the others'.
American Psycho
A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.
Synecdoche, New York
A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
The Invitation
Will and his new girlfriend Kira are invited to a dinner with old friends at the house of Will’s ex Eden and her new partner David. Although the evening appears to be relaxed, Will soon gets a creeping suspicion that their charming host David is up to something.
Friend of the World
After a catastrophic global war, a young filmmaker awakens in the carnage and seeks refuge in the only other survivor: an eccentric, ideologically opposed figure of the United States military. Together, they brave the toxic landscape in search of safety... and answers.
Hollywood Boulevard
A Midwestern ingenue moves to Hollywood and rivals a B-movie queen in low-budget quickies.
Cul-de-sac
A wounded criminal and his dying partner take refuge at an old beachfront fortress. The owner of the fortress and his young wife, initially unwilling hosts, quickly experience their relationship with the criminal shift in a humorous and bizarre fashion.
Hurlyburly
Hollywood movers and shakers dissect their own personal lives when everything seems to clash together.
Dead Again
In 1949, composer Roman Strauss is executed for the murder of his wife. In 1990s Los Angeles, a detective comes across a mute amnesiac woman who is somehow linked to the Strauss murder.
The Player
A Hollywood studio executive is being sent death threats by a writer whose script he rejected - but which one?
The Man Who Wasn't There
A tale of murder, crime and punishment set in the summer of 1949. Ed Crane, a barber in a small California town, is dissatisfied with his life, but his wife Doris' infidelity and a mysterious opportunity presents him with a chance to change it.
The Producers
Broadway producer, Max Bialystock and his accountant, Leo Bloom plan to make money by charming little old ladies to invest in a production many times over what it will actually cost, and then put on a sure-fire flop, so nobody will ask for their money back – and what can be a more certain flop than a tasteless musical celebrating Hitler.
The Hudsucker Proxy
A naive business graduate is installed as president of a manufacturing company as part of a stock scam.
Inside Llewyn Davis
In Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, gifted but volatile folk musician Llewyn Davis struggles with money, relationships, and his uncertain future.
Swimming with Sharks
Guy is a young film executive who's willing to do whatever it takes to make it in Hollywood. He begins working for famed producer Buddy Ackerman, a domineering, manipulative, coldhearted boss. When Guy also finds out that his cynical girlfriend, Dawn, has been using sex as a career move, he reaches his limit. Guy decides to exact revenge on Buddy by kidnapping him and subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment.
Hi, Mom!
Vietnam vet Jon Rubin returns to New York and rents a rundown flat in Greenwich Village. It is in this flat that he begins to film, 'Peeping Tom' style, the people in the apartment across the street. His obsession with making films leads him to fall in with a radical 'Black Power' group, which in turn leads him to carry out a bizarre act of urban terrorism.
Hollywood Ending
Woody Allen stars as Val Waxman, a two-time Oscar winner turned washed-up, neurotic director in desperate need of a comeback. When it comes, Waxman finds himself backed into a corner: Work for his ex-wife Ellie or forfeit his last shot. Is Val blinded by love when he opts for the reconnect? Is love blind when it comes to Ellie's staunch support? Literally and figuratively, the proof is the picture.
Living in Oblivion
Nick is the director of a low-budget indie film. He tries to keep everything together as his production is plagued with an insecure actress, a megalomaniac star, a pretentious, beret-wearing director of photography, and lousy catering.
Mistress
A comedy about a screenwriter (Wuhl) whose old movie script is read by a producer (Landau) and the search for financial backers begins. But it seems that each money source (Aiello, DeNiro, Wallach) has his own mistress that he wants put into the film. Gradually, the screenwriter is forced to make changes to his script to accommodate these backers until he finally sees no semblance of his original ideas in the writing.
Shadow of the Vampire
Director F.W. Murnau makes a Faustian pact with a vampire to get him to star in his 1922 film "Nosferatu."
Seven Psychopaths
A struggling screenwriter inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster's beloved Shih Tzu.
Desire and Hell at Sunset Motel
Right after Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California, in 1955, a toy salesman in town for a convention brings his wife with him so they can both go to Disneyland. They stay at a rundown place called the Sunset Motel nearby. Soon the wife is having an affair with a man staying at the motel. The husband hires a psychotic criminal to spy on them, the wife and her lover plan to murder the husband, and the voyeuristic motel manager is spying on everybody.
Strangers Kiss
To help his actress girlfriend regain her confidence a Hollywood bigshot bankrolls a small budget film being made by a first-time producer and director pair. Despite the hand-to-mouth way it has to be made the film starts to come good, as does the off-set relationship between the actress and her unknown male lead.
It's Such a Beautiful Day
Bill struggles to put together his shattered psyche, in this feature film version of Don Hertzfeldt's animated short film trilogy.
Stand-Ins
Six women who came to Hollywood with the dream of becoming famous find themselves working as stand-ins for the glamorous stars of the late 1930s. Gathering for a birthday celebration at their local watering hole, they introduce a new member to the group – instigating a turn of events that will change their lives forever.
Pi
A mathematical genius discovers a link between numbers and reality, and thus believes he can predict the future.