Best movies like What Maisie Knew

Zorns Lemma is a 1970 American structuralist film by Hollis Frampton. It is named after Zorn's lemma (also known as the Kuratowski–Zorn lemma), a proposition of set theory formulated by mathematician Max Zorn in 1935. Zorns Lemma is prefaced with a reading from an early grammar textbook. The remainder of the film, largely silent, shows the viewer an evolving 24-part "alphabet" (where i & j and u & v are interchanged) which is cycled through, replaced and expanded upon. The film's conclusion shows a man, woman and dog walking through snow as several voices read passages from On Light, or the Ingression of Forms by Robert Grosseteste.

In the twilight of her 20s, Raf works two jobs and spends her free time playing boardgames with her boyfriend’s roommates. Privately, she fantasizes of a life of performance and dance clubs. Over the course of several charged encounters, she becomes friends with a charismatic and wealthy woman named Tal. Raf becomes infatuated with Tal’s take-no-prisoners lifestyle. With Tal as her guide, Raf begins to see a new vision of herself, until a weekend at Tal’s country home reveals the true power balance between them.

A blending of documentary and experimental narrative strategies, combining stunning 16mm landscape cinematography with a bold, lyrical voice-over to share two San Francisco stories: the history of the Golden Gate Bridge as “suicide landmark,” and the story of a butch dyke in San Francisco searching for love and self-discovery. The Joy of Life is a film about landscapes, both physical and emotional.

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

An eight-hour contemplative epic, entirely starring sheep.

Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.

Owen, a small time bookie, decides to open an insurance business as it involves lesser risk. His first client is Colonel Youngblood who insures his daughter, Marilyn, against marriage.

Experimental film consisting of a single static shot of the Empire State Building from early evening until nearly 3 am the next day.

An average kind of guy who has a slight problem with gambling goes to the track, and mystically, it seems as though he can't lose, no matter how he bets; and he has an incredible day.

An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.

A young woman in Manhattan lives in a world where the past, present and future mix.

Separation concerns the inner life of a woman during a period of breakdown – marital, and possibly mental. Her past and (possible?) future are revealed through a fragmented but brilliantly achieved and often humorous narrative, in which dreams and desires are as real as the ‘swinging’ London (complete with Procul Harum music and Mark Boyle light show) of the film’s setting.

Catherine, a nun with a unique form of narcolepsy, attempts to lose herself in the worlds of religion, adolescent fantasy, and finally masochistic devotion to a man. Her husband, a plastic surgeon, has evolved from a yeti-like creature to accommodate her masochism with increasingly extreme and bizarre rituals. With an experimental and ground-breaking format, The Three Trials incorporates surreal narrative, music video, and abstract imagery. The viewer is left to interpret what is real, what is dream, and what is false narrative in this feverish, pitch-black comedy with a smorgasbord of sexual fetishes.

A teenage boy that had early sexual encounters is having trouble finding them now, and spends a lot of time fantasizing about the women he knows. When a beautiful new girl comes to town, he makes a bet with the other guys that he can get her into bed within 10 days. His chief rival stacks the deck, though, by threatening to expose the new girl's sordid past (she was wrongly accused of being involved in an orgy at her previous school) if she sleeps with our hero. Confused about his situation, the boy seeks counsel from the sexy older woman across the street, and she helps him come to terms with his predicament.

Ben Dobbs is a lonely college student who has never had dreams of any kind. This all changes for Ben and he start having a series of sequential and terrifying nightmares that become true in his waking life. As he reaches out for help, he is also expanding the net his nightmare demon is spreading for new victims. Ben’s challenge is to survive this new surrealistic world Beyond Dream’s Door.

In the future, a private detective tries to stop a large corporation from mining an element whose side effects include igniting human flesh and destroying internal body parts.

Sam, Trish, Beth, and Annie are four Valley Girls bored with shopping and frat parties. They come across kind Mr. Stanton, who is running a home for orphaned boys. Mr. Stanton and his charges are in danger of being evicted from their home if they don't come up with the rent money that is due, and one of the boys has taken to selling drugs for a couple of sleazy dealers. When Trish's prized "TUBUL R" Mercedes convertible is lost in a bet in which their Beverly Hills rivals have cheated, mayhem ensues as the Vals, with the help of their frat boy boyfriends, save Mr. Stanton and his boys from being evicted, give the drug dealers their just desserts, and exact revenge on the Beverly Hills brats in a rematch.

A broken family finds their relationships to one another changed by a new arrival in the household.

A nearly wordless visual narrative intercuts two main stories and a couple of minor ones. A woman, perhaps the Madonna, brings forth her baby to a crowd of intrusive paparazzi; she tries to flee them. Two men who are lovers marry and are arrested by the powers that be. The men are mocked and pilloried, tarred, feathered, and beaten. Loose in this contemporary world of electrical-power transmission lines is also Jesus. The elements, particularly fire and water, content with political power, which is intolerant and murderous.

This film involves three interwoven stories with the only seeming connection being the delusions of the involved leads. In the first element of the film, a hot-tempered world tennis star loses endorsement contracts when the press outs him even though he claims the report is false. In the second, a talent-less woman struggles to make it in the world of fashion design or the music video business. In the last, an animal activist runs a dog-adoption agency and has an imaginary friend who appears in a St. Bernard suit.

When former Russian spy Max Stein is murdered, private investigator McGill inherits a key to a safe deposit box in a Lisbon bank – a box that contains secret intelligence documents and a cool million dollars! With both the CIA and rogue elements within the Russian intelligence community in hot pursuit, McGill puts his life on the line in a race to the fortune! Featuring a powerful performance from Richard Bradford as McGill, a discredited ex-CIA agent reduced to working as a private investigator, To Chase a Million is the exceptionally rare, feature-length version of the Man in a Suitcase two-parter Variation on a Million Bucks.

Forty years after Martin Luther King s assassination, HISTORY, with newsman Tom Brokaw, takes viewers through the extraordinary life and times of America's civil rights visionary. KING goes beyond the legend to portray the man, the questions, the myths and, most importantly, the relevance of Dr. King s message in today s world. Includes a rare interview with his son, Martin Luther King III, as well as associates from the civil rights campaigns and contemporary figures such as former President Bill Clinton, Condaleezza Rice, Bono, Forest Whitaker, Chuck D and others.

This unique narrative incorporating documentary elements follows Rey, a 40-year-old non-binary teacher and typhoon survivor, on a roadtrip to fame. With surreal comedy and social portrait realism, filmmaker Seán‌ Devlin explores climate change, LGBTQ+ issues, and the impact of colonialism on contemporary Philippines.

Joe believed in right and wrong until... His job outsourced to India. His teaser rate spiked. His wife bailed. But Joe has a plan...to get it all back, and more. Joe returns home, to the last place on planet Earth where real men can be found...Chicago. Joe's Uncle Dominic is "connected". Joe wants in...to The Mob, or "The Outfit", as it is called in Chicago. And he'll do anything to make it happen. Can a wanna-be wise guy live a long and happy life ? A way cool element of The Return of Joe Rich is amazing HD documentary footage of 10 real-life "Chicago Guys" ages 73 to 89. These "guys" found themselves in the same predicament, in real life, in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's, that Joe does today. They form a "Greek Chorus" which inter-cuts with the present day narrative of The Return of Joe Rich. Written by Sam Auster

21 monologues written by American playwrights form a sort of fractured portrait of the American collective psyche. Ranging from the sad to the hilarious, from the angry to the tentatively celebratory, many of the major and recurrent issues associated with our fraught but beloved union are reconsidered with elegance, wit, brutal honesty, and a little outright insanity.

An "un-biopic" of the young Hilary Rodham set in 1969, during the unverifiable weeks her autobiography has her working at an Alaskan salmon cannery. A parable about America, political narratives, and the absence of free will.

Bette Gordon describes her first feature film as “a narrative derived from film’s own material and my concern for exploring issues of representation and identification in cinema."

Mothers and doctors speak out about the grim reality of life in the five years following the Chernobyl disaster. In children, doctors witnessed a massive increase of recurrent infections, baldness, as well as leukaemia and other cancers.

65 shots making up a cryptically alluded-to narrative: a lesbian couple's Midwest travels, a hitchhiking young man's journeys, the story of a man who may be having an affair.

"The slow and subtle repeated rhythms of daily life provide the material for this 12 part film. The pace is slow with the intention of inviting viewers into a more visceral and less verbally analytical state of mind. The 'action,' small events like the mail arriving, the storm coming, and the grass getting mowed, are secondary to the way of perceiving those events. In many ways this film reaches back into a kind of personal memory one might recall from early childhood." –Leighton Pierce

The Tenant continuously fails to escape his deadly apartment under five minute time limit as his blood-thirsty neighbor threatens to break in and exterminate him.

Conceived and filmed at London's O2 Arena in September 2019 the film follows a team of scientists as they investigate the source of a paranormal anomaly appearing around the world. Blurring the lines between narrative and concert film, virtual and reality, Muse's most theatrical tour to date launches the viewer through a supernatural spectacle, questioning the world around us.

In this new work by Marie Chouinard, the company's ten dancers execute variations on the exercise of freedom. Often, the dancers appear on points: on one, two, and even four at a time. In a spectroscopy of the gesture, we also see them using different devices - crutches, rope, prostheses, horizontal bars, and harnesses - which at times liberate their movements, at others fetter it, and at still others create it.

Following on the heels of the film, "Please, talk with me", comes: Surviving Evidence. This paranormal thriller is set in the present and seeks to raise as many questions in the viewers' minds as it may answer -- acting as a 'what if' exercise in regard to the relevancy, morality and application of paranormal experience in relation to free will, societal customs and what the future may hold.

The film takes the viewer on an embodied journey moving through a space in which its existence in the real or imagined is debatable. Alike how the alleyway is a physical bridge between two main streets, the film presents a series of juxtaposed images that might seem opposing at a glance – the seer and the seen, the outside and inside, young and old, low and high, the leaving, coming, and returning – but are co-existing elements that sustain the living and breathing of the alleyway. The tactility of witnessing inherently embodied by the 16 mm celluloid is mirrored by the witnessing(s) of the tourists, the residents, the non-human subjects in the space. Via a constructed soundscape in which sonic elements from eastern spirituality find their prominence amongst real-life sounds, and through an embodied camera eye that moves freely in the geographical space of the alley, the film evokes a sense of magical realism which gives texture to the meditation on the Chinese American identity.