Movies like Needle and Thread (2000)
The best movies like Needle and Thread (2000) are Heroin(e) (2017), Half Baked (1998) and Elton John: Never Too Late (2024). If Needle and Thread hooked you, these 20 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedEverybody’s Everything (2019)8.4/10 from 311 votes
- NewestElton John: Never Too Late (2024)Released 2024
Heroin(e) (2017)
This documentary follows three women — a fire chief, a judge, and a street missionary — as they battle West Virginia's devastating opioid epidemic.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHalf Baked (1998)
Three lovable party buds try to bail their friend out of jail. But just when the guys have mastered a plan, everything comes dangerously close to going up in smoke.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisElton John: Never Too Late (2024)
Sir Elton John looks back on his life and the astonishing early days of his 50-year career in this emotionally charged, full-circle journey. As he prepares for his final concert in North America at Dodger Stadium, Elton takes us back in time and recounts his struggles with adversity, abuse, and addiction, and how he overcame them to become the icon he is today.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEverybody’s Everything (2019)
The story of artist Lil Peep from his birth in Long Island and meteoric rise as a genre blending pop star & style icon, to his death due to an accidental opioid overdose in Arizona at just 21 years of age.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThings We Lost in the Fire (2007)
A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLet's Get Lost (1988)
Documentary about jazz great Chet Baker that intercuts footage from the 1950s, when he was part of West Coast Cool, and from his last years. We see the young Baker, he of the beautiful face, in California and in Italy, where he appeared in at least one movie and at least one jail cell (for drug possession). And, we see the aged Baker, detached, indifferent, his face a ruin. Includes interviews with his children and ex-wife, women companions, and musicians.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRequiem for a Dream (2000)
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisHeaven Knows What (2015)
A young heroin addict roams the streets of New York to panhandle and get her next fix, while her unstable boyfriend drifts in and out of her life at random.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGrass (1999)
Marijuana is the most controversial drug of the 20th century. Smoked by generations to little discernible ill effect, it continues to be reviled by many governments on Earth. In this Genie Award-winning documentary, veteran Canadian director Ron Mann and narrator Woody Harrelson mix humour and historical footage together to recount how the United States has demonized a relatively harmless drug.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCobain: Montage of Heck (2015)
Hailed as one of the most innovative and intimate documentaries of all time, experience Kurt Cobain like never before in the only ever fully authorized portrait of the famed music icon. Academy Award nominated filmmaker Brett Morgen expertly blends Cobain's personal archive of art, music, never seen before movies, animation and revelatory interviews from his family and closest friends.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCrack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy (2021)
A cheap, powerful drug emerges during a recession, igniting a moral panic fueled by racism. Explore the complex history of crack in the 1980s.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTrainspotting (1996)
Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends --Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning up and moving from Edinburgh to London, Mark finds he can't escape the life he left behind as Begbie and Sick Boy come knocking.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Baker (2023)
A quiet, stoic man, lives a monk-like existence in self-imposed exile. When his estranged son is killed in a drug deal gone bad, he is left to look after a granddaughter he never knew existed, and he is forced back into a life he tried to put behind him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCandy (2006)
A poet falls in love with an art student, who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle — and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Basketball Diaries (1995)
A high school basketball player’s life turns upside down after free-falling into the harrowing world of drug addiction.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPostcards from the Edge (1990)
A substance-addicted actress tries to look on the bright side even as she's forced to move back in with her mother to avoid unemployment.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Outrun (2024)
Fresh out of rehab, Rona returns to the Orkney Islands—a place both wild and beautiful, right off the Scottish coast. Now 29 and after more than a decade of living life on the edge in London, where she both found and lost love, Rona attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. As she reconnects with the dramatic landscape where she grew up, memories of her traumatic childhood merge with more recent challenging events that have set her on the path to recovery.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFuck (2006)
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Million Little Pieces (2019)
A young drug-addled writer approaching the bottom of his descent submits to two months of agonizing detox at a treatment center in Minnesota.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBeautiful Boy (2018)
After he and his first wife separate, journalist David Sheff struggles to help their teenage son, who goes from experimenting with drugs to becoming devastatingly addicted to methamphetamine.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Needle and Thread?
The closest matches to Needle and Thread are Heroin(e) (2017), Half Baked (1998) and Elton John: Never Too Late (2024). Below are 17 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Needle and Thread?
Start with Heroin(e) (2017), the closest match to Needle and Thread.
What is the highest-rated movie like Needle and Thread?
Everybody’s Everything (2019), rated 8.4/10 by 311 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Needle and Thread?
Elton John: Never Too Late (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Needle and Thread?
Yes: Heroin(e) (2017), Half Baked (1998) and Elton John: Never Too Late (2024).
How are movies similar to Needle and Thread chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Needle and Thread, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.