Movies like Pulp (2023)
The best movies like Pulp (2023) are Riceboy Sleeps (2023), A Better Life (2011) and Goodbye June (2025). If Pulp hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedKramer vs. Kramer (1979)7.6/10 from 2,590 votes
- NewestBlue Heron (2026)Released 2026
Riceboy Sleeps (2023)
In the 1990s, an immigrant single mother raises her teenage son in the Canadian suburbs, determined to provide a better life for him than the one she left behind in South Korea.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Better Life (2011)
An Indigenous Latino American gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGoodbye June (2025)
Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Remember Mama (1948)
Norwegian immigrant Marta Hanson keeps a firm but loving hand on her household of four children, a devoted husband and a highly-educated lodger who reads great literature to the family every evening. Through financial crises, illnesses and the small triumphs of everyday life, Marta maintains her optimism and sense of humor, traits she passes on to her aspiring-author daughter, Katrin.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLittle Lord Fauntleroy (1980)
Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Dead Don't Hurt (2024)
In the 1860s, fiercely independent French-Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy embarks on a journey with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen, attempting to forge a life together in the dusty town of Elk Flats, Nevada. When Holger decides to go fight for the Union in the burgeoning Civil War, Vivienne must fend for herself, which isn't easy in a town controlled by a corrupt mayor.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHere (2024)
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlue Heron (2026)
A family of six's fresh start on 1990s Vancouver Island unravels as their youngest child, Sasha, witnesses the increasingly dangerous behavior of her older brother, Jeremy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHouse of Sand and Fog (2003)
Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBoyhood (2014)
The film tells a story of a divorced couple trying to raise their young son. The story follows the boy for twelve years, from first grade at age 6 through 12th grade at age 17-18, and examines his relationship with his parents as he grows.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Fabelmans (2022)
Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEleanor the Great (2025)
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBobby Jones: Stroke of Genius (2004)
The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisTest (2018)
Kurt Longson tries to avenge his daughters death. To succeed he has to battle with his conscience and morality to realize true love.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Girl in the Book (2015)
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisI Believe in Unicorns (2015)
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAround the Bend (2004)
A tale of four generations of men, all of whom have had their offspring at a young age: a great-grandfather, a grandfather, a father in his twenties and a son who is about 7 years old. When the oldest member passes away, the trio heads out on the road together in the Southwest to search out an old family secret that connects to their past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Nest (2020)
Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Never Sang for My Father (1970)
A man living in the towering shadow of his aging father finds it difficult to start a new chapter in his life by marrying his girlfriend and moving to California.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMr. Church (2016)
A unique friendship develops when a little girl and her dying mother inherit a cook - Mr. Church. What begins as an arrangement that should only last six months, instead spans fifteen years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe First Day of the Rest of Your Life (2008)
A sprawling drama centered on five key days in a family's life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Children Nobody Wanted (1981)
True story of Tom Butterfield and his crusade to provide family life for homeless children, becoming not only the first bachelor caretaker, but the youngest single adult to become a legal foster parent in the state of Missouri.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Rappakal (2005)
Saraswathiyamma is the head of a noble family that treats her servant Krishnan as one of her own sons. When her relatives conspire to sell her house, she and Krishnan set out to save it.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
Ted Kramer is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna cannot take this anymore, so she decides to leave him. Ted is now faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of himself and their young son Billy.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThose Who Never Left (2025)
Two years after the Beirut blast, a girl continually revisits the last night she spent with her family in their home.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
East Lynne (1913)
An aristocratic woman, Lady Isabel, leaves her husband and children when she suspects him of adultery, a notion which had been suggested to her by the scheming and murderous Captain Levison. Life on the continent with Levison does not work out as she had envisaged so, eight years later, she returns to England and finds her husband has remarried. She cannot bear to be away from her family and so dons a disguise, gaining employment with them as a governess. When her young son, Willie, dies she is unable to comfort him as she would like, and she too dies.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Naive (2014)
Fighting disabilities and cancer with their chins up, mother and son meander through the city against a tide of indifferent faces and distant eyes and arrive in a park, where blissful tranquility and a ray of sunshine await them.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Valliettan (2000)
Madhavankutty is the Valliettan (Big Brother) of the Arackal family. The long lasting rivalry between Arackal Madhavanunni and Patteri Sivaraman forms the main thread of the story. Madhavanunni, along with his four brothers he rules the village. But Sivaraman, with the help of Bava, develops their plan to trap Madhavanunni.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Help! I'm a Fish (2000)
Three children are accidentally transformed into fish after consuming a potion made by an eccentric scientist. The kids end up in the sea, with one problem: they must find and drink the antidote within 48 hours, or forever remain as fish.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPathemari (2015)
Pathemari features the life of Pallikkal Narayanan who migrated to the Middle-East in the early 1980s, when the Kerala Gulf boom was at its peak.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Pulp?
The closest matches to Pulp are Riceboy Sleeps (2023), A Better Life (2011) and Goodbye June (2025). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Pulp?
Start with Riceboy Sleeps (2023), the closest match to Pulp.
What is the highest-rated movie like Pulp?
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), rated 7.6/10 by 2,590 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Pulp?
Blue Heron (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Pulp?
Yes: Riceboy Sleeps (2023), A Better Life (2011) and Goodbye June (2025).
How are movies similar to Pulp chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Pulp, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.