Movies like DRIFT (2005)
The best movies like DRIFT (2005) are New York Minute (2004), Stop Making Sense (1984) and The Sweet East (2023). If DRIFT hooked you, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedStop Making Sense (1984)8.4/10 from 404 votes
- NewestOne Mile: Chapter One (2026)Released 2026
New York Minute (2004)
Honors student Jane Ryan heads to Manhattan for a college-scholarship competition. Her rebellious twin Roxy tags along to crash a video shoot. But anything can happen – and does – in a romp involving a pursuing truant officer, a smuggler, hunkalicious guys, and the girls' realization that when the chips are down, a sister can be the best friend of all.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStop Making Sense (1984)
A concert film documenting Talking Heads at the height of their popularity, on tour for their 1983 album "Speaking in Tongues." The band takes the stage one by one and is joined by a cadre of guest musicians for a career-spanning and cinematic performance that features creative choreography and visuals.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Sweet East (2023)
A picaresque journey through contemporary America, undertaken by a young woman granted access to the strange sects and cults that proliferate in this country by a series of gatekeepers eager to win her over.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNas: Time Is Illmatic (2014)
Time Is Illmatic is a feature length documentary film that delves deep into the making of Nas' 1994 debut album, Illmatic, and the social conditions that influenced its creation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFritz the Cat (1972)
In late 1960s New York City, fed up with monotonous college life and police repression, free-spirited Fritz, an impenitent seducer and unrestrained party-animal, decides to explore the world. And just like that, as he flees NYC, heading to San Francisco, Fritz embarks on an endless adventure of illumination. Immersed in a world surrounded by drugs and sex, Fritz participates in mad orgies, brings about a revolution, incites mass urban riots, and crosses paths with drug-addled Nazi bikers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSymbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNowhere (1997)
In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTeen Beach Movie (2013)
Life's a beach for surfers Brady and McKenzie – until a rogue wave magically transports them inside the classic '60s beach party flick, "Wet Side Story," where a full-blown rivalry between bikers and surfers threatens to erupt. There, amidst a sea of surfing, singing and dancing, Brady and Mack accidentally change the storyline, and the film’s dreamy hero and heroine fall for them instead of for each other!
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Sparks Brothers (2021)
Take a musical odyssey through five weird and wonderful decades with brothers Ron & Russell Mael, celebrating the inspiring legacy of Sparks: your favorite band’s favorite band.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGrey Gardens (1976)
Edie Bouvier Beale and her mother, Edith, two aging, eccentric relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, are the sole inhabitants of a Long Island estate. The women reveal themselves to be misfits with outsized, engaging personalities. Much of the conversation is centered on their pasts, as mother and daughter now rarely leave home.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Decline of Western Civilization (1981)
The Los Angeles punk music scene circa 1980 is the focus of this film. With Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKids (1995)
A group of bored, disaffected New York City teenagers spend a day skating, smoking, drinking, partying, deflowering virgins, and getting into fights.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNirvana: Live at the Paramount (2011)
Recorded in Seattle, WA on Halloween Night, 1991, Live at the Paramount is the only known Nirvana live show recorded on 16mm film. Now released to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana's watershed album.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisDìdi (弟弟) (2024)
In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can't teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Beach Boys (2024)
A celebration of the legendary band that revolutionized pop music, and the iconic, harmonious sound they created that personified the California dream, captivating fans for generations and generations to come.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like this20th Century Women (2016)
In 1979 Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbour – to help with Jamie's upbringing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOne Mile: Chapter One (2026)
After being released from special forces, a father tries to reconnect with his daughter by taking her on a tour of college, but they soon find themselves fighting for more than their lost relationship when a murderous cult pursues them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Thousand and One (2023)
Struggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and Terry becomes a smart yet quiet teenager, but the secret that has defined their lives threatens to destroy the home they have so improbably built.
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 thisThe Last Repair Shop (2024)
In a warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain more than 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind. Meet four unforgettable characters whose broken-and-repaired lives have been dedicated to bringing so much more than music to the schoolchildren of this city.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Interpreter (2005)
After Silvia Broome, an interpreter at United Nations headquarters, overhears plans of an assassination, an American Secret Service agent is sent to investigate.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKing Kong (1933)
Adventurous filmmaker Carl Denham sets out to produce a motion picture unlike anything the world has seen before. Alongside his leading lady Ann Darrow and his first mate Jack Driscoll, they arrive on an island and discover a legendary creature said to be neither beast nor man. Denham captures the monster to be displayed on Broadway as King Kong, the eighth wonder of the world.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPocketful of Miracles (1961)
A New York gangster and his girlfriend attempt to turn street beggar Apple Annie into a society lady when the peddler learns her daughter is marrying royalty.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLive and Let Die (1973)
James Bond must investigate a mysterious murder case of a British agent in New Orleans. Soon he finds himself up against a gangster boss named Mr. Big.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKing Kong (2005)
In 1933 New York, an overly ambitious movie producer coerces his cast and hired ship crew to travel to mysterious Skull Island, where they encounter Kong, a giant ape who is immediately smitten with the leading lady.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLéon: The Professional (1994)
Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she considers following in Léon's footsteps.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBob Dylan – Don't Look Back (1967)
In this wildly entertaining vision of one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Bob Dylan is surrounded by teen fans, gets into heated philosophical jousts with journalists, and kicks back with fellow musicians Joan Baez, Donovan, and Alan Price.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Wanderers (1979)
The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realises that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisWalk the Line (2005)
A chronicle of country music legend Johnny Cash's life, from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis, where he recorded alongside Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like DRIFT?
The closest matches to DRIFT are New York Minute (2004), Stop Making Sense (1984) and The Sweet East (2023). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after DRIFT?
Start with New York Minute (2004), the closest match to DRIFT.
What is the highest-rated movie like DRIFT?
Stop Making Sense (1984), rated 8.4/10 by 404 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like DRIFT?
One Mile: Chapter One (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like DRIFT?
Yes: New York Minute (2004), Stop Making Sense (1984) and The Sweet East (2023).
How are movies similar to DRIFT chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside DRIFT, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.