Movies like The Paintings Paint Themselves (2017)
The best movies like The Paintings Paint Themselves (2017) are New York Stories (1989), Art School Confidential (2006) and At Eternity's Gate (2018). If The Paintings Paint Themselves hooked you, these 20 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)8.0/10 from 16,744 votes
- NewestEntergalactic (2022)Released 2022
New York Stories (1989)
Three tales of love, ambition, and neurosis unfold in the city that never sleeps. In "Life Lessons" (Martin Scorsese), a tormented painter channels heartbreak into his art. In "Life Without Zoë" (Francis Ford Coppola), a precocious 12-year-old navigates privilege and loneliness in a Manhattan hotel. And in "Oedipus Wrecks" (Woody Allen), a man’s domineering mother literally becomes a looming presence over New York.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisArt School Confidential (2006)
Starting from childhood attempts at illustration, the protagonist pursues his true obsession to art school. But as he learns how the art world really works, he finds that he must adapt his vision to the reality that confronts him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAt Eternity's Gate (2018)
Famed but tormented artist Vincent van Gogh spends his final years in Arles, France, painting masterworks of the natural world that surrounds him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
The Grand Budapest Hotel tells of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars and his friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting, the battle for an enormous family fortune and the slow and then sudden upheavals that transformed Europe during the first half of the 20th century.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisEntergalactic (2022)
Ambitious artist Jabari attempts to balance success and love when he moves into his dream Manhattan apartment and falls for his next-door neighbor.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBasquiat (1996)
The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Odd Couple (1968)
In New York, Felix, a neurotic news writer who just broke up with his wife, is urged by his chaotic friend Oscar, a sports journalist, to move in with him, but their lifestyles are as different as night and day are, so Felix's ideas about housekeeping soon begin to irritate Oscar.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016)
Nude men in rubber suits, close-ups of erections, objects shoved in the most intimate of places—these are photographs taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, known by many as the most controversial photographer of the twentieth century. Openly gay, Mapplethorpe took images of male sex, nudity, and fetish to extremes that resulted in his work still being labelled by some as pornography masquerading as art. But less talked about are the more serene, yet striking portraits of flowers, sculptures, and perfectly framed human forms that are equally pioneering and powerful.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPecker (1998)
A Baltimore teenager who picks up a second-hand camera starts snapping his way to stardom, soon turning into a nationwide sensation, with a fateful choice between his life and his art.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAn Unmarried Woman (1978)
A wealthy woman from Manhattan's Upper East Side struggles to deal with her new identity and her sexuality after her husband of 16 years leaves her for a younger woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSweet and Lowdown (1999)
In the 1930s, jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Fountainhead (1949)
An uncompromising, visionary architect struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSix Degrees of Separation (1993)
The story of a young, gay, black, con artist who, posing as the son of Sidney Poitier, cunningly maneuvers his way into the lives of a white, upper-class New York family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGenius (2016)
New York in the 1920s. Max Perkins, a literary editor is the first to sign such subsequent literary greats as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. When a sprawling, chaotic 1,000-page manuscript by an unknown writer falls into his hands, Perkins is convinced he has discovered a literary genius.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisQuiet Please! (1945)
The family dog warns Tom not to make any noise so he can take a nap. Jerry hears this and immediately devises plans to ensure that the dog's nap will be interrupted.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFactory Girl (2006)
In the mid-1960s, wealthy debutant Edie Sedgwick meets artist Andy Warhol. She joins Warhol's famous Factory and becomes his muse. Although she seems to have it all, Edie cannot have the love she craves from Andy, and she has an affair with a charismatic musician, who pushes her to seek independence from the artist and the milieu.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInsignificance (1985)
Four 1950s icons meet in the same hotel room, and two of them discover more in common between them than they ever anticipated.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Sound of Silence (2019)
A successful "house tuner" in New York City, who calibrates the sound in people's homes in order to adjust their moods, meets a client with a problem he can't solve.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisMice Follies (1954)
Jerry and his diapered little mouse friend flood the kitchen, then use the freezer to turn it into a skating rink. Even though Tom finds a pair of ice skates, the mice have no problem outmaneuvering him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNude (2017)
NUDE explores perceptions of nudity in art by chronicling the creative process of photographer David Bellemere as he's commissioned by NU Muses founder Steve Shaw to shoot a fine art calendar of nude photographs.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Paintings Paint Themselves?
The closest matches to The Paintings Paint Themselves are New York Stories (1989), Art School Confidential (2006) and At Eternity's Gate (2018). Below are 17 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Paintings Paint Themselves?
Start with New York Stories (1989), the closest match to The Paintings Paint Themselves.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Paintings Paint Themselves?
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), rated 8.0/10 by 16,744 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Paintings Paint Themselves?
Entergalactic (2022) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Paintings Paint Themselves?
Yes: New York Stories (1989), Art School Confidential (2006) and At Eternity's Gate (2018).
How are movies similar to The Paintings Paint Themselves chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Paintings Paint Themselves, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.