Movies like Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981)
The best movies like Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981) are The Lost Weekend (1945), The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) and Less Than Zero (1987). If Tales of Ordinary Madness hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedA Walk to Remember (2002)7.7/10 from 4,375 votes
- NewestBlonde (2022)Released 2022
- In ItalianHitch Hike (1977)Also in Italian
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Longtime alcoholic Don Birnam has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst... but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last – one way or another.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004)
Young Jeremiah lives in a stable environment with loving foster parents until the day his troubled mother, Sarah, returns to claim him. Jeremiah becomes swept up in his mother's dangerous world of drugs, seedy hotels, strip joints and revolving lovers. Salvation comes in the form of the boy's ultrareligious grandparents, but soon Jeremiah's mother returns. Maternal love binds the pair together on the road until Sarah's desperate and depraved lifestyle finally consumes her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisLess Than Zero (1987)
A college freshman returns to Los Angeles for Christmas at his ex-girlfriend's request, but discovers that his former best friend has an out-of-control drug habit.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlonde (2022)
From her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane, through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements, this reimagined fictional portrait of Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between her public and private selves.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisNightmare Alley (2021)
An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMidnight Cowboy (1969)
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994)
Dorothy Parker remembers the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of friends whose barbed wit, like hers, was fueled by alcohol and flirted with despair.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisMurder, My Sweet (1944)
After being hired to find an ex-con's former girlfriend, Philip Marlowe is drawn into a deeply complex web of mystery and deceit.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCrash (1996)
A car crash victim inexplicably finds himself aroused by car accidents and becomes involved with an underground subculture of like-minded souls.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHitch Hike (1977)
A bickering couple driving cross-country through California pick up a psychotic hitchhiker with two million dollars who threatens to kill them unless they take him to Mexico.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTetro (2009)
In Buenos Aires, 17-year-old Bennie seeks out his estranged brother Tetro, a once-promising writer haunted by their family’s past. As Bennie uncovers Tetro’s hidden manuscript, old secrets and rivalries resurface, forcing both men to confront the truth about their father and the tangled legacy that tore their family apart.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBringing Out the Dead (1999)
Once called "Father Frank" for his efforts to rescue lives, Frank Pierce sees the ghosts of those he failed to save around every turn. He has tried everything he can to get fired, calling in sick, delaying taking calls where he might have to face one more victim he couldn't help, yet cannot quit the job on his own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
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 · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNocturnal Animals (2016)
Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJoe (2014)
The rough-hewn boss of a lumber crew courts trouble when he steps in to protect the youngest member of his team from an abusive father.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCutter's Way (1981)
Alex Cutter is a boozy, belligerent and deeply cynical Vietnam veteran whose encounter with a landmine during the war has left him minus an eye, a leg and an arm. When his drifter playboy friend Richard Bone is falsely accused of murder, Cutter sets out for revenge in his own inimitable style.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKen Park (2003)
Teen skater Ken Park (nicknamed Krap Nek; his name spelled and pronounced backward) kills himself at a Visalia skate park; his death bookends the lives of four other young people who knew him: Shawn, the most conventional; Tate brims with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother; and Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPitfall (1948)
An insurance man wishing for a more exciting life becomes wrapped up in the affairs of an imprisoned embezzler, his model girlfriend, and a violent private investigator.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Nines (2007)
A troubled actor, a television show runner, and an acclaimed videogame designer find their lives intertwining in mysterious and unsettling ways.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCape Fear (1991)
Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Sweet Hereafter (1997)
A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident leaves more than a dozen of its children dead. A big-city lawyer arrives to help the survivors' and victims' families prepare a class-action suit, but his efforts only seem to push the townspeople further apart. At the same time, one teenage survivor of the accident has to reckon with the loss of innocence brought about by a different kind of damage.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Simple Plan (1998)
Captivated by the lure of sudden wealth, the quiet rural lives of two brothers erupt into conflicts of greed, paranoia and distrust when over $4 million in cash is discovered at the remote site of a downed small airplane. Their simple plan to retain the money while avoiding detection opens a Pandora's box when the fear of getting caught triggers panicked behavior and leads to virulent consequences.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Walk to Remember (2002)
When the popular, restless Landon Carter is forced to participate in the school drama production, he falls in love with Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of the town's minister. Jamie has a "to-do" list for her life, as well as a very big secret she must keep from Landon.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAlmost Home (2019)
A teenage girl flees abuse at home to join a strong but troubled young woman that’s been living on the streets. She joins a de facto family of other homeless youth struggling to survive on the streets of Los Angeles.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
White Men Can't Jump (1992)
Two street basketball hustlers try to con each other, then team up for a bigger score.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)
No one expects much from Christy Brown, a boy with cerebral palsy born into a working-class Irish family. Though Christy is a spastic quadriplegic and essentially paralyzed, a miraculous event occurs when, at the age of 5, he demonstrates control of his left foot by using chalk to scrawl a word on the floor. With the help of his steely mother — and no shortage of grit and determination — Christy overcomes his infirmity to become a painter, poet and author.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Prince of Tides (1991)
A troubled Southern man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her (and New York City) in the process.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMoby Dick (1956)
In 1841, young Ishmael signs up for service aboard the Pequod, a whaler sailing out of New Bedford. The ship is under the command of Captain Ahab, a strict disciplinarian who exhorts his men to find Moby Dick, the great white whale. Ahab lost his leg to that creature and is desperate for revenge. As the crew soon learns, he will stop at nothing to gain satisfaction.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMortality (2021)
A Man runs away from a Shadowy Figure whilst coming to terms with what’s next…His Mortality.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Rakastunut rampa (1975)
Krokelby in the 1920s. Sakris Kukkelman is a crippled, Nietzsche reading village idiot who believes himself to be a romantic hero.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Tales of Ordinary Madness?
The closest matches to Tales of Ordinary Madness are The Lost Weekend (1945), The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) and Less Than Zero (1987). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Tales of Ordinary Madness?
Start with The Lost Weekend (1945), the closest match to Tales of Ordinary Madness.
What is the highest-rated movie like Tales of Ordinary Madness?
A Walk to Remember (2002), rated 7.7/10 by 4,375 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Tales of Ordinary Madness?
Blonde (2022) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Italian movies like Tales of Ordinary Madness?
Yes: Hitch Hike (1977).
How are movies similar to Tales of Ordinary Madness chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Tales of Ordinary Madness, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.