Best movies like Down House
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The plot is set in modern Moscow, in the 1990s, with "New Russians", Hummer H1 SUVs, bribery, violence, truck fulls of tinned stew as a dowry, etc.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: surreal, humorous, not serious, parody, suspense, realistic, biting, grotesque
Best tv shows and movies like Down House (2001):
Similar in 89%
Afghan Breakdown (1991)
Plot Summary:
A drama about the last days of a specific Russian regiment stationed in Afghanistan, before the main troop withdrawal in 1985.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 544
Genere: War
Country: Russia, Italy
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
The Pharmacist (1997)
Plot Summary:
Hella is around 30 and works in a pharmacy. She is waiting for the right man to step into her life, but as she has a certain affinity for losers, she is kind of disillusionized. When she gets to know Levin, a dentist student who likes cars most, her dreams seem to come true. Levin has a very rich grandfather who likes her at first glance. The old man thinks of changing his last will to the condition that Levin has to marry Hella in order to inherit his fortunes. Like in a fairy-tale the door to a new life opens for Hella, but can she take it?.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 986
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Germany
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: manga, atmospheric, humorous, realistic, semi serious, black comedy, dark comedy
Similar in 75%
Dying Beyond Their Means (2014)
Plot Summary:
Isaki Lacuesta presents a social satire in which five common or garden citizens, from a country pretty much identical to our own, see their lives ripped apart by the economic crisis. With nothing more to lose, they come up with a crazy plan to save the Spanish and world economy: kidnap the chairman of the Central Bank and demand that he return everything to the way it used to be.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 471
Genere: Comedy
Country: Spain
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: humorous, not serious, surreal, light, entertaining, absurd, realistic
Similar in 86%
The Marathon Family (1982)
Plot Summary:
The Topalovic family has been in the burial business for generations. When the old (150 yrs old) Pantelija dies, five generations of his heirs start to fight for the inheritance.
IMDB Rating: 8.8
IMDB Votes: 17000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Yugoslavia
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: dark comedy, parody, atmospheric, surreal, cult classic, sincere, humorous, realistic, witty, not serious
Similar in 82%
Case for a Rookie Hangman (1970)
Plot Summary:
Lemuel Gulliver (Lubomír Kostelka) has had a car accident and continues his journey across the unknown countryside on foot. On the road he finds a dead rabbit dressed like a man and takes a watch from its waistcoat breast pocket. The half-ruined house that he enters reminds Lemuel of his childhood and brings up a painful memory of a dearly loved girl Markéta who was drowned years ago. Gulliver finds himself in Balnibarbi, a country where he doesn't understand the laws and habits and so continually offends against public decency. It is a day when people are ordered to keep their mouths shut and they force their visitor to follow suit. He faces harsh interrogation and finds it difficult to explain that he is not the rabbit Oscar whose watch has been found in his possession.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 677
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: surreal, satirical, existential, atmospheric, offbeat, not serious, biting, suspense, modern day adaptation
Similar in 78%
Two Days (2011)
Plot Summary:
A two days from the life of Pyotr Drozdov, a highly ranked official from Moscow, which he spends with young museum employee Masha.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 914
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Russia
Duration: 76 min
Plot tags: humorous, sentimental, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 87%
Bye Bye Blondie (2012)
Plot Summary:
Bye Bye Blondie tells the tale of Gloria and Frances, who first met when they were both patients in the same psychiatric hospital back in the 1980s, and decided to run away together. At the time their love affair was defined by youthful intensity. Later, when Francis disappeared without a trace, Gloria mourned the loss with a heavy heart. Over 20 years later, Francis (Emmanuelle Béart) and Gloria (Béatrice Dalle) have both turned 40. They've taken very different paths in life, with nomadic Gloria spending most of her time in a dive bar, and Frances enjoying success as a popular Parisian TV personality. The wife of a closeted and successful novelist, Francis is locked in a mutually-beneficial marriage of convenience when she once again crosses paths with Gloria, and finds her comfortable world turned upside down.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 731
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, humorous, gloomy, queer cinema
Similar in 77%
Justi&Cia (2014)
Plot Summary:
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IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 214
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious, captivating, biting, suspense
Similar in 79%
The Last New Year's Eve (1998)
Plot Summary:
New year's eve at "The Islands" condos. An aging countess's party is crashed by the soccer team from her gigolo's town. While dressing for a dinner party, the wealthy Guilia discovers her husband's affair with her best friend and vows revenge. Next door, a family prepares their vintage Dodge for a drive through the streets. A call girl ties up a lawyer while, unbeknownst to him, three men await the right moment to break into his office. Across the hall, a woman downs pills in a lonely suicide attempt. Two young men hide out in a bedroom smoking dope; one of them has some dynamite. As midnight approaches, each group draws closer to grotesque tragedy.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, realistic, suspenseful, sexy, dark comedy, offbeat, controversial, splatter, grotesque
Similar in 85%
Posthumous Memories (2001)
Plot Summary:
Free adaptation of Machado de Assis' classic. The narrator is a rich dead man, who tells us about his life and times, making fun of both.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 926
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Portugal, Brazil
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: contemplative, humorous, surreal, cynical, semi serious, suspense, biting
Similar in 82%
The Choirboys (1977)
Plot Summary:
A group of Los Angeles cops decide to take off some of the pressures of their jobs by engaging in various forms of after-hours debauchery.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: neo noir, detective, independent film, bleak, humorous, realistic, cynical, semi serious
Similar in 86%
The Curse of Inferno (1997)
Plot Summary:
A rather dull minded bank robber suddenly suffers from a change of heart and decides to give the money back. However, he then learns that getting the money back into the bank is much more difficult than taking it out.
IMDB Rating: 4.2
IMDB Votes: 542
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: independent film, offbeat, humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 86%
Stay Hungry (1976)
Plot Summary:
Stay Hungry is a 1976 dramatic comedy film by director Bob Rafelson from a screenplay by Charles Gaines. The story centers on a young Birmingham, Alabama, scion, played by Jeff Bridges, who gets involved in a shady real-estate deal. In order to close the deal, he needs to buy a gym building to complete a multi-parcel lot. When he visits the gym, however, he finds himself romantically interested in the receptionist (Sally Field) and drawn to the carefree lifestyle of the Austrian body builder "Joe Santo" (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who is training there for the Mr. Universe competition.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: feel good, realistic, humorous, witty, semi serious, funny, cult classic
Similar in 75%
Purely Belter (2000)
Plot Summary:
Gerry and Sewell are broke. Gerry's still at school and Sewell is unemployed/ They botyh wish for better things in life. Owning two season tickets to their beloved football club is their biggest dream of all. The tickets cost £1000 - they're £1000 short. But they are nothing if not resourceful, and they set themselves a mission to raise the cash. While they think up increasingly outlandish money making schemes - from selling junk to shoplifting and the odd bit of housebreaking - real life begins to interfere with the pair's final scam going hilariously awry landing them in jail, only to discover that their punishment gets them exactly where they want to be!.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: feel good, humorous, semi serious, social, realistic
Similar in 82%
Free Fall (2014)
Plot Summary:
An old woman flies past six floors after jumping from the roof of her apartment block. Six stories on the poor state of humanity, told with humour and rare imagination to the accompaniment of a pulsating soundtrack from Amon Tobin. A woeful burlesque set in the present by one of Europe’s most original contemporary filmmakers.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Hungary, South Korea, France
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: anthology, humorous, surreal, semi serious, suspense, intellectual, art house, offbeat, biting, experimental
Similar in 88%
It's Your Turn, Laura (1998)
Plot Summary:
Une journée dans la vie d'un groupe de femmes qui se retrouvent chaque semaine depuis quinze ans dans la salle d'attente d'un médecin qui prétend arriver à les faire maigrir.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 322
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, humorous, captivating, realistic, talky, semi serious
Similar in 77%
The Mafia Kills Only in Summer (2013)
Plot Summary:
While Arturo tries to gain the love of Flora, he witnesses the history of Sicily from 1969 to 1992, miraculously dodging the crimes of the Mafia and supporting as a journalist the heroic struggle of the judges and policemen who fought this infamous organization.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: sentimental, humorous, semi serious, thought provoking, realistic, stylized, political, social, dark comedy
Similar in 81%
Suzie Gold (2004)
Plot Summary:
Suzie Gold is a twentysomething torn between the nice Jewish boy her family is keen on and the non-Jewish boy she loves.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 651
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: UK
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: feel good, humorous, realistic, not serious, touching
Similar in 75%
The Matsugane Potshot Affair (2006)
Plot Summary:
When a gold ingot and a severed human head are discovered in a small provincial town, the rush to solve the curious case wavers between tragic and darkly humorous.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 235
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, captivating, offbeat, realistic
Similar in 79%
Trust (1990)
Plot Summary:
After being thrown away from home, pregnant high school dropout Maria meets Matthew, a highly educated and extremely moody electronics repairman. The two begin an unusual romance built on their sense of mutual admiration and trust.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 12000
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: independent film, dark comedy, surreal, cult classic, clever, humorous, realistic, witty, talky, retro
Similar in 84%
Shakes the Clown (1991)
Plot Summary:
Shakes plods about his duties as party clown, and uses all of his free time getting seriously drunk. Binky, another clown, wins the spot on a local kiddie show, which depresses Shakes even more, and his boss threatens him with unemployment if he can't get his act under control.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: humorous, dark comedy, disturbing, surreal, talky, stylized, semi serious, parody, cult classic, clever
Similar in 83%
The Ruination of Men (2000)
Plot Summary:
Two men jump out from behind some cacti and beat a man over the head with a rock. They then take the body to the dead man's hut, and sit with his body for the night while they talk, complain and dance. Later at the police station, two women come to claim the body--a bitter, venomous wife and a younger prettier women. They fight and scrap until one of them get the responsibility for the body. Later we find out why the self-titled "King of Baseball" was killed.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 319
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Mexico, Spain
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: rough, cynical, humorous, realistic, semi serious, biting, black comedy, dark comedy, suspense
Similar in 80%
In Custody (1994)
Plot Summary:
Ismail Merchant's feature directorial debut addresses a subject close to his heart: the expressive Urdu language of Northern India, in danger of extinction as political trends and modernization obscure its contributions to Indian culture. Merchant 's treatment is wry and good humored , as his characters - an aging Urdu poet (Shashi Kapoor) and a worshipful young college lecturer - clash despite their shared passion for the beauty of words. Anita Desai adapted her novel with Shahrukh Husain, incorporating poems by Urdu author Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The movie won the President of India Gold Medal for Best Picture in 1994.(http://www.merchantivory.com/custody.html).
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 391
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK, India
Duration: 126 min
Plot tags: insightful, parallel cinema, clever, humorous, realistic, contemplative, semi serious, biting, surprise ending, suspense
Similar in 86%
The Chef's Wife (2014)
Plot Summary:
Marithé works in a training center for adults. Her mission: to help other people to change direction in their work and to find their vocation. Carole, who lives and works in the shadow cast by her husband, Sam, an energetic and talented Michelin-starred chef, arrives in the center one day. It's not so much a change in job that Carole seems to need, as a change in husband. Marithé does everything she can to help Carole set out down a new path. But what are the real motives behind this devotion? After all, Marithé doesn't seem to be impervious to Sam's charms, or to his cooking.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 563
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: humorous, tragicomedy, psychological, sentimental, captivating, feel good, realistic, not serious
Similar in 89%
The Sale of Paradise (2012)
Plot Summary:
Many immigrants, when they arrived in Spain, thought they had found paradise, soon thwarted all their dreams of prosperity. Many of them then decided to return to their land, but not so simple. In a pension match various immigrants end up discovering that deportation is the only way to return to his country.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 76
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, realistic, surreal, light, offbeat
Similar in 86%
The 92 Minutes of Mr. Baum (1997)
Plot Summary:
Balding advertising executive Mr. Baum spends more time on a new ad campaign for purple sunglasses than he does with his own family. But suddenly he is forced to reexamine his life after a doctor tells him that he has an 'aggressive' brain tumor and will die in 90 minutes.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 183
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Israel, France
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: dark comedy, thought provoking, clever, humorous, tragicomedy, realistic, surreal, contemplative, cynical, semi serious
Similar in 81%
Generation P (2011)
Plot Summary:
A chronicle of Russia's transition from communism to capitalism.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: Russia, USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: surreal, mind bending, offbeat, thought provoking, cult classic, clever, humorous, cynical, semi serious, biting
Similar in 83%
The Happy Thieves (1961)
Plot Summary:
We confess! They did it! But it's how they did it that makes it so delightful!.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 603
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: independent film, humorous, realistic, cynical, stylized, semi serious
Similar in 85%
Grassroots (2012)
Plot Summary:
Grant Cogswell, a liberal music critic decides to run for city council against a popular black incumbent and is assisted by a reporter who recently lost his job. Initially given no chance, things turn dark when Cogswell makes it into the general election. Based on a true story.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, witty, semi serious, political, clever, biting, suspense
Similar in 76%
Watching TV with the Red Chinese (2012)
Plot Summary:
In New York City in 1980, Dexter Mitchell plays half-willing big brother to his neighbors, a trio of exchange students from the People's Republic of China.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 112
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious, offbeat, non-linear, independent film