Best movies like My Own Private Idaho

Similar in 83%

Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006)

Plot Summary:

A lyrical telling of the coming of age of a 13-year-old boy who learns to cope with his new found sexuality and his unrequited love for the cool kid in school.

Similar in 78%

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)

Plot Summary:

Sissy Hankshaw is born with enormous thumbs that help her hitchhiking through the US from a young age. She becomes a model in advertising and her NY agent 'the Countess' sends her to his ranch in CA to shoot a commercial, set against the background of mating whooping cranes. There, she befriends Bonanza Jellybean, one of the cowgirls at the beauty- ranch.

Similar in 79%

Close (2022)

Plot Summary:

Two thirteen year-olds have always been incredibly close but they drift apart after the intimacy of their relationship is questioned by schoolmates. An emotionally transformative and unforgettable portrait of the intersection of friendship and love, identity and independence, and heartbreak and healing.

Similar in 85%

Sauvage (2018)

Plot Summary:

Leo is 22 and sells his body on the street for a bit of cash. The men come and go, and he stays right here... longing for love. He doesn’t know what the future will bring. He hits the road. His heart is pounding.

Similar in 79%

Bad Night (1986)

Plot Summary:

Mala Noche is the film debut from director Gus van Sant. The film portrays the unanswered love of an American man toward a young Mexican man.

Similar in 82%

L.I.E. (2001)

Plot Summary:

In this biting and disturbing coming-of-age tale from writer-director Michael Cuesta, life is bittersweet along the L.I.E., also known as the Long Island Expressway, as suburban teen Howie Blitzer learns all too clearly. In the space of a week, he loses nearly everything and everyone he knows and is left to navigate his adolescence virtually unsupervised.

Similar in 86%

Mandragora (1997)

Plot Summary:

Marek is a 15-year-old from a provincial village who runs away to Prague when he begins to fail at school. He is mugged shortly after arriving in the city and is rescued by Honza with the promise of work. Marek is taken to an apartment, drugged, and becomes a male prostitute. He is a bit smarter than his colleagues and teams up with a friend, David, in order to go after bigger scores – to cash in and get out. They manage to stash away a bit of money, but when it comes time to return home, Marek loses his nerve and is soon back in the city.

Similar in 89%

Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)

Plot Summary:

A driver and a mechanic travel around the United States hopping from drag strip to drag strip in a 1955 Chevy Bel-Air coupe. They race for money, betting with their competitors. The pair gain a young and talkative female stowaway. Along the way they unintentionally attract a well-to-do drifter driving a new Pontiac GTO. This older man, looking for attention, antagonizes their efforts.

Similar in 84%

Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Plot Summary:

A murder in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.

Similar in 90%

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Plot Summary:

A drop-out from upper-class America picks up work along the way on oil-rigs when his life isn't spent in a squalid succession of bars, motels, and other points of interest.

Similar in 83%

Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

Plot Summary:

Bob and his friends Dianne, Rick and Nadine have been drug addicts for years and live from one high to the next. Gus Van Sant attempts to show an intimate look into the lives of heroin addicts with his film Drugstore Cowboy.

Similar in 84%

Moonlight (2016)

Plot Summary:

The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.

Similar in 75%

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Plot Summary:

A naive male prostitute and his sickly friend struggle to survive on the streets of New York City.

Similar in 83%

Scarecrow (1973)

Plot Summary:

Two drifters bum around, visit earthy women and discuss opening a car wash in Pittsburgh.

Similar in 76%

Wild Reeds (1994)

Plot Summary:

As the Algerian War draws to a close, a teenager with a girlfriend starts feeling homosexual urges for two of his classmates: a country boy, and a French-Algerian intellectual.

Similar in 78%

Beautiful Thing (1996)

Plot Summary:

A pair of teenage boys growing up in a working-class neighbourhood of Thamesmead, in south-east London, become aware of their homosexuality. While both were vaguely aware they might be gay, neither had ever acted on their impulses. Once they decide that they're attracted to each other, neither is sure just what to do.

Similar in 88%

Dream Boy (2008)

Plot Summary:

The story of Nathan, a young teenager who tries to flourish in a romantic relationship with neighbour Roy. The two young men will have to face the brutal reality of the rural south of the United States in the late 1970s.

Similar in 89%

Come Undone (2000)

Plot Summary:

Story of two gorgeous, young French boys who begin a passionate relationship that boils over and threatens to destroy both their lives. Shy Mathieu is 18-years-old and on summer vacation in the south of France. He spends his days lazily sunning himself at the beach, until he spies the handsome Cédric and falls in love. The film, like a dream, flows back and forth between the past and present, often asking us to fill the deliberate jumps in time.

Similar in 85%

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Plot Summary:

Two modern-day cowboys meet on a shepherding job in the summer of '63, the two share a raw and powerful summer together that turns into a lifelong relationship conflicting with the lives they are supposed to live.

Similar in 75%

Maurice (1987)

Plot Summary:

In 1909, Maurice Hall (James Wilby) enters Cambridge, where he befriends wealthy Clive Durham (Hugh Grant). Clive confesses he is sexually attracted to Maurice, who realizes he is a homosexual when he begins to return Clive's feelings. The two embark on an intense but chaste affair to avoid tarnishing Clive's reputation, but eventually the relationship ends, and Clive marries Anne (Phoebe Nicholls). While visiting Clive, Maurice is drawn toward his friend's servant, Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves).

Similar in 85%

Summer of 85 (2020)

Plot Summary:

What do you dream of when you're 16 years old and in a seaside resort in Normandy in the 1980s? A best friend? A lifelong teen pact? Scooting off on adventures on a boat or a motorbike? Living life at breakneck speed? No. You dream of death. Because you can't get a bigger kick than dying. And that's why you save it till the very end. The summer holidays are just beginning, and this story recounts how Alexis grew into himself.

Similar in 82%

Mysterious Skin (2004)

Plot Summary:

A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.

Similar in 79%

All About My Mother (1999)

Plot Summary:

A single mother in Madrid sees her only son die on his birthday as he runs to seek an actress' autograph. Beside herself with grief, she returns to Barcelona to tell the boy's father about the death of the son he never knew he had.

Similar in 87%

Boogie Nights (1997)

Plot Summary:

Set in 1977, back when sex was safe, pleasure was a business and business was booming, idealistic porn producer Jack Horner aspires to elevate his craft to an art form. Horner discovers Eddie Adams, a hot young talent working as a busboy in a nightclub, and welcomes him into the extended family of movie-makers, misfits and hangers-on that are always around. Adams' rise from nobody to a celebrity adult entertainer is meteoric, and soon the whole world seems to know his porn alter ego, "Dirk Diggler". Now, when disco and drugs are in vogue, fashion is in flux and the party never seems to stop, Adams' dreams of turning sex into stardom are about to collide with cold, hard reality.

Similar in 79%

Savage Grace (2007)

Plot Summary:

This examination of a famous scandal from the 1970s explores the relationship between Barbara Baekeland and her only son, Antony. Barbara, a lonely social climber unhappily married to the wealthy but remote plastics heir Brooks Baekeland, dotes on Antony, who is homosexual. As Barbara tries to "cure" Antony of his sexuality -- sometimes by seducing him herself -- the groundwork is laid for a murderous tragedy.

Similar in 83%

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Plot Summary:

A coming-of-age story based on the best-selling novel by Stephen Chbosky, which follows 15-year-old freshman Charlie, an endearing and naive outsider who is taken under the wings of two seniors. A moving tale of love, loss, fear and hope - and the unforgettable friends that help us through life.

Similar in 79%

Trainspotting (1996)

Plot Summary:

Renton, deeply immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene, tries to clean up and get out, despite the allure of the drugs and influence of friends.

Similar in 81%

A Home at the End of the World (2004)

Plot Summary:

Three friends form a bond over the year, Johnathan is gay, Clare is straight and Bobby is neither, instead he loves the people he loves. As their lives go on there is tension and tears which culminate in a strong yet fragile friendship between the three.

Similar in 77%

American Beauty (1999)

Plot Summary:

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.

Similar in 77%

Milk (2008)

Plot Summary:

The story of California's first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, who became an outspoken agent for change, seeking equal rights and opportunities for all. His great love for the city and its people brought him backing from young and old, straight and gay, alike – at a time when prejudice and violence against gays was openly accepted as the norm.