Best movies like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

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The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

Plot Summary:

Peter Greenaway's first fiction feature (after the mock-documentary The Falls) made him immediately famous and was named one of the most original films of the 1980s by British critics. The action is set in the director's beloved 17th century. Ambitious young artist Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins) is invited by Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) to make 12 elaborate sketches of her estate. Besides money, the contract includes sexual favors that Mrs. Herbert will offer to the draughtsman in the absence of Mr. Herbert. Entirely confident in his ability to weave a web of intrigues, Mr. Neville eventually becomes a victim of someone else's elaborate scheme. The film is structured as a sophisticated intellectual puzzle like the ones popular in the 17th century.

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8 ? Women (1999)

Plot Summary:

After the death of his wife, wealthy businessman Philip Emmenthal and his son Storey open their own private harem in their family residence in Geneva (they get the idea while watching Federico Fellini's 8½ and after Storey is "given" a woman, Simato (Inoh), to waive her pachinko debts). They sign one-year contracts with eight (and a half) women to this effect. The women each have a gimmick (one is a nun, another a kabuki performer, etc.). Philip soon becomes dominated by his favourite of the concubines, Palmira, who has no interest in Storey as a lover, despite what their contract might stipulate. Philip dies, the concubines' contracts expire, and Storey is left alone with Giulietta (the titular "½", played by Fujiwara) and of course the money and the houses.

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Spring Breakers (2012)

Plot Summary:

After four college girls rob a restaurant to fund their spring break in Florida, they get entangled with a weird dude with his own criminal agenda.

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Baise-moi (2000)

Plot Summary:

Manu has lived a difficult life. Abused and violently raped, she sets off to find herself only to meet Nadine, a prostitute who has encountered one too many injustices in the world. Angry at the world, they embark on a twisted, rage-filled road trip. They choose to have sex when they please and kill when they need. Leaving a trail of mischief and dead bodies in their wake. Generating a media blitz and manhunt, soon everyone is out to capture the young fugitives.

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Young Adam (2003)

Plot Summary:

A young drifter working on a river barge disrupts his employers' lives while hiding the fact that he knows more about a dead woman found in the river than he admits.

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Performance (1970)

Plot Summary:

Young gangster Chas Devlin seeks refuge from the mob in a basement belonging to a reclusive, fading rock star Turner.

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The Baby of Mâcon (1993)

Plot Summary:

A town cursed with barren women and famine is saved by a miracle birth to an old, ugly woman: the Mother. Immediately afterwards, the old woman's Daughter (Ormond) claims to have delivered the baby herself in a virgin birth. She imprisons the Mother and begins to exploit the Baby by selling blessings to the desperate townspeople of Mâcon.

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Man Bites Dog (1992)

Plot Summary:

The activities of rampaging, indiscriminate serial killer Ben are recorded by a willingly complicit documentary team, who eventually become his accomplices and active participants. Ben provides casual commentary on the nature of his work and arbitrary musings on topics of interest to him, such as music or the conditions of low-income housing, and even goes so far as to introduce the documentary crew to his family. But their reckless indulgences soon get the better of them.

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Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

Plot Summary:

Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.

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Dogville (2003)

Plot Summary:

A barren soundstage is stylishly utilized to create a minimalist small-town setting in which a mysterious woman named Grace hides from the criminals who pursue her. The town is two-faced and offers to harbor Grace as long as she can make it worth their effort, so Grace works hard under the employ of various townspeople to win their favor. Tensions flare, however, and Grace's status as a helpless outsider provokes vicious contempt and abuse from the citizens of Dogville.

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Blue Velvet (1986)

Plot Summary:

The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of criminals who have kidnapped her child.

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Irreversible (2002)

Plot Summary:

Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass. Her boyfriend and ex-lover take matters into their own hands by hiring two criminals to help them find the rapist so that they can exact revenge. A simultaneously beautiful and terrible examination of the destructive nature of cause and effect, and how time destroys everything.

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Naked Lunch (1991)

Plot Summary:

After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally murders his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in an Islamic port town in Africa.

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Bitter Moon (1992)

Plot Summary:

An embittered husband, paralyzed and in a wheelchair, buttonholes a complete stranger and begins to tell him the story of his marriage. The stranger would like to escape, but cannot. For one thing he grows fascinated by the story. For another he is mesmerized by the man's wife, who has perfected that trick of looking a man boldly in the eye until, by looking away, he concedes sexual supremacy.

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Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)

Plot Summary:

Six outwardly average individuals have elaborate fetishes they indulge with surreptitious care. A mousy letter carrier makes dough balls she grotesquely ingests before bed. A shop clerk fixates on a TV news reader while he builds a machine to massage and masturbate him. One of his customers makes an elaborate chicken costume for a voodoo-like scene with a doll resembling his plump neighbor. She, in turn, has a doll that resembles him, which she whips and dominates in an abandoned church. The TV news reader has her own fantasy involving carp. Her husband, who is indifferent to her, steals materials to fashion elaborate artifacts that he rubs, scrapes and rolls across his body.

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The Doom Generation (1995)

Plot Summary:

Jordan White and Amy Blue, two troubled teens, pick up an adolescent drifter, Xavier Red. Together, the threesome embark on a sex and violence-filled journey through an America of psychos and quickiemarts.

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Wild at Heart (1990)

Plot Summary:

Young lovers Sailor and Lula run from the variety of weirdos that Lula's mom has hired to kill Sailor.

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Delicatessen (1991)

Plot Summary:

This bizarre surrealistic black comedy takes place in a small fictitious post-apocalyptic town where food is scarce and butcher Clapet has the macabre business of using human flesh to feed his customers. Yet when his daughter falls in love with his next slaughter victim things turn into chaos.

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In the Realm of the Senses (1976)

Plot Summary:

Based on a true story set in pre-war Japan, a man and one of his servants begin a torrid affair. Their desire becomes a sexual obsession so strong that to intensify their ardor, they forsake all, even life itself.

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Ken Park (2002)

Plot Summary:

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

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If.... (1968)

Plot Summary:

The film is a caustic portrait of a traditional English boys’ boarding school, where social hierarchy reigns supreme and power remains in the hands of distanced and ineffectual teachers and callously vicious prefects in the Upper Sixth. But three Lower Sixth students, leader Mick Travis, Wallace and Johnny decide on a shocking course of action to redress the balance of privilege once and for all.

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A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Plot Summary:

Demonic gang-leader Alex goes on the spree of rape, mugging and murder with his pack of "droogs". But he's a boy who also likes Beethoven's Ninth and a bit of "the old in-out, in-out". He later finds himself at the mercy of the state and its brainwashing experiment designed to take violence off the streets.

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American Psycho (2000)

Plot Summary:

A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.

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City of God (2002)

Plot Summary:

Cidade de Deus is a shantytown that started during the 1960s and became one of Rio de Janeiro’s most dangerous places in the beginning of the 1980s. To tell the story of this place, the movie describes the life of various characters, all seen by the point of view of the narrator, Buscapé. Buscapé was raised in a very violent environment. Despite the feeling that all odds were against him, he finds out that life can be seen with other eyes.

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Pulp Fiction (1994)

Plot Summary:

A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.