Best movies like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Mr. Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu) is a retired Romanian engineer, spending his time in the company of his cats and booze. When he starts feeling unusually ill, he first seeks painkillers from his neighbors. It soon becomes apparent that Lazarescu is indeed sick, and an ambulance arrives with a nurse (Luminita Gheorghiu) who has a few ideas about what could be the problem. However, a major traffic accident and poor organization leaves little room in Romanian hospitals for the fading Lazarescu.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 16000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Romania
Duration: 153 min
Plot tags: sincere, realistic, contemplative, bleak, meditative, dark comedy, sad, serious, psychological, captivating
Best tv shows and movies like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005):
Similar in 88%
Arrhythmia (2017)
Plot Summary:
Oleg is a young gifted paramedic. His wife Katya works as a nurse at the hospital emergency department. She loves Oleg, but is fed up with him caring more about patients than her. She tells him she wants a divorce. The new head of Oleg’s EMA department is a cold-hearted manager who’s got new strict rules to implement. Oleg couldn’t care less about the rules – he’s got lives to save; his attitude gets him in trouble with the new boss. The crisis at work coincides with the personal life crisis. Caught up between their patients, alcohol-fueled off-shifts, and an evolving health care system, Oleg and Katya have to find the binding force that will keep them together.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia, Finland, Germany
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: art house, depressing, melancholic, disturbing, sad, crying
Similar in 88%
The Good Heart (2009)
Plot Summary:
Brian Cox stars as Jacques, the curmudgeonly owner of a gritty New York dive bar that serves as home to a motley assortment of professional drinkers. Jacques is determinedly drinking and smoking himself to death when he meets Lucas (Dano), a homeless young man who has already given up on life. Determined to keep his legacy alive, Jacques deems Lucas is a fitting heir and takes him under his wing, schooling him in the male-centric laws of his alcoholic clubhouse: no new customers, no fraternizing with customers and, absolutely no women. Lucas is a quick study, but their friendship is put to the test when the distraught and beautiful April (Isild Le Besco) shows up at the bar seeking shelter, and Lucas insists they help her out.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Iceland, Denmark, USA, France, Germany
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, sincere, realistic, independent film, thought provoking, social, sad, crying, psychological
Similar in 79%
12:08 East of Bucharest (2006)
Plot Summary:
It's the 22nd of December. Sixteen years have passed since the revolution, and in a small town Christmas is about to come. Piscoci, an old retired man is preparing for another Christmas alone. Manescu, the history teacher, tries to keep up with his debts. Jderescu, the owner of a local television post, seems not to be so interested in the upcoming holidays. For him, the time to face history has come. Along with Manescu and Piscoci, he is trying to answer for himself a question which for 16 years has not had an answer: "Was it or wasn't it a revolution in their town?".
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Romania
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: humorous, captivating, witty, semi serious, dark comedy, contemplative, slow cinema, aesthetic, realistic
Similar in 87%
Article 99 (1992)
Plot Summary:
Dr. Richard Sturgess leads a team of compassionate doctors at a veteran's hospital. Along with Drs. Morgan, Handleman and Van Dorn, he fights to deliver adequate care to needy veterans in the face of funding cuts and a corrupt administration. To succeed, the staff may have to bend the rules and circumvent the villainous "Article 99," a bureaucratic loophole that prevents veterans from receiving the benefits they deserve.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: humorous, thought provoking, realistic, semi serious, biting, medical drama, independent film, sentimental, light, feel good
Similar in 77%
Critical Care (1997)
Plot Summary:
Werner Ernst is a young hospital resident who becomes embroiled in a legal battle between two half-sisters who are fighting over the care of their comatose father. But are they really fighting over their father's care, or over his $10 million estate? Meanwhile, Werner must contend with his nutty supervisor, who insists that he only care for patients with full insurance. Can Werner sidestep the hospital's legal team and do what's best for the patient?.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Australia, USA
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: black comedy, humorous, cynical, dark comedy, independent film, clever, realistic, witty, semi serious, biting
Similar in 78%
In the Heart (2014)
Plot Summary:
Masha (37) is in an overwhelming relationship with Luuk, father of two and separated. Nothing seems to stand in their way until Luuk turns incurably ill, leaving Masha without status.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 349
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Netherlands, Belgium
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, touching, serious, realistic, captivating
Similar in 89%
Shrink (2009)
Plot Summary:
Unable to cope with a recent personal tragedy, LA's top celebrity shrink turns into a pothead with no concern for his appearance and a creeping sense of his inability to help his patients.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 19000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, depressing, emotional, sentimental, serious, sincere, touching, dark comedy, philosophical
Similar in 83%
Winter Passing (2005)
Plot Summary:
Actress Reese Holden has been offered a small fortune by a book editor if she can secure for publication the love letters that her father, a reclusive novelist, wrote to her mother, who has since passed away. Returning to Michigan, Reese finds that an ex-grad student and a would-be musician have moved in with her father, who cares more about his new friends than he does about his own health and well-being.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: touching, emotional, serious, realistic, heartbreaking, cult classic, psychological, clever, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 78%
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)
Plot Summary:
Gabita is pregnant, abortion is strictly forbidden in Romania during the communist regime. Despite this it is common practice and Gabita wants an abortion. The movie follows her and her friend Otilia during the day she has made the appointment with Mr. Bebe to have the abortion.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 63000
Genere: Drama
Country: Romania, Belgium
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: depressing, disturbing, bleak, emotional, melancholic, tense, controversial, art house, independent film, serious
Similar in 85%
All or Nothing (2002)
Plot Summary:
Penny's love for her partner, taxi-driver Phil, has run dry. He is a gentle, philosophical guy, and she works on the checkout at a supermarket.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, France
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: depressing, emotional, bleak, serious, realistic, meditative, sentimental, sincere, talky, offbeat
Similar in 87%
Love Liza (2002)
Plot Summary:
Following the unexplained suicide of his wife Liza, website designer Wilson Joel turns to huffing gasoline fumes and remote control gaming while avoiding an inevitable conflict with his mother-in-law.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France, Germany, USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: bleak, emotional, psychological, touching, grim, meditative, independent film, terrifying, tense, serious
Similar in 84%
Wit (2001)
Plot Summary:
A renowned professor is forced to reassess her life when she is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: depressing, sincere, emotional, touching, sentimental, thought provoking, contemplative, sad, christian film, clever
Similar in 88%
Hippocrates (2014)
Plot Summary:
Benjamin is meant to be a great doctor, he’s certain of it. But his first experience as a junior doctor in the hospital ward where his father works doesn’t turn out the way he hoped it would. Responsibility is overwhelming, his father is all but present, and his co-junior partner, a foreign doctor, is far more experimented than he is. This internship will force Benjamin to confront his limits… and start his way to adulthood.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, semi serious, captivating, social, humorous, contemplative
Similar in 88%
Aaltra (2004)
Plot Summary:
In this pitch black comedy the rivalry between two neighbors escalates into an all out war. Through a maintenance error on a tractor they both end up, paralyzed, in a wheelchair. It seems they are doomed to stay together. They no longer focus their rage on each other but on the manufacturer of the tractor, in Helsinki. So get ready for a hilarious wheelchair road movie.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Belgium, France
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: road movie, dark comedy, humorous, semi serious, black and white, black comedy, dark, offbeat, tragic
Similar in 88%
One-Way Ticket to Mombasa (2002)
Plot Summary:
Pete loses his consciousness while playing in a pop band. The diagnosis is harsh and the doctor cannot say for sure whether Pete will celebrate his 18th birthday. One night, encouraged by the vodka on Jusa's 18th birthday, Pete confesses his love to Kata, his dream girl. Together with Jusa, they go to Lapland where Kata has her summer job. In Jusa's wild company, Pete experiences something which he never felt before as they decide to take a trip to Mombasa via Lapland.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Finland
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: road movie, sentimental, touching, humorous, semi serious, realistic, sincere, captivating, offbeat
Similar in 86%
Mondays in the Sun (2002)
Plot Summary:
After the closure of their shipyard in Northern Spain, a few former workers: Santa, José, Lino, Amador, Sergei and Reina keep in touch. They meet mainly at a bar owned by their former colleague Rico. Santa is the most superficially confident and the unofficial leader of the group. A court case hangs over him relating to a shipyard lamp he smashed during protest against the closure. José is bitter that his wife, Ana, is employed when he is not. The gap between them is widening and he is fearful that she will leave him for a co-worker. Despite arthritic legs, Ana endures night shifts at a fish factory and thinks her looks are now lost. Not everyone seems to agree including her boss. Lino, an aging family man doggedly pursuing positions beyond his qualifications. The oldest member of the group, Amador, has degenerated into alcoholism after being abandoned by his wife; maintaining an increasingly transparent pretense that his wife will soon return from holiday.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 15000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain, France, Italy
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: touching, sincere, realistic, political, psychological, serious, feel good, bleak, comedy drama, social
Similar in 87%
Songs from the Second Floor (2000)
Plot Summary:
A film poem inspired by the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. A story about our need for love, our confusion, greatness and smallness and, most of all, our vulnerability. It is a story with many characters, among them a father and his mistress, his youngest son and his girlfriend. It is a film about big lies, abandonment and the eternal longing for companionship and confirmation.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 20000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Germany
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: surreal, atmospheric, black comedy, philosophical, art house, disturbing, talky, depressing, melancholic, meditative
Similar in 80%
The Weather Man (2005)
Plot Summary:
A Chicago weather man, separated from his wife and children, debates whether professional and personal success are mutually exclusive.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 83000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA, Germany
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: depressing, realistic, dark comedy, sincere, emotional, black comedy, sentimental, semi serious, psychological, philosophical
Similar in 81%
Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981)
Plot Summary:
Ken Harrison is an artist that lives to make sculptures. One day he is involved in a car accident, and is paralyzed from his neck down. All he can do is talk and move his head, and he wants to die. Whilst he is in hospital he makes friends with some of the staff, and they support him when he goes to trial to be allowed to die.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: sad, touching, emotional, psychological, sincere, uplifting, serious, realistic, biting, sentimental
Similar in 87%
Amour (2012)
Plot Summary:
Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 105000
Genere: Drama
Country: Austria, France, Germany
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: philosophical, reflective, sad, sincere, art house, emotional, depressing, compassionate, breathtaking, disturbing
Similar in 87%
A Serious Man (2009)
Plot Summary:
A Serious Man is the story of an ordinary man's search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances Sy Ableman.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 148000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK, France, USA
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: dark comedy, black comedy, philosophical, ironic, intellectual, cynical, meditative, talky, cult classic, bleak
Similar in 87%
Naked (1993)
Plot Summary:
Johnny flees Manchester for London, to avoid a beating from the family of a girl he has raped. There he finds an old girlfriend, and spends some time homeless, spending much of his time ranting at strangers, and meeting characters in plights very much like his own.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 43000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: disturbing, talky, compassionate, realistic, philosophical, art house, serious, dark comedy, black comedy, existential
Similar in 77%
Hesher (2010)
Plot Summary:
A young boy has lost his mother and is losing touch with his father and the world around him. Then he meets Hesher who manages to make his life even more chaotic.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 54000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: bleak, realistic, independent film, serious, touching, emotional, dark comedy, thought provoking, visually appealing, melancholic
Similar in 79%
Aurora (2010)
Plot Summary:
An apartment kitchen: a man and a woman discuss Little Red Riding Hood, their voices hushed, mindful of waking the little girl sleeping next room. Waste land on the city outskirts: behind a line of abandoned trailers, the man silently watches what seems to be a family. The same city, the same man: driving through traffic with two hand-made firing pins for a hunting rifle. The man is 42 years old, his name - Viorel. Troubled by obscure thoughts, he drives across the city to a destination known only to him.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Romania, France, Switzerland, Germany
Duration: 181 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, bleak, serious, contemplative, slow cinema, aesthetic, sincere, realistic, enigmatic
Similar in 89%
Withnail & I (1987)
Plot Summary:
Two out-of-work actors -- the anxious, luckless Marwood and his acerbic, alcoholic friend, Withnail -- spend their days drifting between their squalid flat, the unemployment office and the pub. When they take a holiday "by mistake" at the country house of Withnail's flamboyantly gay uncle, Monty, they encounter the unpleasant side of the English countryside: tedium, terrifying locals and torrential rain.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 47000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: black comedy, dark comedy, funny, art house, cult classic, offbeat, atmospheric, grim, independent film, clever
Similar in 77%
The Savages (2007)
Plot Summary:
A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 38000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: sentimental, realistic, independent film, emotional, compassionate, touching, depressing, melancholic, sincere, humorous
Similar in 77%
Beginners (2010)
Plot Summary:
A young man is rocked by two announcements from his elderly father: that he has terminal cancer, and that he has a young male lover.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 94000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: touching, sad, emotional, sentimental, sincere, heartbreaking, romantic, visually appealing, indie film, feel good
Similar in 88%
Happiness (1998)
Plot Summary:
The lives of many individuals connected by the desire for happiness, often from sources usually considered dark or evil.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 73000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: black comedy, cynical, independent film, dark comedy, depressing, bleak, art house, disturbing, psychological, psychedelic
Similar in 88%
The Doctor (1991)
Plot Summary:
Jack McKee is a doctor with it all: he's successful, he's rich, and he has no problems.... until he is diagnosed with throat cancer. Now that he has seen medicine, hospitals, and doctors from a patient's perspective, he realises that there is more to being a doctor than surgery and prescriptions.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: psychological, sentimental, touching, emotional, uplifting, scary, depressing, sincere, serious, realistic
Similar in 90%
Lost in Translation (2003)
Plot Summary:
Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 480000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA, Japan
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: melancholic, atmospheric, offbeat, psychological, artsy, emotional, art house, visual, contemplative, heartbreaking