Best movies like The Sea That Thinks
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Incredible optical illusions in a story in a story in a story helps the surprised viewer finally to find out that he has been watching himself all along.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 558
Genere: Adventure, Biography, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Netherlands
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: dark, surreal, meta, experimental
Best tv shows and movies like The Sea That Thinks (2000):
Similar in 83%
Alone in the T-Shirt Zone (1986)
Plot Summary:
Michael Mikaele is a young man in a catatonic state living in a psychiatric ward where his doctor thinks her sympathies for him justify raping him. It's all part of his mad world, and we see what brought him there. He's an artist from a broken home, working for eight years at a job that he loathes, drawing pictures from sayings on sexually suggestive T-shirts. Mike's unsympathetic boss, Bill, plays bad motivational tapes over the P.A., makes Mike's girlfriend (another employee) handle him during office hours, which is espied by co-worker Joni, and refuses to let Mike have the rest of the day off even though he is clearly ill. He ties together T-shirts out the bathroom window to escape, and befriends a man, Rod, whom, unbeknownst to him, is his girlfriends father. He, however, hallucinates that the cinematographer is walking around the apartment in nothing but a towel.
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 93
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags: sex comedy, independent film
Similar in 88%
Freak Orlando (1981)
Plot Summary:
FREAK ORLANDO is divided into five more-or-less distinct sections, all featuring "Freak" Orlando, a woman, played by the late Magdalena Montezuma, who appears in various guises, and deformities, throughout.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 361
Genere: Comedy, Fantasy
Country: West Germany
Duration: 126 min
Plot tags: surreal, dark, avant garde, experimental, absurd, cult film
Similar in 88%
The Woman with Red Boots (1974)
Plot Summary:
An elderly millionaire manipulates an avant-garde writer and a happily married man.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 494
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: France, Italy, Spain
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: sex comedy, surreal
Similar in 86%
City of Pirates (1983)
Plot Summary:
A surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island of pirates and encounters a man with multiple personalities.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 904
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
Country: France, Portugal
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: surreal, rough, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 82%
The Inner Scar (1972)
Plot Summary:
A collage of dreams. Garrel made a name for himself with this film as a new Jean Vigo. With Nico (Velvet Underground). A poetic and painterly film that has been described as 'a collage of dreams'. The film was shot without a script, but Garrel had already thought up the eventual title ('the scar inside'). This title was an obsession for him, every shot had to be an expression of 'the scar inside'. Apart from Garrel himself and actor Pierre Clementi, Garrel's former partner Nico, member of the legendary Velvet Underground, played a role in the film. Another important role was for the landscape. Garrel, 23 when he made the film, was compared with Jean Vigo because of his age and talent. La cicatrice intérieure even led Claude Mauriac to call him the Rimbaud of film. (from https://www.iffr.com/en/films/la-cicatrice-int-rieure/).
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 738
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Music
Country: France
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: experimental, surreal, avant garde, weird
Similar in 80%
Dream City (1973)
Plot Summary:
A married couple of artists move to a utopian town known for its absolute freedom, but behind the surface perversion and violence are spreading.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 226
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: West Germany
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: dark, experimental, surreal, disturbing, weird
Similar in 76%
The Surrealist and His Naughty Hand (2013)
Plot Summary:
A film about Finnish artist Kalervo Palsa who was completely neglected by his peers and time.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 173
Genere: Biography, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Finland
Duration: 73 min
Plot tags: surreal, sincere, unusual plot structure, humorous, contemplative, dark comedy
Similar in 87%
The Adventures of God (2000)
Plot Summary:
It tells the story of a man and a woman trapped inside what appears to be a dream set in the labyrinthine hallways, mysterious rooms of a large hotel in the 30's, facing the sea.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 158
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Argentina
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: art house, captivating, surreal, absurd, experimental
Similar in 82%
Escape from the 'Liberty' Cinema (1990)
Plot Summary:
The film is set just before Poland's communist regime came to an end, and the central character is a provincial censor (Janusz Gajos), a tired, sloppy, lonely man, whose wife has long since left him. For him, censorship is both an art and a game, but he does not enjoy it. During a screening of a sentimental Polish melodrama called "Daybreak" at the Liberty cinema across the road from the censor's office, the actors start to rebel and refuse to speak their lines. There is anarchy and when the censor is unable to control the situation, senior party officials are called in. Eventually a film critic notes that the situation reminds of "The Purple Rose of Cairo" by Woody Allen and brings a reel of the film to demonstrate. The officials watch the film with amusement until another mix-up occurs: the second projector is turned on accidentally and superimposes "Daybreak" over "Purple Rose".
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: surreal, mind bending, psychedelic, intellectual
Similar in 84%
The Bird People in China (1998)
Plot Summary:
Wada (Masahiro Motoki), a salary man, is enlisted to venture off to China to investigate a potential Jade mine. After his arrival, Wada encounters a violent, yet sentimental, yakuza (Renji Ishibashi), who takes the liberty of joining his adventure through China. Led on their long and disastrous journey to the mine by Shen, the three men come across something even more magical and enticing.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Japan
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: mesmerizing, offbeat, humorous, semi serious, weird, bizarre
Similar in 86%
Interview (1987)
Plot Summary:
Federico Fellini welcomes us into his world of film making with a mockumentary about his life in film, as a Japanese film crew follows him around.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Italy
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: art house, neorealism, mockumentary, sentimental, humorous, realistic, surreal, stylized, semi serious, meta
Similar in 80%
Takeshis' (2005)
Plot Summary:
Beat Takeshi lives the busy and sometimes surreal life of a showbiz celebrity. One day he meets his blond lookalike named Kitano, a shy convenience store cashier, who, still an unknown actor, is waiting for his big break. After their paths cross, Kitano seems to begin hallucinating about becoming Beat.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Japan
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: surreal, stylized, semi serious, mind bending, psychedelic, offbeat, non-linear, postmodern
Similar in 83%
Slipstream (2007)
Plot Summary:
Aging screenwriter Felix Bonhoeffer has lived his life in two states of existence: in reality and his own interior world. While working on a murder mystery script, and unaware that his brain is on the verge of implosion, Felix is baffled when his characters start to appear in his life, and vice versa.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: surreal, atmospheric, humorous, semi serious, mind bending, psychedelic, intellectual, existential, esoteric, independent film
Similar in 87%
The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966)
Plot Summary:
A man and his son take an allegorical stroll through life with a talking bird that spouts social and political philosophy.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Italy
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: surreal, road movie, mind bending, psychedelic, intellectual, spiritual, neorealism, mystic, thought provoking, clever
Similar in 83%
Sweet Dreams (1981)
Plot Summary:
Michele Apicella is a young film and theater director, who lives his troubles as an artist. In Italy reach the Eighties, and Michele, who was contestant in the Sixties, now finds himself in a new era full of crisis of values and ignorance. So Michele, with his works, meants to represent the typical outcast and left indifferent intellectual outcast who establishes a breach between him and the world of ordinary people.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: semi autobiographical
Similar in 84%
Pastoral Hide and Seek (1974)
Plot Summary:
A young boys' coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Japan
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: surreal, experimental, psychedelic, mind bending, disturbing, avant garde, weird, cult film
Similar in 76%
Leolo (1992)
Plot Summary:
The story of an imaginative boy who pretends he is the child of a sperm-laden Sicilian tomato upon which his mother accidentally fell.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Canada, France
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, art house, humorous, dark comedy, erotic, mind bending, psychedelic, epic, controversial
Similar in 83%
Endless Poetry (2016)
Plot Summary:
A portrait of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s young adulthood, set in the 1940s and 50s, in the electric capital city of Santiago. There, he decides to become a poet and is introduced, by destiny, into the foremost bohemian and artistic circle of the time.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Chile, UK, France, Japan
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: surreal, sexy, mind bending, psychedelic, captivating, light, sincere, touching, funny, intellectual
Similar in 89%
Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream That One Calls Human Life (1995)
Plot Summary:
Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school's operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There's a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Japan, Germany
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: black and white, art house, surreal, cult classic, psychological, atmospheric, mindfuck, mind bending, psychedelic, spiritual
Similar in 86%
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)
Plot Summary:
An advertising executive jumps back and forth in time between 21st century London and 17th century La Mancha, where Don Quixote mistakes him for Sancho Panza.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 22000
Genere: Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA, Spain, France, Belgium, Portugal, UK
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags: light, feel good, humorous, captivating, entertaining, meta, fairy tale, funny, surreal, period piece
Similar in 89%
The Disaster Artist (2017)
Plot Summary:
An aspiring actor in Hollywood meets an enigmatic stranger by the name of Tommy Wiseau, the meeting leads the actor down a path nobody could have predicted; creating the worst movie ever made.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 162000
Genere: Biography, Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: feel good, light, humorous, funny, entertaining, absurd, talky, slasher, surreal, period piece
Similar in 89%
On the Silver Globe (1988)
Plot Summary:
A small group of cosmic explorers leave Earth to find freedom and start a new civilization.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Country: Poland
Duration: 166 min
Plot tags: avant garde, surreal, atmospheric, art house, mind bending, psychedelic, dark, mysterious, deep, metafiction
Similar in 80%
Mirror (1975)
Plot Summary:
A dying man in his forties remembers his past. His childhood, his mother, the war, personal moments and things that tell of the recent history of all the Russian nation.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 51000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: surreal, cerebral, atmospheric, avant garde, art house, enigmatic, serious, philosophical, psychological, thought provoking
Similar in 82%
The Fall (2006)
Plot Summary:
In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastic story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 116000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA, South Africa, India
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: surreal, offbeat, fairy tale, visual, visually stunning, touching, visually appealing, mind bending, light, psychological
Similar in 80%
The Bothersome Man (2006)
Plot Summary:
Forty-year-old Andreas arrives in a strange city with no memory of how he got there. He is presented with a job, an apartment - even a wife. But before long, Andreas notices that something is wrong. Andreas makes an attempt to escape the city, but he discovers there's no way out. Andreas meets Hugo, who has found a crack in a wall in his cellar. Beautiful music streams out from the crack. Maybe it leads to "the other side"? A new plan for escape is hatched.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: Norway, Iceland
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: surreal, enigmatic, psychological, psychedelic, philosophical, mindfuck, art house, suspenseful, dark comedy, dark
Similar in 85%
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014)
Plot Summary:
An absurdist, surrealistic and shocking pitch-black comedy, which moves freely from nightmare to fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as it muses on man’s perpetual inhumanity to man.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 19000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Sweden, Germany, Norway, France, Denmark
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: surreal, realistic, talky, lyrical, dark comedy, humorous, philosophical, semi serious, absurd, art house
Similar in 85%
The Holy Mountain (1973)
Plot Summary:
A Mexican master leads a Christ figure and other disciples to a mountain of immortal wise men. The scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky's flood of sacrilegious imagery and existential symbolism in The Holy Mountain is a spiritual quest for enlightenment pitting illusion against truth. The Alchemist (Jodorowsky) assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept's intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 47000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Mexico
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychedelic, avant garde, disturbing, art house, mindfuck, mind bending, experimental, atmospheric, stylized
Similar in 82%
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Plot Summary:
Spike Jonze’s debut feature film is a love story mix of comedy and fantasy. The story is about an unsuccessful puppeteer named Craig, who one day at work finds a portal into the head of actor John Malkovich. The portal soon becomes a passion for anybody who enters it’s mad and controlling world of overtaking another human body.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 349000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychological, cerebral, mind bending, offbeat, mindfuck, philosophical, dark comedy, disturbing, black comedy
Similar in 90%
Interstate 60 (2002)
Plot Summary:
An aspiring painter meets various characters and learns valuable lessons while traveling across America.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 36000
Genere: Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Canada, USA
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: road movie, surreal, witty, enigmatic, offbeat, independent film, mindfuck, psychological, black comedy, dark comedy
Similar in 88%
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Plot Summary:
Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo drive a red convertible across the Mojave desert to Las Vegas with a suitcase full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. As their consumption of drugs increases at an alarming rate, the stoned duo trash their hotel room and fear legal repercussions. Duke begins to drive back to L.A., but after an odd run-in with a cop, he returns to Sin City and continues his wild drug binge.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 298000
Genere: Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychedelic, atmospheric, road movie, mind bending, cult classic, dark comedy, disturbing, mindfuck, cerebral