Best movies like Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets
Last updated March 2024
Looking for movies like Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets? Contribute your expertise to lead others to movies and tv shows you've seen before that might interest them too. Facilitate widening the network of individuals proposing videos to each other. We welcome your involvement!
Plot Summary:
Conditions have been better for the nameless protagonist: his grandmother is a shoplifter and his war criminal father and sister have an unhealthy, intimate relationship with the family rabbit.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Japan
Duration: 137 min
Plot tags: avant garde, experimental, offbeat, disturbing, erotic drama, art house, surreal, psychedelic, weird, cult film
Best tv shows and movies like Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1971):
Similar in 83%
The Man Who Left His Will on Film (1970)
Plot Summary:
A metaphysical mystery involving a university student's camera getting stolen, and the thief then committing suicide. Looking back upon the event, the situation comes to be questioned if it happened at all.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 776
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: psychological, touching, weird
Similar in 79%
Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1969)
Plot Summary:
This is the story of a bookstore thief named Birdy, who is led through various adventures in Tokyo's Shinjuku district by salesgirl Umeko.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 817
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: experimental, avant garde, weird
Similar in 83%
Salome (1972)
Plot Summary:
A psychedelic re-telling of the biblical story. Salome is the daughter of the second wife of King Herod. The King is infatuated with her and after she fails to seduce the prophet John (The Baptist) she dances for the King in order to ask for his execution. The story is told in a bizarre way of fast cuts, repetitive dialogue and extreme satire.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 431
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 76 min
Plot tags: psychedelic, experimental, avant garde, weird
Similar in 81%
River of Fundament (2014)
Plot Summary:
Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 311
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 319 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, psychological, slow cinema, avant garde, experimental, philosophical, contemplative, art house
Similar in 85%
The Other Side of the Underneath (1972)
Plot Summary:
A surreal look at the schizophrenia of a group of girls in a therapy session.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 455
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 142 min
Plot tags: surreal, experimental, weird, cult film
Similar in 76%
Nanami: The Inferno of First Love (1968)
Plot Summary:
A teenage goldsmith with a dark past tragically falls in love with a young nude model.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 906
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: romantic drama, experimental, avant garde, independent film, freeze frame, weird, student film
Similar in 88%
Chelsea Girls (1966)
Plot Summary:
Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's art house classic follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City, presented in a split screen with a single audio track in conjunction with one side of screen.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 210 min
Plot tags: underground film, experimental, avant garde, psychedelic, art house, art film, cult classic, independent film, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 87%
Central Bazaar (1976)
Plot Summary:
For this remarkable experimental film, the provocative avant-garde legend Stephen Dwoskin gathered together a group of strangers and filmed them as they explored their fantasies over a period of five days: a project that now sounds a little like TV's Big Brother. The ceremonial gowns and make-up here not only evoke the eroticism of European horror movies but also highlight the film's interplay between performance and intimacy. Jonas Mekas called it 'theatre of life'.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 118
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 156 min
Plot tags: avant garde, erotic, experimental, independent film, weird
Similar in 82%
Gushing Prayer: A 15-Year-Old Prostitute (1971)
Plot Summary:
A young girl, already a jaded sexual veteran, embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery to find out the true reasons for her dissatisfaction and total desensitization.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 421
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: erotic, controversial, avant garde, weird
Similar in 76%
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 78%
Mandara (1971)
Plot Summary:
About two student couples who become members of an obscure sect. The cult seeks a prehistoric utopia with free sex and without society's norms and values. The students are torn between ambient pressure and the sect leader's authority to organ music in the creative camera angles.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 498
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags: independent film, weird
Similar in 78%
Day-Dream (1964)
Plot Summary:
While under sedation in a dentist's office, a young art student has sex fantasies about naked women, vampires and a beautiful patient he saw in the office.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 259
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: Japan
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: erotic, experimental, disturbing, controversial, dark fantasy, weird
Similar in 84%
Eden and After (1970)
Plot Summary:
A group of French students are drawn into the psychological and sexual games of a mysterious Dutchman. Once they sample his "fear powder" the students experience a series of hallucinations.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Czechoslovakia, Tunisia
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: allegory, disturbing, erotic, psychological thriller, enigmatic, experimental, surreal, controversial, avant garde, weird
Similar in 79%
Mekong Hotel (2012)
Plot Summary:
Shifting between fact and fiction in a hotel situated along the Mekong River, a filmmaker rehearses a movie expressing the bonds between a vampire-like mother and daughter.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 881
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Thailand, UK
Duration: 61 min
Plot tags: serious, surreal, experimental, sincere, touching, mind bending, offbeat, contemplative, avant garde
Similar in 75%
Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1971)
Plot Summary:
In a Japanese colony, children overthrow their parental guardians and attempt to form a new society. Their plan spirals out of control and they are soon lost in a web of sexual deviation and violence.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 761
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: experimental, disturbing, controversial, avant garde
Similar in 76%
Hail Mary (1985)
Plot Summary:
In this modern retelling of the Virgin birth, Mary is a student who plays basketball and works at her father's petrol station; Joseph is an earnest dropout who drives a cab. The angel Gabriel must school Joseph to accept Mary's pregnancy, while Mary comes to terms with God's plan through meditations that are sometimes angry and usually punctuated by elemental images of the sun, moon, clouds, flowers, and water.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Switzerland, UK
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: avant garde, controversial, disturbing, erotic, psychedelic, spiritual, art house, mind bending, surreal, absurd
Similar in 86%
Porcile (1969)
Plot Summary:
Two dramatic stories. In an undetermined past, a young cannibal (who killed his own father) is condemned to be torn to pieces by some wild beasts. In the second story, Julian, the young son of a post-war German industrialist, is on the way to lie down with his farm's pigs, because he doesn't like human relationships.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: disturbing, controversial, experimental, erotic, art house, art film, cult classic, avant garde, atmospheric, clever
Similar in 84%
Heart of Glass (1976)
Plot Summary:
A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: surreal, art house, disturbing, experimental, allegory, atmospheric, mind bending, psychedelic, psychological, serious
Similar in 88%
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)
Plot Summary:
A feverish collision of avant-garde aesthetics and grind-house shocks, Funeral Parade of Roses takes us on an electrifying journey into the nether-regions of the late-’60s Tokyo underworld. In Toshio Matsumoto’s controversial debut feature, seemingly nothing is taboo: neither the incorporation of visual flourishes straight from the worlds of contemporary graphic-design, painting, comic-books, and animation; nor the unflinching depiction of nudity, sex, drug-use, and public-toilets. But of all the “transgressions” here on display, perhaps one in particular stands out the most: the film’s groundbreaking and unapologetic portrayal of Japanese gay subculture.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: avant garde, disturbing, mind bending, surreal, psychedelic, social, sad, experimental, controversial, art house
Similar in 80%
I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973)
Plot Summary:
Running away from the police, Aden goes to the desert where he meets an uncivilized man who has a special link with Mother-Earth. He ends up by convincing the hermit to come along with him into another desert... the big town!.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 950
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, psychedelic, mind bending, experimental, controversial, avant garde, art house, psychotronic, deep
Similar in 76%
Go, Go, Second Time Virgin (1969)
Plot Summary:
After being raped in an unknown rooftop, nineteen year-old girl Poppo meets a mysterious boy, and both share their sexual traumas and fears, with fatal consequences.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Horror
Country: Japan
Duration: 65 min
Plot tags: erotic, experimental, disturbing, sexual, controversial, sensual, psychological, rough, bleak, serious
Similar in 90%
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 84%
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 75%
Post Tenebras Lux (2012)
Plot Summary:
Juan and his urban family live in the Mexican countryside, where they enjoy and suffer a world apart. And nobody knows if these two worlds are complementary or if they strive to eliminate one another.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico, France, Netherlands, Germany
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, serious, experimental, psychological, psychedelic, surreal, captivating, slow cinema, philosophical
Similar in 81%
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004)
Plot Summary:
The dysfunctional twenty-three years old Sarah takes her six year old natural son Jeremiah from the home of his beloved foster parents with the support of the social service to live with her. Along the years, the boy shares her insane and lowlife style and is introduced to booze and drugs and mentally, physically and sexually abused by Sarah, her lovers and her religiously fanatic family.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, UK, France, Japan
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: disturbing, psychological, rough, serious, depressing, realistic, art house, controversial, stylized, intense
Similar in 90%
Quadrophenia (1979)
Plot Summary:
Based on the 1973 rock opera album of the same name by The Who, this is the story of 60s teenager Jimmy. At work he slaves in a dead-end job. While after, he shops for tailored suits and rides his scooter as part of the London Mod scene.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 20000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: UK
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: surreal, cult classic, stylized, depressing, melancholic, lyrical, atmospheric, captivating, rough, serious
Similar in 84%
The Garden (1990)
Plot Summary:
A nearly wordless visual narrative intercuts two main stories and a couple of minor ones. A woman, perhaps the Madonna, brings forth her baby to a crowd of intrusive paparazzi; she tries to flee them. Two men who are lovers marry and are arrested by the powers that be. The men are mocked and pilloried, tarred, feathered, and beaten. Loose in this contemporary world of electrical-power transmission lines is also Jesus. The elements, particularly fire and water, content with political power, which is intolerant and murderous.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Germany, Japan
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic, art house, disturbing, cult classic, experimental, independent film, clever, offbeat
Similar in 82%
Gummo (1997)
Plot Summary:
Solomon and Tummler are two teenagers killing time in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that has never recovered from the tornado that ravaged the community in the 1970s.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 38000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: disturbing, surreal, dark comedy, experimental, independent film, art house, bleak, psychedelic, offbeat, erotic
Similar in 83%
Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)
Plot Summary:
A troubled rock star descends into madness in the midst of his physical and social isolation from everyone.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 84000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Music
Country: UK
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: psychedelic, surreal, psychological, disturbing, experimental, adult animation, stylized, mindfuck, mind bending, scary
Similar in 89%
The Piano Teacher (2001)
Plot Summary:
Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 70000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: France, Austria, Germany
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: sexual, disturbing, psychological, controversial, bleak, emotional, art house, serious, erotic, psycho sexual