Film

Buffalo '66

Name: Buffalo '66
Genre: Drama, Romance, Comedy
Released: 1998
Cast: Vincent Gallo, Christina Ricci, Ben Gazzara, Anjelica Huston, Mickey Rourke

Drama

Vincent Gallo's debut feature is a deadpan dark comedy about a man fresh from prison who kidnaps a girl to pose as his fiancée for his parents. It's tender and brutal by turns, visually playful, emotionally strange. For anyone drawn to outsider cinema that treats loneliness and desperation as material for both comedy and genuine pathos.

TMDb rating

3.6

If you liked this

Punch-Drunk Love2002

Paul Thomas Anderson captures the same collision of romantic fantasy and social awkwardness, with Adam Sandler as a vulnerable man trying to connect. The visual language—neon, warping space, sudden violence—mirrors Gallo's off-kilter beauty.

But It's deliberately abrasive and unpleasant for long stretches. The romance at its centre doesn't ease the discomfort.

Welcome to the Dollhouse1996

Todd Solondz's vision of adolescent sexual confusion and social exile has the same darkly funny, slightly queasy tone. Dawn Weiner is as unglamorous and real as Layla, and the film never cheats by making cruelty cute.

But It's aggressively unglamorous. Some viewers find it depressing rather than funny, and the comedy lands through pain.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer2017

Yorgos Lanthimos creates the same sense of rules nobody has explained to you. Relationships feel like hostage situations dressed as family drama, with the same fractured logic and visual precision that Gallo brings to his world.

But It's colder and more deliberately artificial. If you need warmth underneath the strangeness, this will leave you out in the cold.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Buffalo '66

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Loving2016

Both films take a scenario of coercion and captivity and suggest—carefully, without excusing—that something real might still grow there. Both refuse the easy judgment.

Jeff Nichols' film is about a man (Joel Edgerton) who kidnaps a woman (Ruth Negga) and holds her captive—a true crime story told with tenderness and without judgment. Like Gallo, Nichols finds something broken but genuine in the relationship that forms.

But It asks you to sympathize with a kidnapper. Many viewers find that moral compromise impossible, and the film offers no reassurance that this is okay.

Happiness1998

Todd Solondz again—the same year as Buffalo '66. It's another film where depravity and loneliness coexist with moments of genuine tenderness, where the comedy comes from watching broken people try and fail to connect.

But It goes to much darker places regarding abuse and violence. The tonal shifts can feel jarring rather than moving.

Gerry2002

Gus Van Sant's minimalist film about two men lost in the desert has the same obsession with watching characters in real time, suffering through ordinary moments. It trusts silence and repetition to create meaning.

But It's extremely slow and asks for patience that most viewers won't give. Very little happens in the conventional sense.

In the Mood for Love2000

Wong Kar-wai's film is about yearning and the impossibility of connection, rendered in impossibly beautiful frames. Like Gallo's work, it makes loneliness feel visual and kinetic rather than merely sad.

But The pacing is meditative to the point of stasis. If you're looking for plot momentum, you won't find it.

Girls2012

Lena Dunham's series captures the same uncomfortable specificity about broken people and dysfunctional relationships, with the same refusal to make likability a requirement. It finds comedy in moral failure and sexual confusion.

But It's deliberately abrasive and often repellent. Many viewers find the characters too self-absorbed to spend time with.

The Master2012

Paul Thomas Anderson returns to the idea of two people locked in an impossible relationship. It has the same craftsmanship and willingness to make beauty from degradation and power imbalance.

But It's long, challenging, and deliberately unresolved. Joaquin Phoenix's performance can read as mannered rather than moving.

Kids1995

Harmony Korine's film shares Buffalo '66's fascination with youth and predation, its documentary-realist style, and its refusal to judge or explain its characters' behaviour. It's unflinching and strange.

But It's deeply disturbing and exploitative in its own way. The casual violence toward young people is difficult to sit with.

The Sopranos1999

Both center on men whose damage is so profound that only elaborate fantasies—therapy sessions, pretend relationships, criminal enterprise—make life bearable. Both are funny because the delusion is so transparent.

Started the year after Buffalo '66, it shares the same DNA: a man unable to function in the world, seeking therapy and connection while committing violence. It's darkly funny about male fragility and the desperation of wanting to be loved.

But It's 86 hours long and requires absolute commitment. The payoff is not a conclusion but a refusal to conclude.

Safe1995

Both Gallo and Haynes use precise, controlled visual language to create distance from their characters' suffering. Both suggest that connection—medical, romantic, human—is fundamentally impossible. Both are formally beautiful about despair.

Todd Haynes' film about a woman developing mysterious environmental illness is formally inventive and deeply unsettling. Like Buffalo '66, it's visually controlled and emotionally oblique—you feel watched, never comforted. The artificiality is the point.

But It's deliberately blank and doesn't offer psychological insight or catharsis. Many find it depressing and remote rather than illuminating.