Film
Four Good Days
A raw, unglamorous portrait of addiction and maternal love. Glenn Close and Mila Kunis navigate the jagged terrain of recovery—neither character likeable, both desperately human. It's a chamber piece about the gap between wanting to help and being able to, and what forgiveness costs. Demanding but honest.
If you liked this
Requiem for a Dream2000
Aronofsky's harrowing descent into addiction across four lives. Visually relentless, structurally innovative, and devastatingly sad about how quickly ruin arrives.
But The style can feel heavy-handed, and the assault of repetitive music and imagery becomes deliberately suffocating. Some find it overwrought.

Moonlight2016
A film about becoming yourself despite the world's indifference. Tender, specific, alive to small moments of connection. The quiet here is as powerful as any shouting.
But Deliberately paced and interior. If you need plot momentum, this will feel slow. Some scenes are ambiguous by design.

The Florida Project2017
Children and their families living in motels. Directed with such love and specificity that heartbreak sneaks up on you. The world as seen from underneath, never patronizing.
But Shot handheld, mostly naturalistic. If you need conventionally beautiful cinematography, the realism can feel chaotic. Deliberately understated ending will frustrate some.

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The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Winter Light1963
Both examine how people stay present for each other when faith (in recovery, in God, in the person) wavers. Both show love as a choice made repeatedly, not a feeling.
Bergman's darkest film about a pastor questioning faith while his ex-lover sits in his church. Bleak, compact, theologically furious. The despair is cleaner and colder than everyday sadness.
But Swedish cinema from 1963—black and white, slow, oblique. Very interior and philosophical rather than dramatic. Some find it punishing rather than moving.

More like this (7)
Transparent2014
A family implodes and remakes itself after a parent's transition. Messy, theatrical, alive with contradiction. Everyone is partly right and mostly wrong at once.
But Some seasons felt indulgent even to admirers. The emotional intensity becomes relentless. Also: the final film exists, and you have to decide if you want to go there.

Trainspotting1996
Boyle's heroin-soaked Edinburgh; stylish, brutal, and blackly funny about addiction's logic. It makes the incomprehensible visceral in a way that tutorial couldn't.
But The film feels like it celebrates what it shows. Some find it morally queasy despite itself. Also very much a 90s aesthetic, which dates it or charms it depending on your taste.

Joker2019
A character study of a man's unraveling. Phillips commits to showing the small humiliations and disconnections that accumulate until they combust. Phoenix is extraordinary.
But It's exhausting and bleak without offering any counterweight. Some saw it as nihilistic rather than tragic. The style can feel designed to provoke rather than illuminate.

We Need to Talk About Kevin2011
A mother reckons with her son's violence and her own ambivalence about motherhood. Formally daring, morally unsettling, refuses simple explanations.
But Unconventionally structured, which some find pretentious. The subject matter is horrific. Tilda Swinton's performance is so controlled it reads cold to some viewers.

Beautiful Boy2018
A father and son navigate the father's addiction and recovery. Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet crack open the tenderness underneath the wreckage. Based on true memoirs.
But The film's structure can feel repetitive—relapse, recovery, repeat. Some find it sentimental despite its subject. The father is the centre of gravity, not the son using.

A Ghost Story2017
A meditative film about grief, time, and what we leave behind. Quiet and strange and somehow about both loss and the living. Casey Affleck under a sheet has never been more moving.
But The pacing is glacial. A long scene of someone eating a pie. If you need conventional narrative momentum, this will feel pointless rather than profound.

The Farewell2019
Both watch a family member prepare for something hard while witholding full honesty. Both find tenderness and dark humour in care that cannot be openly acknowledged.
A Chinese-American woman navigates family, culture, and mortality while keeping a diagnosis secret. Funny, tender, specific. Lulu Wang finds the absurdity in grief without diminishing it.
But Some scenes are in Mandarin without subtitles—the film refuses to translate everything for the audience. Genre tones shift unpredictably. Might feel slight to those expecting something heavier.

People
Cast
Glenn CloseDeb
Mila KunisMolly
Stephen RootChris
Joshua LeonardSean
Rebecca FieldCoach Miller
Michael HyattLisa
Sam HenningsDale
Mandy June TurpinDale's Girlfriend
Violet BrinsonSammy
Gloria GarayuaDetox Receptionist
Rebecca TilneySpa Client
Carla GalloAshley
Directing
- Rodrigo GarcíaDirector
Writing
- Eli SaslowWriter
- Rodrigo GarcíaWriter
Production
- Veronica Collins RooneyCasting
- Jacob AvnetProducer
- Jai KhannaProducer
- Jon AvnetProducer
- Marina GrasicProducer
- Rodrigo GarcíaProducer
- Lauren MillerProduction Supervisor