Film

Starlet

A tender, unglamorous look at unlikely connection. Jane, a young woman drifting in Los Angeles, finds a fortune hidden in a yard sale purchase and becomes entangled with Sadie, the elderly woman who sold it. Quietly funny, genuinely moving, with no agenda beyond watching two people matter to each other.

TMDb rating3.4

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Paterson2016

Another Sean Baker film (Starlet's director) about quiet grace in ordinary lives. A bus driver writes poetry, loves his wife, rescues a puppy. It's small and perfect and will stay with you.

But It's slow and plotless. If you need things to happen, you'll feel like you're watching someone's diary.

Paterson poster

Wendy and Lucy2008

Michelle Williams gives a heartbreaking performance as a drifting woman and her dog. Like Starlet, it finds profound humanity in precarity and economic hardship without ever preaching.

But Bleak. There are no comforting resolutions, just the weight of survival.

Wendy and Lucy poster

The Farewell2019

A family keeps a cancer diagnosis from their grandmother. It's funny, tender, and understands how love and deception can be the same thing. Lulu Wang captures the strangeness of intergenerational connection.

But It moves between tones in ways some find jarring rather than charming.

The Farewell poster

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring2003

Both films trust silence and the camera to do the emotional work. They find wholeness in small gestures and believe in the power of simply bearing witness to another person.

A Buddhist master and his student live on a floating monastery in Korea. Kim Ki-duk's film is meditative, cyclical, and concerned with how we wound each other and what forgiveness looks like. Visually perfect.

But It's a poem, not a story. Entirely visual at times. If you need plot and dialogue, you'll think nothing is happening.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring poster
More like this (7)

Past Lives2023

Two people separated by emigration reunite years later. It's achingly quiet about love, memory, and the lives we might have lived. The screenplay feels like it was written with a feather.

But Almost nothing happens. If you need conflict or resolution, this will frustrate you deeply.

Past Lives poster

Columbus2017

Two strangers meet in Columbus, Indiana and spend one day together. A meditation on architecture, grief, and talking to someone who understands you. Achingly intimate.

But The emotional register is so low it reads as cold to many viewers. Some will find it mannered.

Columbus poster

After the Storm2016

Koreeda Hirokazu's portrait of a failed man and his aging mother. Finds tenderness in aimlessness. A reminder that small moments between people are everything.

But It's very Japanese in its ellipses and restraint. Viewers impatient with subtlety will be frustrated.

After the Storm poster

Christine2016

Rebecca Hall as a real-life newswoman unraveling on camera. Precise, devastating, and concerned only with interior collapse and small kindnesses from those around her.

But It's depressing and ends in tragedy. No catharsis, only the sadness of watching someone disappear.

Christine poster

Tiny Furniture2010

Lena Dunham's debut about a post-college woman drifting through New York with her artist parents. Funny, awkward, deeply honest about aimlessness and self-sabotage.

But Made on a tiny budget, it shows. The aesthetic can feel amateurish or precious depending on your tolerance for indie flatness.

Tiny Furniture poster

A Serious Man2009

Both films locate the sacred in the quotidian. Both are about searching—for money, for meaning—and discovering that the search itself is the point. Both trust their audiences to sit with ambiguity.

The Coen Brothers' only genuinely spiritual film: a man's life fragmenting in 1960s Minnesota while he seeks meaning. It's about uncertainty and connection, and uses Jewish philosophy the way Starlet uses yard sales—as a way into something infinite.

But It's bleak and refuses neat answers. Very funny, but in ways that can feel cold.

A Serious Man poster

Pina2011

Both are about bodies in space and how physical presence creates meaning. Starlet and Pina share an unstudied grace—they believe in showing, not explaining. Both are essentially about love made visible through simple proximity.

Wim Wenders' documentary about choreographer Pina Bausch, filmed in 3D. It's a visual love letter to dance and creativity. Watching it is like being held. Pure cinema, no irony.

But It's a documentary about modern dance, which is a niche interest. The 3D can feel gimmicky if you're resistant to it.

Pina poster

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