Recommendations Based On Beloved Movies

If you love Heat, When Harry Met Sally, or Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, try out these lesser known gems

Jan 22, 2021

Happy Friday, DYLAers! We’re doing something a little different this week. Instead of one unifying theme, we are recommending movies based on the ones you already love. For each suggestion, we list a popular movie or two and then recommend a similar lesser known movie that you might like. Hopefully you find something interesting you haven’t seen before.

In addition, we want your feedback. We are soliciting suggestions for future newsletters! If you have a theme -- it could be a genre, actor/actress, director, whatever -- that you’d like to see a newsletter on, please reply to this email! Here’s our archive if you want to look back at what we’ve done before.

Drew recommends…

If you love: Heat, The Town, or Inside Man

Then you might like: Den of Thieves (streaming on Netflix)

You’re probably either in or out on something like Den of Thieves. This is a movie where Gerard Butler plays a degenerate detective named Big Nick, who, not long after eating a donut from a bloody crime scene, tells a criminal that, “You’re not the bad guys. We are.” This is a gritty heist flick that also stars 50 Cent and Ice Cube’s son. Honestly, you probably already know if this sounds up your alley or not.

While Den of Thieves wears its heist movie influences very obviously on its sleeve, it’s a suspenseful and implausible thrill ride that I greatly enjoyed. It opens with a deadly armored truck hijacking in Los Angeles that immediately calls back to Heat, and from there we follow this gang of thieves as they target the Federal Reserve building for their next big score. Gerard Butler leads his team of dirty cops to attempt to stop this crew before they can strike again.

Butler is as good as I’ve seen him since at least 300 back in 2006. He added 25 to 30 pounds to play Big Nick here, and Butler embodies this crooked, barely-holding-it-together character really well. However, Pablo Schreiber (The Wire, Orange Is the New Black) almost steals the movie as the gang’s ex-Marine leader. His showdown with Butler is something to behold.

In fact, there are a few crackerjack set pieces in this movie that recall other heist movies, like Inside Man and The Town. Den of Thieves isn’t quite cut from the same cloth, but if this kind of intense street-level crime film is in your wheelhouse, then I don’t know how you could miss it.

If you love: When Harry Met Sally or Four Weddings and a Funeral

Then you might like: Plus One (streaming on Hulu)

When it comes to rom-coms, chemistry is everything. It doesn’t even matter if the story is formulaic or predictable, there has to be that spark between the leads. Plus One may not knock you out with a totally original romantic comedy setup, but it has charm for days due to the central characters played by Maya Erskine and Jack Quaid.

Plus One takes place in that period of one’s life (usually in your 20s) when it feels like you’re attending a different wedding every other week. In an effort to fight off wedding loneliness, two single friends, Alice and Ben, hatch a plan to be each other’s plus one for every wedding they get invited to. If you’ve seen this type of rom-com before, you know where this is going. Plus One borrows from classics like When Harry Met Sally (with the “friends become lovers” plotline) and pretty much any rom-com set at a wedding (there are countless), but it stands out because it’s delightfully funny with two hugely likable leads.

Alice is played by Maya Erskine (PEN15), who is a genuinely hysterical performer. She brings a raunchy yet endearing presence that makes me want to seek out everything she’s ever done. Ben is played by Jack Quaid, who is the son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan, so yeah, he was born to be in movies like this. Perhaps most impressively, these two also nail their emotionally charged dramatic moments in what is otherwise a lighthearted comedy. If you miss wedding season or if you are always on the hunt for a good rom-com, Plus One is a terrific match.

Billy recommends…

If you love: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Then you might like: Safety Not Guaranteed (streaming on Netflix)

Bill & Ted spent the 90s gaining traction from cult classic to straight up iconic due to the Ted of the duo (Keanu Reeves) becoming a bonafide superstar. Plus the overt silliness, time travel, and recognizable historical figures made a rewatch more fun each time. Now let’s introduce a movie that might be on a similar trajectory, Safety Not Guaranteed.

The major difference between Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Safety Not Guaranteed is the type of silliness that is portrayed on screen. Bill & Ted is full high guy comedy. It is loud and rambunctious with pop culture references all over the place. Safety Not Guaranteed has an immense amount of quirkiness that is connected with a mysterious story about a man claiming he can time travel and a journalist plus two interns investigating the legitimacy of this story.

With that quirk comes some serious heart and it fits perfectly into the era of 2010 indie comedies. I hope that Safety Not Guaranteed has the legs of a Bill & Ted and each year it seems that more people become fans. I propose that we give Jake Johnson or Aubrey Plaza a The Matrix like franchise so that a big action star can be associated with an indie comedy forever. Giving it the legs it deserves.

Each of these time travel stories fit perfectly into their era of comedy. It needed a select generation to give it the initial support and then obnoxiously tell people how great it is for years to come. Without support for this small story it might get stuck as an afterthought. If that happens Drew and I will have to travel back in time to 2012 and give this movie the love it deserves.

Recent Release Mini-Reviews

One Night in Miami (streaming on Amazon Prime)

Drew: It’s no surprise to see that Regina King, a high-caliber actress herself, cultivated such excellent acting in her directorial debut. Everyone seems to have their favorite performance, but I was impressed that Kingsley Ben-Adir (someone I wasn’t familiar with) was able to sketch out an intimate and conflicted portrait of Malcolm X when the standard has been set so high by Denzel in Spike Lee’s powerful biopic. I also thought Eli Goree captured Cassius Clay’s brash and energetic spirit well.

As play adaptations go, this is a fairly dynamic one. King peppers in boxing scenes and musical performances, but One Night in Miami is about the words and views of these titans of entertainment, politics, and activism. Kemp Powers (who also co-wrote Pixar’s Soul — heck of a year for him) generates a fascinating fictionalized account of that night in 1964.

One Night in Miami occasionally labors under the massive weight of history, which creates a stilted atmosphere at times. But the dialogue, especially in the second half, crackles as these four legends discuss the challenges and responsibilities they face as Black celebrities in a turbulent time. - 3.5 / 5 Apples

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