Movies Like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
If you loved The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover's Crime and Drama storytelling, these films deliver a similar experience — carefully selected for tone, themes, and emotional depth. Each pick includes where to watch it right now.
★ Top Picks
Eating Raoul
A prudish married couple feel put upon by the swingers living in their apartment building. One night, by accident, they discover a way to both rid themselves of the “perverts” down the hall and simultaneously realize their dream of opening a restaurant.
Kinds of Kindness
A triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
The Art of Self-Defense
Casey is attacked at random on the street and enlists in a local dojo led by a charismatic and mysterious Sensei in an effort to learn how to defend himself. What he uncovers is a sinister world of fraternity, violence and hypermasculinity and a woman fighting for her place in it.
Winged Creatures
A psychotic man opens fire in a diner, murdering numerous people before killing himself. The survivors struggle in different ways following this horrendous event: a doctor doubts his own instincts and elects to use an experimental medical procedure on his wife, while a gambler believes he's on a lucky streak. A waitress begins engaging in promiscuous sex, and a young girl whose father is among the dead gains unexpected fame.
The Last Supper
A group of idealistic but frustrated liberals succumb to the temptation of murdering right-wing pundits for their political beliefs.
Guns Up
When a job goes horribly wrong, an ex-cop and family man who moonlights as a mob henchman has one night to get his family out of the city.
Willard
Desperate for companionship, the repressed Willard befriends a group of rats that inhabit his late father's deteriorating mansion. In these furry creatures, Willard finds temporary refuge from daily abuse at the hands of his bedridden mother and his father's old partner, Frank. Soon it becomes clear that the brood of rodents is ready and willing to exact a vicious, deadly revenge on anyone who dares to bully their sensitive new master.
Panic
Alex is going through a midlife crisis and it has become a very difficult time for him. His marriage is struggling, he's worried about his son, and his job of killing people for his family has become the most stressful part of his life. He seeks the help of a therapist and meets a woman in the waiting room that he connects with.
More Movies Like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
Desperate Living
After killing her husband, Peggy Gravel and her murderous maid Grizelda wind up in the crazy town of Mortville, where Queen Carlotta presides over a sleazy collection of misfits.
Rope
Two young men attempt to prove they committed the perfect murder by hosting a dinner party for the family of a classmate they just strangled to death.
Falling Down
An ordinary man frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them.
Bad
Hazel runs a beauty salon out of her house, but makes extra money by providing ruthless women the oppurtunity to perform hit jobs. L.T. is a parasite, and contacts Hazel looking for work after he runs out of money. She is reluctant to use him for a hit, since she prefers using women, but decides to try him on a trial basis. Meanwhile, the cop she pays off wants an arrest to make it look like he's doing his job, but Hazel doesn't want to sacrifice any of her "associates". The sleazy side of life is explored in this delightfully dark and deadpan film.
The Woman
A lawyer puts his family in jeopardy when he captures the last member of a violent clan and tries to forcibly tame her.
The Drop
Bob Saginowski finds himself at the center of a robbery gone awry and entwined in an investigation that digs deep into the neighborhood's past where friends, families, and foes all work together to make a living - no matter the cost.
Last Straw
A rural roadside diner becomes the host of a maniacal killing spree – leaving a young waitress to clean up the mess. After hard-headed Nancy fires the staff at her dad’s diner, she decides to cover the last shift of the night by herself. Little does she know, she is far from alone. The day is coming back to haunt her and when things begin to spiral out of control, she must fight for her life over the course of one long night.
Cheap Thrills
Recently fired and facing eviction, a new dad has his life turned upside down when he meets a wealthy couple who offer a path to financial security... but at a price.
Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?
Mystery abounds when it is discovered that, one by one, the greatest chefs in Europe are being killed. The intriguing part of the murders is that each chef is killed in the same manner that their own special dish is prepared in. Food critics and the (many) self-proclaimed greatest chefs in Europe demand the mystery be solved.
The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun
The staff of an American magazine based in France puts out its last issue, with stories featuring an artist sentenced to life imprisonment, student riots, and a kidnapping resolved by a chef.
Nightmare Alley
An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.
Polyester
Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine Fishpaw turns to the bottle as her life falls apart -- until deliverance appears in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow. Originally screened with "Odorama" scratch and sniff cards so the audience could (at their own risk) smell along with the film.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989): Crime and Drama themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.
See full details for The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)