20 best movies like Achilles and the Tortoise (2008)

Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.

While combing through the belongings of his recently deceased aunt, Matsuko, nephew Sho pieces together the crucial events that sank Matsuko's life into a despairing tragedy.

Ryûhei Sasaki is keeping a secret from his wife, Megumi and his two teenage sons. Even though he leaves the house every day, he's not really going to work. He's going to an employment office. He recently lost his job due to outsourcing, but is determined to find another position, all while supporting an old friend who is also out of work. But when Megumi accidentally finds out Ryûhei's secret and doesn't tell him, her trust in him, and their marriage, suffers.

Beat Takeshi lives the busy and sometimes surreal life of a showbiz celebrity. One day he meets his blond lookalike named Kitano, a shy convenience store cashier, who, still an unknown actor, is waiting for his big break. After their paths cross, Kitano seems to begin hallucinating about becoming Beat.

A woman named Kit moves back to her parent's house, where she receives a mysterious invitation that would fulfill her childhood dreams.

A bigoted junkie cop suffering from bipolar disorder and drug addiction manipulates and hallucinates his way through the festive season in a bid to secure promotion and win back his wife and daughter.

Fed up with the cruelty and stupidity of American culture, an unlikely duo goes on a killing spree, killing reality TV stars, bigots and others they find repugnant in this black comedy.

Jimmy Grimble is a shy Manchester school boy. At school he is constantly being bullied by the other kids, and at home he has to face his mother's new boyfriend. However, through football, and some special boots, he manages to gain the confidence to succeed and leads his school football team towards the final of the local schools cup.

One day in the life of Anders, a young recovering drug addict, who takes a brief leave from his treatment center to interview for a job and catch up with old friends in Oslo.

A ten year old girl named Angela leads her six year old sister, Ellie, through various regimens of 'purification' in an attempt to rid themselves of their evil, which she believes to be the cause of their mother's mental illness. Precocious, to say the least, Angela has visions of Lucifer coming to take her and her sister away, and one of her remedies for this is for them to remain within a circle of their dolls and toys until they see a vision of the virgin Mary come to them. But such thinking can only lead to an ending befitting of her own mental state.

A tale of delinquent and lazy school girls. In their efforts to cut remedial summer math class, they end up poisoning and replacing the schools brass band.

Three fanatical bird-watchers spend an entire year competing to spot the highest number of species as El Nino sends an extraordinary variety of rare breeds flying up into the U.S., but they quickly discover that there are more important things than coming out on top of the competition

The story of Swiss painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

Tokyo! is an anthology of three short films by Gondry (France), Carax (France) and Bong (Korea), each of whom offers an imaginative and trans-/super- natural glimpse into the Tokyo Megapolis.

In the War's closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.

THE ACID HOUSE is a surreal triptych adapted by "Trainspotting" author Irvine Welsh from his acclaimed collection of short stories. Combining a vicious sense of humor with hard-talking drama, the film reaches into the hearts and minds of the chemical generation, casting a dark and unholy light into the hidden corners of the human psyche. Directed by Paul McGuigan, the film dramatises three stories from the book: 1- The Granton Star Cause, 2- A Soft Touch & 3- The Acid House.

Al Fountain, a middle-aged electrical engineer, is on the verge of a mid-life crisis, when he decides to take his time coming home from a business trip, rents a car, and heads out looking for a lake he remembers from his childhood. But his wandering takes him into the life of Kid, a free-spirited young man who helps Al escape from the routine of everyday life and find freedom to enjoy himself.

This Ken Loach film tells the story of a man devoted to his family and his religion. Proud, though poor, Bob wants his little girl to have a beautiful (and costly) brand-new dress for her First Communion. His stubbornness and determination get him into trouble as he turns to more and more questionable measures, in his desperation to raise the needed money. This tragic flaw leads him to risk all that he loves and values, his beloved family, indeed even his immortal soul and salvation, in blind pursuit of that goal.

A misanthropic man sets out to exact revenge on his estranged father, by finding a loophole and attempting to win the National Spelling Bee as an adult. Figuring it would destroy his father, and everything he's worked so hard for as head of the Spelling Bee Championship Organization, Guy Trilby (Jason Bateman) eventually discovers winning isn't necessary for revenge, and that friendship is a blessing not a curse.

Fred lives on his own. His wife is dead, his son has left. He leans on the church, busses, meat-and-two-veg. Then Leo appears. Leo is a tramp. Fred lets Leo move in with him. An absurdist feature debut with a laugh and a tear in stuffy Netherlands.

A chamber drama about a widow and her son who live in an antique shop in Boulogne. The widow invites a man whom she loved twenty-two years earlier to visit. Her son is haunted by Muriel, a young woman whose death he may have caused while serving as a soldier in Algeria. As in Resnais' earlier films, memory is deflected, fragmented, enshrined, and imagined.

A life-size, inflatable sex doll suddenly comes to life one day. Without her owner knowing, she goes for a walk around town and falls in love with Junichi. She starts to date Junichi and gets a job at the same store where he works. Everything seems to be going perfect for her until something unexpected happens.

The personal tales of various sex workers who occupy a Japanese brothel.

High school student Yuki Hase (Kento Yamazaki) wants to become close with classmate Kaori Fujimiya (Haruna Kawaguchi) who is alway by herself. Kaori Fujimiya refuses to become close with Yuki Hase, because she forgets her friends every new Monday. Even though Kaori tells Yuki why she doesn't want to become friends, Yuki still wants to become close to her.

A dark comedy centering on the lives of a Neapolitan based family whose father, a fish merchant, is so infatuated with the reality TV show "Grande Fratello" (the Italian version of "Big Brother") he starts living his life as if he were on it.

A New York couple's relationship is tested after the loss of their child. This film is the wide-released combination of the original two :him and :her volumes that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Natha a poor farmer from Peepli village in the heart of rural India is about to lose his plot of land due to an unpaid bank loan. A quick fix to the problem is the a government program that aids the families of indebted farmers who have committed suicide. As a means of survival Farmer Natha can choose to die. His brother is happy to push him towards this unique 'honour' but Natha is reluctant. Local elections are around the corner and what might have been another unnoticed event turns into a 'cause celebre' with everyone wanting a piece of the action. Political bigwigs, high-ranking bureaucrats, local henchmen and the ever-zealous media descend upon sleepy Peepli to stake their claim. The question on everyone's lips - "Will he or Won't he?" As the mania escalates, nobody seems to care how Natha really feels.

When technical illustrator Tony Takitani asks his wife to resist her all-consuming obsession for designer clothes, the consequences are tragic.

Kitano plays Murakawa, a Tokyo yakuza tiring of gangster life. Along with a few of his henchmen, he is sent by his boss to Okinawa to help end a gang war, supposedly to mediate between two warring clans. He finds that the dispute between the clans is insignificant and whilst wondering why he was sent to Okinawa at all, Murakawa's headquarters are bombed and he and his gang are ambushed in a bar.

A detective probes the brutal murder of a woman in a red light district while a housewife hides her double life as a prostitute from her husband.

About existence from the perspective of 20 nameless black females. Each of the women portray one of the characters represented in the collection of twenty poems, revealing different issues that impact women in general and women of color in particular.

Set in the 1960s, high school student Toru Watanabe loses his only friend Kizuki after he commits suicide. Toru, now looking for a new life, enters a university in Tokyo. By chance, Toru meets Kizuki's ex-girlfriend Naoko in the university. They grow close because they both share the same loss. As Toru and Naoko grow even closer, Naoko's sense of loss also grows. After Naoko's 20th birthday, she leaves for a sanitarium in Kyoto. Watanabe, devastated by the situation, meets pure-hearted Midori during the spring semester. Midori looks like a small animal that just came into the world ...

Wada (Masahiro Motoki), a salary man, is enlisted to venture off to China to investigate a potential Jade mine. After his arrival, Wada encounters a violent, yet sentimental, yakuza (Renji Ishibashi), who takes the liberty of joining his adventure through China. Led on their long and disastrous journey to the mine by Shen, the three men come across something even more magical and enticing...

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

Nakamura Aoi stars as a young aspiring manga artist who's able to deal with loneliness and separation from his family through the companionship of an American Shorthair cat named Gin-o-gou.

Abe is a man who is in his thirties and who lives with his parents. He works regretfully for his father while pursuing his hobby of collecting toys. Aware that his family doesn't think highly of him, he tries to spark a relationship with Miranda, who recently moved back home after a failed literary/academic career. Miranda agrees to marry Abe out of desperation, but things go awry.

An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.

Three disaffected youths live in Datong in 2001, part of the new "Birth Control" generation. Fed on a steady diet of popular culture, both Western and Chinese, the characters of Unknown Pleasures represent a new breed in the People's Republic of China, one detached from reality through the screen of media and the internet.

After failing to find success as a writer in New York City, Jim slinks back to his family's home in the Midwest to lick his wounds. But his visit is quickly complicated when his angst spreads to his brother, Tim, who promptly decides to drive his car straight into a tree. Under the shadow of his sibling's injurious actions, Jim strikes up an unlikely friendship with Anika, whose centered small-town wisdom gradually rubs off on him.

After learning that a brain aneurysm will kill him in about 90 minutes, a perpetually unhappy man struggles to come to terms with his fate and make amends with everyone he has ever hurt.

A beautiful and mysterious woman helps an inept scam artist get his game together...but is their meeting purely coincidence?

On the rocky path to sobriety after a life-changing accident, John Callahan discovers the healing power of art, willing his injured hands into drawing hilarious, often controversial cartoons, which bring him a new lease on life.

Thirty-nine-year old divorcé Louise Harrington (Linney) works in the admissions office at Columbia University School of the Arts. She is unnerved when she receives an application from F. Scott Feinstadt, the same name of her high school sweetheart who was killed in a car crash, and calls the student to arrange an interview. His appearance, mannerisms, and painting style closely resemble those of her former love, and she begins to suspect the young artist may be the reincarnation of her old flame. Hours after meeting, the two embark upon an affair. Also complicating Louise's life are her relationship with her ex-husband Peter , who confesses he is learning to cope with a sex addiction that, unknown to her, plagued their marriage; her ne'er-do-well brother Sammy, who is favored by their mother Ellie despite his shortcomings; and her best friend Missy, who stole the original Scott from Louise before his death and seems intent on doing the same with the contemporary version.

Charlie gets released from an insane asylum and moves in with Miranda, the young daughter he left behind. Charlie believes that there is treasure hidden beneath the local Costco, so he puts together a plan to unearth the loot. By convincing Miranda to quit her job at McDonald's and instead work at the wholesale store, he is able to obtain a key. Although Miranda is skeptical, she helps her father with his irrational quest.

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

Set in the mid 1990s in Singapore, ILOILO chronicles the relationship between a family and their maid from Ilo Ilo, a province in the Philippines.

Aging screenwriter Felix Bonhoeffer has lived his life in two states of existence: in reality and his own interior world. While working on a murder mystery script, and unaware that his brain is on the verge of implosion, Felix is baffled when his characters start to appear in his life, and vice versa.

Teenager Homer Macauley stays at home in small-town Ithaca to support his family while his older brother Marcus prepares to go to war.

Matt and Karen have inconsiderate neighbours whose lawn sprinkler drowns their flowers. A feud errupts and a series of tit-for-tat actions develop and escalate.

Manny tries to get his crack addict brother, Danny, to clean up.