20 best movies like sex, lies, and videotape (1989)

Sex is a background to examine intimacy and vulnerability. Looks at the complexity of modern day relationships told through eight separate couples. Through dialogue and compromising situations, the film takes us from the beginning of a relationship to the aftermath of one, and examines every stage in between seeing humor within the drama, heartache and confusion of it all.

A New Jersey guy dedicated to his family, friends, and church, develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to find happiness and intimacy with his potential true love.

Though a childhood bout with polio left him dependent on an iron lung, Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) maintains a career as a journalist and poet. A writing assignment dealing with sex and the disabled piques Mark's curiosity, and he decides to investigate the possibility of experiencing sex himself. When his overtures toward a caregiver scare her away, he books an appointment with sex surrogate Cheryl Green (Helen Hunt) to lose his virginity.

Estranged twins Maggie and Milo coincidentally cheat death on the same day, prompting them to reunite and confront the reasons their lives went so wrong. As the twins' reunion reinvigorates them, they realize the key to fixing their lives may just lie in repairing their relationship.

A comedian tries to make it as a serious actor when his reality-TV star fiancé talks him into broadcasting their wedding on her TV show.

Elliot is going to the island of Eden to live out his submissive fantasies, but inadvertently photographs diamond smugglers at work. Smugglers, and detectives, follow him to the island, where they try to retrieve the film. Elliot begins falling in love with Lisa, the head mistress of the island, and Lisa must evaluate her feelings about Elliot and her own motivations.

Set in 1890s North Wales over a long, hot August weekend, the Victorian calm of a household is suddenly upset with the arrival of a London couple who impose their city ways and thoughts on the more rurally based family. An adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play, "Uncle Vanya."

Unable to cope with a recent personal tragedy, LA's top celebrity shrink turns into a pothead with no concern for his appearance and a creeping sense of his inability to help his patients.

Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend.

An ophthalmologist's mistress threatens to reveal their affair to his wife, while a married documentary filmmaker is infatuated by another woman.

By following ten simple rules, 20-somethings Vince and Cameron spice up their relationship by sleeping around. But when their straitlaced friends get engaged, their relationship gets turned upside down. To put the rules to the test, they will go on the road to the Hamptons to crash the biggest party of the year where love triangles collide and off-the-wall mayhem ensues.

Ren MacCormack is transplanted from Boston to the small southern town of Bomont where loud music and dancing are prohibited. Not one to bow to the status quo, Ren challenges the ban, revitalizing the town and falling in love with the minister’s troubled daughter Ariel in the process.

A young man is rocked by two announcements from his elderly father: that he has terminal cancer, and that he has a young male lover.

Two romantically-engaged corporate spies team up to manipulate a corporate race to corner the market on a medical innovation that will reap huge profits and enable them to lead an extravagant lifestyle together.

A tough, sexy Long Island divorcee, Callie Thorne, gets a job as therapist for a professional football team in order to make ends meet. Underestimated at every turn, she succeeds beyond all expectations and soon finds herself as the sought-after therapist to high-profile clients. As a newly single mom raising two teenagers, she is determined to make her new career work by striking a balance between her personal and professional worlds.

The lives of two struggling musicians, who happen to be brothers, inevitably change when they team up with a beautiful, up-and-coming singer.

Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.

A modern reimagining of the classic romantic comedy, this contemporary version closely follows new love for two couples as they journey from the bar to the bedroom and are eventually put to the test in the real world.

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.

A hard-partying high school senior's philosophy on life changes when he meets the not-so-typical "nice girl."

At a family reunion, the Cooper clan find that their parents' home is being foreclosed. "Temporarily," Ma moves in with son George's family, Pa with daughter Cora. But the parents are like sand in the gears of their middle-aged children's well regulated households. Can the old folks take matters into their own hands?

A 29-year-old lawyer and her lesbian best friend experience a dramatic shift in their longtime bond after one enters a serious relationship

When Jay and Annie first got together, their romantic connection was intense – but ten years and two kids later, the flame of their love needs a spark. To kick things up a notch, they decide – why not? – to make a video of themselves trying out every position in The Joy of Sex in one marathon three-hour session. It seems like a great idea – until they discover that their most private video is no longer private. With their reputations on the line, they know they’re just one click away from being laid bare to the world... but as their race to reclaim their video leads to a night they'll never forget, they'll find that their video will expose even more than they bargained for.

A fidgety, wisecracking video store clerk develops a fixation on a particularly reclusive customer, a frequent visitor to the pornography section of Cinefile, the video store where he works in Los Angeles. After multiple failures to impress her during their brief daily transactions, he finds her street address in the store's database, drives to her apartment building and initiates an unconventional campaign to win her affections.

Cursed since childhood, dentist Charlie Kagan cannot find the right woman. Even worse, he learns that each of his ex-girlfriends finds true love with the man she meets after her relationship with him ends. Hearing of Charlie's reputation as a good-luck charm, women from all over line up for a quick tryst. But when Charlie meets the woman of his dreams, he must find a way to break the curse or risk losing her to the next man she meets.

Brian Cox stars as Jacques, the curmudgeonly owner of a gritty New York dive bar that serves as home to a motley assortment of professional drinkers. Jacques is determinedly drinking and smoking himself to death when he meets Lucas (Dano), a homeless young man who has already given up on life. Determined to keep his legacy alive, Jacques deems Lucas is a fitting heir and takes him under his wing, schooling him in the male-centric laws of his alcoholic clubhouse: no new customers, no fraternizing with customers and, absolutely no women. Lucas is a quick study, but their friendship is put to the test when the distraught and beautiful April (Isild Le Besco) shows up at the bar seeking shelter, and Lucas insists they help her out.

As the devoutly single Don Johnston is dumped by his latest girlfriend, he receives an anonymous pink letter informing him that he has a son who may be looking for him.

After a one-night stand a couple is faced with the terrifying possibility of what they really want.

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life-dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge-he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues-and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled; he succumbs to his own jealousy and arranges to have her followed.