20 best movies like The Big Empty (2003)

An aspiring painter meets various characters and learns valuable lessons while traveling across America.

A tight-knit team of FBI investigators, along with their District Attorney supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered.

Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.

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.

Skeptical journalist Ozzie Graham investigates a support group for alien abductees to write about the members' supposed encounters. The more he digs into their oddball claims, the more he realizes there is truth in their stories and possibly even signs that point to his own alien abduction.

A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.

From his hospital bed, a writer suffering from a skin disease hallucinates musical numbers and paranoid plots.

A serial killer, who drains his victims for blood is on the loose in London, the Police follow him to a house owned by an eccentric scientist.

A young filmmaker in 1960s Paris juggles directing a cheesy sci-fi debacle, directing his own personal art film, coping with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, and a new-found infatuation with the sci-fi film's starlet.

Over-the-hill gumshoe in Los Angeles seeks to avenge the killing of an old pal, another detective who had gotten himself involved in a case concerning a murdered broad, stolen stamps, a nickel-plated handgun, a cheating dolly, and a kidnapped pussycat.

A rising star at agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Mark Whitacre suddenly turns whistleblower. Even as he exposes his company’s multi-national price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI, Whitacre envisions himself being hailed as a hero of the common man and handed a promotion.

Vignettes weaving together the stories of six individuals in the old West at the end of the Civil War. Following the tales of a sharp-shooting songster, a wannabe bank robber, two weary traveling performers, a lone gold prospector, a woman traveling the West to an uncertain future, and a motley crew of strangers undertaking a carriage ride.

Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.

Alex, Emily, and their son, RJ, are new to Los Angeles. A chance meeting at the park introduces them to the mysterious Kurt, Charlotte, and Max. A family “playdate” becomes increasingly interesting as the night goes on.

An adaptation of Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" told in the setting of a modern office.

When a chance encounter brings together the cynical Dell and the quick-witted Kimberly, the stage is set for a tempestuous love affair that unfolds like a puzzle. As the film zigzags back and forth in time-from a meteor shower in LA, to an encounter in a Paris hotel room, to a fateful phone call-an unforgettable portrait of a relationship emerges.

19 years after President Timothy Keegan was assassinated, his brother Nick discovers a dying man claiming to have been the gunman. While trying to avoid his wealthy and domineering father's attempts to control his actions, Nick follows the clues that have been handed to him. As he progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern the real trails from the dead ends, and increasingly dangerous as unknown parties try to stop Nick from uncovering the truth.

In the near future, due to a breakthrough scientific discovery by Dr. Thomas Harbor, there is now definitive proof of an afterlife. While countless people have chosen suicide to reset their existence, others try to decide what it all means. Among them is Dr. Harbor's son Will, who has arrived at his father's isolated compound with a mysterious young woman named Isla. There, they discover the strange acolytes who help Dr. Harbor with his experiments.

A slightly unhinged former Navy SEAL lands a job as a police officer in Los Angeles where he's partnered with a veteran detective trying to keep maintain a low stress level in his life.

When renowned director Werner Herzog and fellow filmmaker Zak Penn set off to explore the legend of Scotland's Loch Ness monster, they uncover much more than they bargained for. Unexplained sightings of the creature and chaos among the crew create an uneasy feeling that things aren't what they seem.

The widow of a wise professor stumbles upon one of his inventions that's able to record and play a person's memory.

A father and son go on the run after the dad learns his child possesses special powers.

Follows the epic Biblical story of the Resurrection, as told through the eyes of a non-believer. Clavius, a powerful Roman Military Tribune, and his aide Lucius, are tasked with solving the mystery of what happened to Jesus in the weeks following the crucifixion, in order to disprove the rumors of a risen Messiah and prevent an uprising in Jerusalem.

Four couples meet for Sunday brunch only to discover they are stuck in a house together as the world may be about to end.

When shadowy U.S. intelligence agents blackmail a reformed computer hacker and his eccentric team of security experts into stealing a code-breaking 'black box' from a Soviet-funded genius, they uncover a bigger conspiracy. Now, he and his 'sneakers' must save themselves and the world economy by retrieving the box from their blackmailers.

A New York detective investigates a series of murders committed by random New Yorkers who claim that "God told them to."

Dr. Jacob Hood is a brilliant biophysicist and special science advisor to the government who investigates scientific crises and oddities. His crusade is to protect the substance of science against those who would abuse and misuse scientific discoveries for their own gain.

Art dealer, Charles Mortdecai, searches for a stolen painting rumored to contain a secret code that gains access to hidden Nazi gold.

Smilla Jaspersen, half Danish, half Greenlander, attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building. Suspecting wrongdoing, Smilla uncovers a trail of clues leading towards a secretive corporation that has made several mysterious expeditions to Greenland. Scenes from the film were shot in Copenhagen and western Greenland. The film was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival, where director Bille August was nominated for the Golden Bear.

Jonathan Ames, a young Brooklyn writer, is feeling lost. He's just gone through a painful break-up, thanks in part to his drinking, can't write his second novel, and carouses too much with his magazine editor. Rather than face reality, Jonathan turns instead to his fantasies — moonlighting as a private detective — because he wants to be a hero and a man of action.

Taking place after alien crafts land around the world, an expert linguist is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.

In Los Angeles at the turn of the 1970s, drug-fueled detective Larry "Doc" Sportello investigates the disappearance of an ex-girlfriend.

Set in the futuristic landscape of Los Angeles on July 4, 2008, as it stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Boxer Santaros is an action star who's stricken with amnesia. His life intertwines with Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality television project, and Ronald Taverner, a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.

A group of men who were clearing brush for the government arrive back in town, claiming that their friend was abducted by aliens. Nobody believes them, and despite a lack of motive and no evidence of foul play, their friends' disappearance is treated as murder.

A journalist and his girlfriend get pulled in while they investigate a cult whose leader claims to be from the future.

An engineer in charge of the production line of a factory in Moscow is sent to a small town to try to specify the distributor the new dimensions of a mechanic part they need. But in this town everybody seems to be crazy (a secretary who works naked, a group of people take the engineer as a rock & roll player, etc) and, in addition, this man is witness of a suicide, so he is trapped inside the town.

A college student, who sees a UFO, uses his exceptional math skills to investigate the sighting with his friends while the FBI follows closely behind.

A former mental patient's repressed anger reaches the boiling point, leading him to embark on a mission of revenge against the thugs who once subjected him to severe physical and mental trauma.

A documentary filmmaker turns his lens on an enigmatic conspiracy theorist who claims he's found the entrance to a vast underground city populated entirely by monsters.

Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.