Movies Like The Waxing and Waning of Life

If you liked The Waxing and Waning of Life (2023), a movie directed by Kentaro Kishi and Shota Koseki, here are 20 movies with a similar feel, based on TMDB's recommendations. Each one links to its cast, trailer and where it's streaming.

1
Postcards from the Edge (1990)
★ 6.6/10
A substance-addicted actress tries to look on the bright side even as she's forced to move back in with her mother to avoid unemployment.
2
A Million Little Pieces (2019)
★ 6.2/10
A young drug-addled writer approaching the bottom of his descent submits to two months of agonizing detox at a treatment center in Minnesota.
3
Trainspotting (1996)
★ 8/10
Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends --Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning…
4
Beautiful Boy (2018)
★ 7.6/10
After he and his first wife separate, journalist David Sheff struggles to help their teenage son, who goes from experimenting with drugs to becoming devastatingly addicted to methamphetamine.
5
Brother (2000)
★ 7.1/10
A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.
6
The Souvenir (2019)
★ 6.1/10
A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.
7
Dìdi (弟弟) (2024)
★ 7.2/10
In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can't teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.
8
No Exit (2022)
★ 6.8/10
Stranded at a rest stop in the mountains during a blizzard, a recovering addict discovers a kidnapped child hidden in a car belonging to one of the people inside the building which sets her on a terrifying struggle to…
9
Bigger (2018)
★ 7/10
The inspirational tale of the grandfathers of the fitness movement as we now know it, Joe & Ben Weider. Battling anti-Semitism, racism and extreme poverty, the brothers beat all odds to build an empire & inspire future…
10
Foxcatcher (2014)
★ 6.7/10
The greatest Olympic Wrestling Champion brother team joins Team Foxcatcher led by multimillionaire sponsor John E. du Pont as they train for the 1988 games in Seoul - a union that leads to unlikely circumstances.
11
The Outrun (2024)
★ 6.8/10
Fresh out of rehab, Rona returns to the Orkney Islands—a place both wild and beautiful, right off the Scottish coast. Now 29 and after more than a decade of living life on the edge in London, where she both found and…
12
Oldboy (2013)
★ 5.9/10
A man has only three and a half days and limited resources to discover why he was imprisoned in a nondescript room for 20 years without any explanation.
13
Hellion (2014)
★ 5.9/10
When motocross and heavy metal obsessed, 13-year-old Jacob's delinquent behavior forces CPS to place his little brother Wes with his aunt, Jacob and his emotionally absent father must finally take responsibility for…
14
The Basketball Diaries (1995)
★ 7.4/10
A high school basketball player’s life turns upside down after free-falling into the harrowing world of drug addiction.
15
Candy (2006)
★ 7.1/10
A poet falls in love with an art student, who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle — and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of…
16
The Glass House (2001)
★ 6/10
When Ruby and Rhett's parents are killed in a car accident, their carefree teenage lives are suddenly shattered. Moving to an incredible house in Malibu with the Glasses', old friends of the family, seems to be the…
17
Nobody's Fool (2018)
★ 6/10
After serving five years in prison, wild child Tanya looks to her buttoned-up, by-the-book sister Danica to help her get back on her feet. The feisty ex-con becomes suspicious and concerned when Danica tells her that…
18
Graveyard of Honor (1975)
★ 6.7/10
A self-destructive man becomes a powerful member of the yakuza but quickly loses his self-control. Based on the true story of Rikio Ishikawa.
19
Under the Open Sky (2021)
★ 7.5/10
Mikami, an ex-yakuza of middle age with most of his life in prison, gets released after serving 13 years of sentence for murder. Hoping to find his long lost mother, from whom he was separated as a child, he applies…
20
I Wish (2011)
★ 7.3/10
Twelve-year-old Koichi, who has been separated from his brother Ryunosuke due to his parents' divorce, hears a rumor that the new bullet trains will precipitate a wish-granting miracle when they pass each other at top…