Movies Like Desire

If you liked Desire (2005), a drama movie directed by Tetsuo Shinohara, 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
Taboo (1999)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering on a…
2
Female Yakuza Tale (1973)
★ 6.1/10Also drama
Ocho is accidentally captured by a drug trafficking cartel who use Chinese women to smuggle drugs into Japan by hiding it in their vaginas. She is tortured, and manages to escape, fighting both the male yakuzas and a…
3
Tokyo Decadence (1992)
★ 6/10Also drama
A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that…
4
Gracie (2007)
★ 6.2/10Also drama
A teenager faces an uphill battle when she fights to give women the opportunity to play competitive soccer.
5
Antiporno (2017)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
Kyôko, a traumatized young Japanese girl, finds herself struggling with her self-confidence in her adult life. Growing up in a family without her mother and her sister, she constantly questions the rationale of sex and…
6
The Ballad of Narayama (1983)
★ 7.5/10Also drama
In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it…
7
Beast (2026)
★ 7.5/10Also drama
MMA legend Patton James, now a commercial fisherman, is pulled back into the cage when his brother is in danger. Reuniting with his old coach Sammy, he commits to one final fight in one championship against the brutal…
8
Hands of Stone (2016)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
9
Salomé (2013)
★ 6.1/10Also drama
After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé…
10
Magazine Dreams (2025)
★ 7.1/10Also drama
Aspiring bodybuilder Killian Maddox struggles to find human connection in an exploration of celebrity and violence. Nothing deters him from his fiercely protected dream of superstardom, not even the doctors who warn…
11
Hardball (2001)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.
12
Cardboard Boxer (2016)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.
13
Bastard Out of Carolina (1996)
★ 7.1/10Also drama
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as…
14
Jawbone (2017)
★ 6.1/10Also drama
A former youth boxing champion, Jimmy McCabe is a man in search of hope but looking in all the wrong places. When he hits rock bottom he turns to his childhood boxing club and the only family he has left: gym owner…
15
Road to Paloma (2014)
★ 5.8/10Also drama
While Native American Wolf is being pursued by the FBI for having taken the law into his own hands, when his mother was raped and killed on their reservation he crosses paths with Cash, a down and out musician who is…
16
Kisses (2008)
★ 7.1/10Also drama
Two kids, Dylan and Kylie, run away from home on Christmas Day and spend a night of magic and terror on the streets of inner-city Dublin.
17
In Full Bloom (2019)
★ 6.8/10Also drama
Set shortly after the end of World War II, a philosophical boxing drama of two fighters from opposite worlds (USA and Japan) who are pulled together for a questionable fight arranged by their unscrupulous managers and…
18
The Cut (2025)
★ 5.9/10Also drama
A retired boxer intends to return to the ring for one last shot at the title, but first he must make the weight. Holed up in a room in Las Vegas with an unscrupulous trainer, he embarks on an intensive and illegal…
19
Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise (2015)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
Police Chief Jesse Stone now presides over the quiet, seaside village of Paradise, Massachusetts. When the facts don't add up in a brutal Boston-area murder case, Jesse opens an investigation filled with surprises…
20
Mexicali (2026)
★ 7.7/10Also drama
A former special forces contractor is forced out of retirement as an avocado farmer in Mexico when local gangsters try to force him and his family off their farm.