Movies Like Small Pleasures
If you liked Small Pleasures (2016), a movie directed by Karin Lee, 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

Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (1998)
★ 7.2/10Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even…
- 2

The Joy Luck Club (1993)
★ 7.2/10Through a series of flashbacks, four Chinese women born in America and their respective mothers born in feudal China explore their pasts.
- 3

Train Dreams (2025)
★ 7.3/10A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America.
- 4

Sense and Sensibility (1995)
★ 7.4/10The Dashwood sisters, sensible Elinor and passionate Marianne, learn that their prospects of marriage seem doomed by their family's sudden loss of fortune. After Henry Dashwood dies unexpectedly, his estate must pass…
- 5

The Map That Leads to You (2025)
★ 6.7/10Heather is a young woman traveling Europe with friends before starting her perfectly planned life. A chance meeting with Jack sparks an unexpected romance that leads to deep emotional discovery. As secrets and life…
- 6

Sense and Sensibility (2026)
★ 7.3/10A charming, witty, and deeply relatable story of love and sisterhood.
- 7

The Best of Me (2014)
★ 7.5/10A pair of former high school sweethearts reunite after many years when they return to visit their small hometown.
- 8

Boudica (2023)
★ 5.8/10Inspired by events in A.D. 60, Boudica follows the eponymous Celtic warrior who rules the Iceni people alongside her husband Prasutagus. When he dies at the hands of Roman soldiers, Boudica’s kingdom is left without a…
- 9

Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between (2022)
★ 6.1/10Clare and Aidan make a pact to break up before college — no regrets, no broken hearts. But will one epic goodbye date offer them a last chance at love?
- 10

I Walk the Line (1970)
★ 5.9/10Henry Tawes, a middle-aged sheriff in a rural Tennessee town, is usually the first man to criticize others for their bad behavior. Miserable in his marriage, Henry falls in love with teenage seductress Alma, who is the…
- 11

Bastard Out of Carolina (1996)
★ 7.1/10A 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…
- 12

Safe Haven (2013)
★ 7.2/10A young woman with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her.
- 13

Great Expectations (2012)
★ 6.4/10Orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but…
- 14

Winter Spring Summer or Fall (2024)
★ 7.3/10Remi and Barnes, two very different teenagers, meet by chance in the winter of their senior year, then spend four days together over the course of a year that will change their lives forever.
- 15

The Giver (2014)
★ 6.6/10In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.
- 16

Odd Thomas (2013)
★ 7/10In a California desert town, a short-order cook with clairvoyant abilities encounters a mysterious man with a link to dark, threatening forces.
- 17

Bad Sister (2015)
★ 6.6/10As a top student at St. Adeline's Catholic Boarding School, Zoe senses that something is not quite right about the school's new nun-- a sense proven to be true when it is revealed the "good' nun is an imposter with a…
- 18

Holy Lands (2019)
★ 6.1/10When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife…
- 19

Just Friends (2005)
★ 6.2/10While visiting his hometown during Christmas, a man comes face-to-face with his old high school crush whom he was best friends with – a woman whose rejection of him turned him into a ferocious womanizer.
- 20

The Painted Veil (2006)
★ 7.3/10A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.