Netflix is removing a highly underrated thriller very soon, and you definitely need to catch it before it leaves. Described as Taxi Driver (starring Robert De Niro) meets Fight Club (starring Brad Pitt), the film follows a lonely, underprivileged rideshare driver spiraling into a crisis of masculinity who finds a sense of belonging in a cult-like brotherhood of alpha men. It premiered at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival on February 18, 2023, and was released in the U.S. by Lionsgate on November 10, 2023.
As John Trengove‘s English-language debut, Manodrome marks a striking shift for the South African director, bringing his distinct storytelling voice to a provocative and psychologically charged premise. It is anchored by an intense central performance from Jesse Eisenberg, who portrays driver Ralphie, and a commanding turn from Adrien Brody, as “Dad Dan”, the charismatic leader of the patriarchal cult. Starting from May 8, 2026, Manodrome won’t be available to Netflix subscribers in the U.S., almost three years after its theatrical debut.
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
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Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
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🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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‘Manodrome’ Is the Cult Thriller You’re Missing
Adrien Brody, Ethan Suplee, and Jesse Eisenberg riding down as escalator as RDan, Leo, and Ralphie in ManodromeImage via Lionsgate
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Although the 2023 cult thriller is not perfect, it is a compelling watch that thoughtfully explores toxic masculinity and power dynamics in relationships through a story of a men’s retreat. According to Manodrome’s synopsis, Ralphie is a man wrestling with external forces and the demons within, until he meets a mysterious family of men who welcome him as one of their own. As Ralphie struggles to define himself, pressure mounts, and a powder keg is lit that will blow a hole in the lives of everyone he touches, including his pregnant girlfriend, Sal (Odessa Young), who ultimately leaves him after giving birth to their child.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Manodrome holds an underwhelming 49% rating based on 35 reviews, with some praising the cast’s performances, as reflected in RogerEbert.com’s review. Meanwhile, in Collider’s review, the film is described as “an enthralling experience for the most part” and compared to Fight Club, such that it takes the 1999 action gem’s message and ensures the public will get it this time. Screen Rant’s review, on the other hand, notes that Manodrome falls short as both social commentary and a character study, largely due to how it frames the audience’s relationship with its protagonist’s perspective.
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