Films and TV shows that feel like Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen

A weary, darkly funny litany of cynicism: everyone knows the game is rigged, the good guys lost, and the plague is coming, delivered with a deadpan shrug.

1. Pump Up the Volume (1990): The song is featured in this film, where a pirate radio DJ rails against a rotten, hypocritical system.
2. Natural Born Killers (1994): Cohen's song plays in its media-soaked vision of a corrupt, violent society everybody secretly knows is sick.
3. Wag the Dog (1997): A deadpan satire of rigged politics where everyone knows the con and plays along.
4. Thank You for Smoking (2005): A sardonic, funny look at lobbyists and spin with the same shrugging cynicism.
5. The Wire (2002): Institutions are rigged and everybody on the street and in city hall knows it.
6. Michael Clayton (2007): A tired fixer discovers the corporate game is dirty, in a hushed, weary mood.
7. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011): Betrayal, infidelity and moral decay in a murky, late-Cold War world.
8. Veep (2012): Political cynicism played for bleak laughs, where nobody is surprised by the corruption.