Best movies like Burning an Illusion

Psychiatrist Ann Hecker is ending one relationship and possibly starting an important new one, while finding that some of the sexual exploits her patients relate are weighing on her. Turning to a married friend from her research days for guidance, she finds his help increasingly important when a female patient is murdered and it turns out that her new boyfriend was also seeing the dead woman.

It's New Year's Eve in Thatcher's de-industrialising Britain. The scene is set at a seedy bar in Liverpool where a group of Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic pensioners will gather to clash and bash the new year in.

Rita and Sue are two teenagers living on a run-down council estate in Bradford, who both share a job babysitting for Bob and Michelle's children. Whilst giving them a lift home one night, Bob decides to take Rita and Sue up to a deserted, country-side landscape. Clearly knowing what he has in mind, Rita and Sue are only too happy to oblige and both have a sexual encounter with him that becomes a regular occurrence.

Claude and Ellen are best friends who live in a not-so-nice area of New York. They're involved in the subculture of 90s youth, complete with drugs, live music, and homophobia. All is changed one night when a violent and meaningless death rocks their lives.

Set in 1943 in Scotland during World War II. Janie is a young housewife married to a man named Dougal, 15 years her senior. As part of a war rehabilitation program, Janie and Dougal welcome three Italian POWs to work on their farm. Soon, Janie falls in love with one of them...

Drama telling the story of Blue, a young man of Jamaican descent living in Brixton in 1980, as he hangs out with his friends, fronts a dub sound system, loses his job, struggles with family problems and has his friendships tested by racism.

Pinter's semi-autobiographical play examining the surprise attraction, shy first steps, gradual flowering, and treasonous deception of a woman's extramarital affair with her husband's best friend; the entire story is told from the husband's point of view, with the scenes in precise reverse chronological order. Written by Dan Hartung

Two young women reunite and rekindle their friendship after having said goodbye at their college graduation, six years earlier.

'Chance' is a black comedy about how hard it is to find "the one". Mostly told from the point-of-view of a young, sexually aggressive woman, named Chance, whom according to her: "we're all out there looking for true love", which turns out to be a very elusive thing indeed, and Chance is no exception. She's desperately on the prowl for a man, but since she's more mouse than cat, she gets herself into scrape after scrape in her screwball pursuit of love. Surrounded by a bevy of adoring but completely wrong-for-her men (and one dead girl from Manchester, England), Chance has to pick her way through her messy life in order to figure out which guy is "it".

Tara returns to her ancestral estate only to have her clothes explode off her body and a white light enter her chest. Afterwards she’s tormented by strange desires and dreams of running through the woods. Her cave-dwelling boyfriend is no help to her. Meanwhile, false friends plot to steal her inheritance and a determined hunter seeks to slay the new werewolf in town.

Ruth Ellis lives with her ten-year old son Andy next to a night club. One night she meets David Blakely, and they start a love affair. However, for David with his upper-class background, it is impossible to uphold the relationship. He breaks up with her, something which makes Ellis, obsessed by him, very upset.

The second film in Terence Davies's autobiographical series (along with "Trilogy" and "The Long Day Closes") is an impressionistic view of a working-class family in 1940s and 1950s Liverpool, based on Davies's own family. Through a series of exquisite tableaux Davies creates a deeply affecting photo album of a troubled family wrestling with the complexity of love.

Secret agent Drew Stargrove is brutally murdered by the ruthless hermaphrodite gang leader Velvet Von Ragnar. The murdered secret agent's son, Lance Stargrove is thrust into the dangerous and intriguing world of secret agents and espionage when he seeks revenge. Danja Deerling teams up with Lance as his sidekick and love interest.

After inheriting a large country estate from his late father, Peter invites his friends from college: married couple Roger and Mary, the lonely Maggie, fashionable Sarah, and writer Andrew, who brings his American TV star wife, Carol. Sarah's new boyfriend, Brian, also attends. It has been 10 years since college, and they find their lives are very different.

Bud is a lonely and quiet boy whose moments of solace occur when he sits in rapture at the local cinema, watching towering and iconic figures on the movie screen. The movies give Bud the strength to get through another day as he deals with his oppressive school environment and his burgeoning homosexuality.

Slice-of-life look at a sweet working-class couple in London, Shirley and Cyril, his mother, who's aging quickly and becoming forgetful, mum's ghastly upper-middle-class neighbors, and Cyril's pretentious sister and philandering husband. Shirley wants a baby, but Cyril, who reads Marx and wants the world to be perfect, is reluctant. Cyril's mum locks herself out and must ask her snooty neighbors for help. Then Cyril's sister Valerie stages a surprise party for mum's 70th birthday, a disaster from start to finish. Shirley holds things together, and she and Cyril may put aside her Dutch cap after all.

Hip Hop duo Kid & Play return in the second follow-up to their 1990 screen debut House Party. Kid (Christopher "Kid" Reid) is taking the plunge and marrying his girlfriend Veda (Angela Means), while his friend Play (Christopher Martin) is dipping his toes into the music business, managing a roughneck female rap act called Sex as a Weapon. Play books the ladies for a concert with heavy-hitting pr

Out of work actor Joe volunteers to help try and save his sister's local church for the community by putting on a Christmas production of Hamlet, somewhat against the advice of his agent Margaretta. As the cast he assembles are still available even at Christmas and are prepared to do it on a 'profit sharing' basis (that is, they may not get paid anything) he cannot expect - and does not get - the cream of the cream. But although they all bring their own problems and foibles along, something bigger starts to emerge in the perhaps aptly named village of Hope.

Darius Lovehall is a young black poet in Chicago who starts dating Nina Moseley, a beautiful and talented photographer. While trying to figure out if they've got a "love thing" or are just "kicking it," they hang out with their friends, talking about love and sex. Then Nina tests the strength of Darius' feelings and sets a chain of romantic complications into motion.

Lazy preppie Palmer Woodrow hires street-smart Eddie Keaton to go to school for him while he lives it up in Europe. Eddie falls in love with preppie gal Tracey, upsetting Biff, the Hoover Academy bully. When his bookie from the old neighborhood, Dice, comes to collect on Eddie's gambling debts and Palmer returns early from Europe, the the scheme slowly starts to unravel. Soon, Eddie can't even tell whose side he's really on.

After restaurateur Sam Wong dies in a telephone booth after making a call, law clerk Elaine Choi is tasked with executing his will. In order for the will to be valid, it needs to be signed by its recipients, but Choi finds that each of them are reluctant to do so.

When the young, attractive Joe Orton meets the older, more introverted Kenneth Halliwell at drama school, he befriends the kindred spirit and they start an affair. As Orton becomes more comfortable with his sexuality and starts to find success with his writing, Halliwell becomes increasingly alienated and jealous, ultimately tapping into a dangerous rage.

What happens when a 30-something woman allows life's "what ifs" to overwhelm her appreciation for what life actually is. Disregarding her current obligations, she digs into her romantic past in hopes of invigorating her present.

Two disc jockeys have a friend's murder to solve in the fringe-group melting pot of 1977 London.

A professor of astronomy helping on a missile development program. An old friend of his is a Russian chess champion. The Russian is working with shady businessman Marek and they plan to kidnap the professor and make it look as though he has defected to the Soviet Union.

Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.

A young boy seeks love and understanding from his cold, demanding father.

Jamie is a successful novelist trapped in a bad relationship with her possessive boyfriend. But when things get out of control and Jamie accidentally kills him, Jamie's best friend Laura along with a third friend, Arlene convince Jamie to cover if up knowing she will not receive fair treatment by the court system. But when things get more complicated, the three women join forces to commit more murders of abusive, cheating and lying men.

At an elite New England university built on the site of a Salem-era gallows hill, two black women strive to find their place. Navigating politics and privilege, they encounter increasingly terrifying manifestations of the school's haunted past… and present.

Susan has always been the self-centered oddball in her family who lazily skated through life with their begrudging support until one day she wakes up to realize she’s middle-aged with no job, no relationship, and an increasingly estranged family. She finally decides to take charge and turn things around, but never having done anything herself before, the struggle is real (and hilarious) as Susan becomes the woman she always wanted to be, all on her own.

Brooklyn flies home to surprise her boyfriend on his birthday, but immediately changes her mind upon arrival and decides to hide out for the summer with her friend Faith. Faith lives with Casey and with relationship problems of their own, the couple are happy with the distraction...until Brooklyn begins to assert herself, then all of the characters come face to face with the hard realities of their relationships.

Something is missing in Tom's life. His marriage has lost its spark, his job is suffocating him, and his childhood best friend Dan still clings to the past. Every day he goes through the motions, becoming increasingly detached from those around him. Dan has the solution... something Tom's got to see to believe... tonight. What Dan shows him leaves Tom unsettled, flooding his mind with disturbing images, and binding the two friends together with its ugly secret.

As England begins its military engagement in the Falklands, a BBC news journalist attempts to climb up from his working-class roots, at any cost, lying to those around him to get what he wants, only to discover that he is the recipient of a deception far more clever than his own.

Thatcherism and the Irish troubles provide the backdrop for this study of Mick, a well-meaning youth in Sheffield, who has, unlike Dickens' Pip, no expectations. Mick lives with his parents, works on his motorbike, looks for work, and every two weeks gets his check from the dole. There are no jobs. His best mate Alan joins the army to fix tanks and is sent to Belfast to quell Catholics. At a disco, Mick meets Karen, who works at a shoe shop and lives with her recently-separated mom. Karen misses her dad. She offers Mick emotional stability and a route to adulthood; Alan pitches the army. Does Mick have a future?

Cassious is a hopelessly romantic college student seeking to find love and companionship with his best friend Jenesis. Jenesis is an emotionally scarred college girl who has outspokenly lost her faith in true love. Cassious is careful to not to spill his true feelings knowing her feelings regarding love and their friendship. Jenesis expresses her stern opinions of love in one of her college courses and winds up with a special assignment. Jenesis is challenged by her professor to document the opinions of at least 10 of her peers on the question "What is love?". Once she has documented her peers she is then to document her opinion after listening to her peers to see if her idea has changed. As Jenesis has done her whole life, she depends on Cassious to help her complete her learning and love. Cassious gets ribbed by his friends for following Jenesis around constantly and being her errand boy as she jumps from guy to guy and dismissed Cassious' obvious feelings... Written by Mason Younge