Best movies like Il padrone del vapore

When the first manned flight to Venus returns to Earth, the rocket crash-lands in the Mediterranean near a small Italian fishing village. The locals manage to save one of the astronauts Colonel Calder, the mission commander. A young boy also recovers what turns out to be a specimen of an alien creature. Growing at a fantastic rate, it manages to escape and eventually threatens the city of Rome.

In a remote, isolated Yazidi Kurdish village in post-Soviet Armenia, Hamo, a widower with a pitiful pension and three worthless sons, travels daily to his wife's grave. There he meets the lovely Nina, who is communing with her late husband. The two are penniless--she works in a local bar that is about to close down, while he has been forced to start selling his meager possessions. All seems hopelessly bleak, yet when Hamo begins to court Nina, their unexpected love revitalizes them.

A doctor's sophisticated wife joins him at his remote Asian practice to try and patch up their marriage. Increasingly violent friction between local rubber plantation workers and the authorities force both parties to make decisions.

There were very few commercial feature films made during the Italian fascist era that were as openly propagandistic as this famous (notorious?) dramatic paean to the Blackshirts. The story takes place in a small village in Italy in October of 1922, on the eve of the fascist "March on Rome", in which King Victor Emanuel III was persuaded to consign power to Benito Mussolini. Gianfranco Giachetti is Dr. Cardini, a doctor at the local psychiatric hospital, where a strike has been called by the local socialists. Cardini turns to the fascists to help avert the strike. His son Roberto (Mino Doro) rounds up fascist friends to fight those aligned with the strikers and the town's socialists.

On December 24th the Orient Express gets snowbound near a little mountain village and its passengers are forced to spend some time there, mingling with the local people, upsetting their usually monotonous daily lives.

Critics and the public say Karen Stone is too old -- as she approaches 50 -- for her role in a play she is about to take to Broadway. Her businessman husband, 20 years her senior, has been the angel for the play and gives her a way out: They are off to a holiday in Rome for his health. He suffers a fatal heart attack on the plane. Mrs. Stone stays in Rome. She leases a magnificent apartment with a view of the seven hills from the terrace. Then the contessa comes calling to introduce a young man named Paolo to her. The contessa knows many presentable young men and lonely American widows.

Agostina is a maid turned prostitute during World War II. She sends all the money she makes to the local priest in her home village for safekeeping. After the war is over Agostina and her friend Australia plan to open a clothing store so they return to her home island to collect the money from the priest. But after arriving there Agostina learns in shock that the priest has been dead for more than a year and that his eccentric successor mistook the received money for donations and spent all of it on building a new orphanage for war orphans. To make matters even worse, other islanders think that Agostina is now a millionaire and beg her to help them financially.

A kindly but desperate Alsatian innkeeper named Mathias murders and robs a rich Jewish merchant staying at his inn, but the ghost of his victim will not let him rest. Meanwhile, a mysterious Mesmerist has come to town, claiming he has made many criminals confess their crimes...

Third Man on the Mountain is an American film directed by Ken Annakin and produced by Walt Disney Productions, released in 1959. It is adapted from a novel by James Ramsey Ullman, entitled "Banner In The Sky". In the middle of the 19th century in Switzerland, a famous British mountaineer, Captain John Winter, wanted to climb a difficult summit, the Citadel. He goes to a small village but no guide wants to accompany him. A young man from the village, Rudi Matt, whose father died fifteen years earlier during an attempt to climb the Citadel, is determined to accompany him, with the help of his uncle. Winter also manages to hire a guide from a neighboring village and competitor, Emil Saxo. The roped party of four men then begins the ascent of the still untouched summit.

Microphone in hand, Pier Paolo Pasolini asks Italians to talk about sex, apparently their least favorite subject: he asks children if they know where do babies come from, asks old and young women about gender equality, and asks both genders if a woman's virginity still matters, how do they view homosexuals, if sex and honor are related, if divorce should be legal, if they support the recent abolition of brothels, etc. He interviews workers, intellectuals, students, rural farmers, the bourgeoisie, and other different people, painting a vivid portrait of Italy in the years of the Economic Boom, suspended between modernity and tradition.

A young boy living in a remote village in the Andes Mountains dreams of becoming shaman.

Six vignettes follow the Allied invasion from July 1943 to winter 1944, from Sicily north to Venice.

During the hot, sweltering summer, Mike, a young American tourist goes looking for his missing friend in an isolated Spanish village. Here, he gets embroiled with an alluring local woman who soon becomes obsessed with him. Forced to escape, Mike soon finds that the horror is far greater than he could have ever imagined.

The aging, conservative population of a small, sleepy village in the Italian Alps are surprised to see that a former French professor has settled there with his young wife and their three children to produce goat cheese, in order to escape the wrongs of civilization. At first they are suspicious of his unconventional ideas and lifestyle, then are conquered by the enthusiasm, kindness, helpfulness of the young family and start to see in them a possible rebirth of the place. But little by little misunderstandings, envy and conflicts take over.

In 19th-century Louisiana's Cajun country, Belizaire (Armand Assante) is the informal spokesman for his citizens, who don't see eye to eye with local racists who wish to eradicate all Cajuns. Complicating matters is the fact that Belizaire's former flame (Gail Youngs) is now married to his biggest rival (Will Patton), an affluent landowner's son. Before he knows it, Belizaire is caught up in a web of murder, lies and prejudice.

The teenage boy, Giuseppe, lives with his mother in Cammarata, a Sicilian mountain village. His father left the family years ago, and has since then settled down as a guest worker in West-Germany and established a family. Under local moral rules, Maria is a so-called "white widow", who must stay faithful to her husband even if he never returns to her again. Maria and the newly arrived young doctor fall in love with each other. Their happiness is frowned upon not only by Giuseppe, but the entire village as well as the distant husband.

A recently orphaned young Kurdish-French woman travels to Iraqi Kurdistan to find her mother's village, likely destroyed during the Anfal genocide. On her journey she meets two American film students who are traveling to remote villages screening Charlie Chaplin films. They decide to help her search, an undertaking that brings them to the war-weary Mount Qandil, dubbed by the locals the Kurdish Bermuda Triangle, along the Iraqi-Turkish-Iranian borders.

On Halloween eve in 1980, local outcast, Julien Cummings, is carelessly murdered. A vagabond witch doctor, Dr. Death, takes matters into his own hands and brings Julien back from the dead to creatively seek brutal revenge on his killers.

A team of climbers is assembled by a rich and eccentric man to rescue a missing expedition he sent up to a forbidden mountain who disappeared after sending out one last disturbing radio message.

After a night of drinking and gambling, Tyrell (R. Marcos Taylor) is awakened by an angry call from his girlfriend Meena (Anita Clay) and finds himself in bed with a strange woman, Cecelia (Alissa Schneider), a local mob boss' daughter. Once the local mob boss finds out, he hires relentless hitman Shota (Wilson). To make matters worse, the reward on Tyrell's head has dozen of others looking for him. Worst of all, Meena, the love of his life, is put in harm's way. Tyrell must make a stand by taking on the mob, taking on Shota, and finding the money to pay their landlord Mr. McGetty--all before the day ends.

The theft of a famous painting leads to murder and many suspects on a plush train speeding from Paris to Rome.

After the war, almost by chance, Alfonso Sansone starts to produce documentary films and moves from Palermo to Rome, the city of film.

The "Tucci" are a poor Italian family living in a small village in Lazio. Father, mother, a conceited daughter and a genius son, forced to pretend being stupid to keep up with the family. One day something unexpected happens: the family wins one hundred million Euros. Excited, they decide to keep the winning a secret, but as soon as a single word slips out from the mouth of the householder, they only have one choice to avoid being persecuted by friends and acquaintances: run away. They leave at night, heading to Milan. They will realize as soon as they arrive that today's rich people behaves very differently from the past, and being rich has become a real bother... this discovery will make things way different from what Tuccis' expected.

A nine-year-old Elizabeth Taylor made her film debut in this lively comedy. She plays the spoiled-brat daughter of a pudding manufacturer who has been entered into the town's mayoral race by some of the local businessmen. They have chosen him because they think he is easy to manipulate. As a sales gimmick, the pudding magnate advertises that his product contains the highly nutritious "Vitamin Z." He suddenly begins selling pudding like crazy and soon his political campaign is well-funded. Unfortunately, there is no "Vitamin Z" and when this is discovered, the town fathers try to dump him and show that he is a fake.

A big city hotelier's boss informs her that she will receive a promotion if she can pull off a major project.

In her early forties, Sofia lives in the mountains, isolated from the world, a place where even basic Internet technology seems to be an unknown entity. She runs an old farmhouse, located at the highest point outside the village, an age-old structure that she has converted into a holiday farm, whilst taking tending to her cows, her curative herbs and producing special milk used for the making top-quality Parmesan. One day, a foreigner from a well-known telecommunications company shows up. He considers that particular location the ideal spot to erect a cellphone repeater, a tower that will bring progress not only to Sofia, but to the whole area… How can ancient customs, peaceful silence and recipes coexist with the inevitable approach of new technologies which can improve our lives?

To prove his thesis that any product--even one that doesn't exist--can be merchandized if it is advertised properly, a young man gets together with his father's savvy secretary to market a non-existent laundry soap. Complications ensue when his "product" turns out to be more successful than even he imagined--and now he has to deliver.

A Texas millionaire travels to Europe to meet his girlfriend, a European countess. He stops in a rustic mountain village and meets a beautiful peasant girl. He falls in love with her, then must decide if he wants her or the rich countess.

A noted concert pianist in her early forties, totally obsessed with her music, retreats to a small town to be alone and to write a concerto, but there falls for a talented teenage musician and becomes consumed in an affair with him.

Andrea is a twentysomething from a rich but cold family who leads a superficial life devoid of responsibility. After receiving a letter from his dying father, whom he hasn't seen since he was a child, Andrea reluctantly joins him in Kenya to bid him farewell. Once there, he'll find himself with a rather singular inheritance: an 8-year-old half-brother that his father had from a local woman.

Emma is the bright, attractive and funny widowed mother of teen honor-student Charlie. She has a drinking problem that seemingly increases exponentially, and Charlie has problems of his own, chief among them the pregnancy of his girlfriend Lauren...

December 1944. As their bomber is shot down during a mission over Japan, Sergeant McManus and Robert, a young lieutenant, have no other choice but make a parachute jump. They are captured by local villagers and are saved from execution by Fukushima, the village elder. McManus never accepts his lot unlike Robert, who soon takes an interest in Japanese customs and rites. More, he falls in love with pretty Miyoko, Fukushima's widowed daughter-in-law.

Matteo, a boy from the city, goes to visit his grandfather in a secluded mountain village, where preparations for a local ancient festival are under way. Matteo spends the eve of the festival with Lidia and three other boys from the village. The group of kids begins a dangerous game, bringing up obscure mysteries that are rooted in the past of that mountain valley. Matteo thus goes through a sort of initiation, at the end of which he is able to exorcise his fears, but only after becoming uncomfortably conscious of the existence of evil.

Directed by Gian Tavarelli, Liberi (Break Free) centers on the freckle-faced Vince (Elio Germano), whose life in a Roman mountain village is unfulfilling, to say the least. His father Cenzo (Luigi Maria Burruano) lost his job after a local chemical plant closed; shortly afterward, Cenzo's wife Paola (Anita Zagaria) dumped him for a politician. Fed up, Vince travels to the beach town of Pescara and lands a job as a junior cook at a tourist resort. While there, he falls in love with Genny (Nicole Grimaudo), a waitress plagued by a phobia of traveling. Just as the romance begins to take off, Cenzo appears at Vince's doorstep demanding that his son help him get Paola back. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

An Italian clerk has been helped to his position by a fake kickback letter from a politician who, meanwhile has become a state secretary. His colleagues thus send him to Rome to settle an important matter with the powerful character. The poor fellow goes hoping the truth will not come out.