Best movies like Keep the Aspidistra Flying

A film company hires a gangster to mock himself holding up a bank, but he succeeds too well and makes off with the money. But all ends well.

The mysterious death of an enigmatic young man newly arrived in the suburb of Wetherby releases the long-repressed, dark passions of some of its residents.

Businesswoman Claire King is the daughter of a powerful advertising executive. When Claire marries humble copywriter Bill Landin, she wants to use her influence to help her husband get ahead, but he will have none of it.

An unemployed reporter, fired because of his drinking, takes a job at an advertising agency. Drama.

A heart-stirring meditation on time, memory and mortality, “Of Time and the City” is Terence Davies’ poetic, conflicted ode to his birthplace of Liverpool, England. The visual content of the film consists largely of archival clips of the city from the 1940s to the 1960s, their nostalgic charm darkened by accompanying music and the counterpoint of Davies’ dry, at times dyspeptic, voice-over narration. His voice thickens with emotion as he recalls the delights of juvenile movie-going or the ritual of a holiday trip to New Brighton, across the River Mersey, and hardens with contempt when he turns his gaze on the hoopla surrounding Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953. The film is a powerful evocation of the director's youth in post-war Britain and a reflection on how his home city has changed over the years.

A marriage crisis between a writer and his wife leads her to flee to Germany and eventually return with another man, through whom the writer is going to overcome his writer's block.

Penny works at a supermarket and Phil is a gentle taxi-driver. Penny’s love for Phil has run dry and they lead joyless lives with their two children, Rachel, a cleaner, and Rory, who is unemployed and aggressive.

After being discharged from the Army, Brian Flanagan moves back to Queens and takes a job in a bar run by Doug Coughlin, who teaches Brian the fine art of bar-tending. Brian quickly becomes a patron favorite with his flashy drink-mixing style, and Brian adopts his mentor's cynical philosophy on life and goes for the money.

An artist returning from years abroad takes the identity of his dead valet and gets married, but then there are complications.

The klutzy yet stunning Rebecca Sommers walks in on her hunky boyfriend in bed with another woman. They break up and Rebecca starts to fall apart, but, with the help of her close girlfriends, she begins to date again. Unfortunately, the men she meets all happen to be crazy. John, her dorky guy friend, tries to express his secret love for Rebecca, but she's too busy to notice as she tries to come to terms with her breakup.

A hapless undertaker becomes embroiled in a mafia war when he's forced to protect the brutal brother of a mob kingpin while be becomes romantically involved with the mob brother's wife.

A middle aged carpenter, who requires state welfare after injuring himself, is joined by a single mother in a similar scenario.

All but abandoned by her family in a London retirement hotel, an elderly woman strikes up a curious friendship with a young writer.

Receptionist Anne’s new relationship with nascent writer Peter is opening her eyes to a new lifestyle, one far removed from her comfortable middle-class background.

Naive Stanley Windrush returns from the war, his mind set on a successful career in business. Much to his own dismay, he soon finds he has to start from the bottom and work his way up, and also that the management as well as the trade union use him as a tool in their fight for power.

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.

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.

David and Linda Howard are successful yuppies from LA. When he gets a job disappointment, David convinces Linda that they should quit their jobs, liquidate their assets, and emulate the movie Easy Rider, spending the rest of their lives traveling around America...in a Winnebago.

A young advertising executive's life becomes increasingly complicated when, in order to impress her boss, she pretends to be engaged to a man she has just met.

Maud Bailey, a brilliant English academic, is researching the life and work of poet Christabel La Motte. Roland Michell is an American scholar in London to study Randolph Henry Ash, now best-known for a collection of poems dedicated to his wife. When Maud and Roland discover a cache of love letters that appear to be from Ash to La Motte, they follow a trail of clues across England, echoing the journey of the couple over a century earlier.

Heiress Hedda Nillson certain that her family is about to lose all its money, takes a job as a maid. After the usual trials and tribulations, Hedda falls in love with humble chauffeur Eric Landstrom.

In this comedy, the town gossip fills her time running the lives of others. Naturally, she is also a matchmaker.

A lonely young aristocrat in turn-of the century England struggles to meet the approval of his over-bearing, class-conscious father while trying to please the selfish woman he loves.

Suave French actor Philippe Martin provokes a scandal when, in a darkened theater, he mistakes young Monique for his mistress, Yvonne, and tries to kiss her. Charged with assault, the quick-thinking Philippe claims it's French tradition to do as he did, and is let go. To his surprise, Philippe learns that Monique has paid his fine. As the tabloids exploit the situation, Monique dates Philippe, until a photo appears of him kissing Yvonne.

Jack and Judy are husband and wife, and Howard is Judy's father. They live in some fictional undemocratic and repressive country, and tell us a story about their lives, mostly from Jack's point of view.

Director John Dullaghan’s biographical documentary about infamous poet Charles Bukowski, Bukowski: Born Into This, is as much a touching portrait of the author as it is an exposé of his sordid lifestyle. Interspersed between ample vintage footage of Bukowski’s poetry readings are interviews with the poet’s fans including such legendary figures such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Fante (wife of John), Bono, and Harry Dean Stanton. Filmed in grainy black and white by Bukowski’s friend, Taylor Hackford, due to lack of funding, the old films edited into this movie paint Bukowski’s life of boozing and brawling romantically, securing Bukowski’s legendary status.

A newspaper reporter keeps beating the police to clues in a current murder case. This makes the police think he may be involved in the crime.

Ben Gold gets the break of his life as aspiring author, but must stay home with his kids, Luke and Madison, to make his 5 months deadline. His feminist wife, workaholic fashion executive Alex, selfishly decides to take in promising rebel designer Zoe Miller, who left her boyfriend Trey. The teenager soon wins the family's hearts. Written by KGF Vissers

Christophe agrees to be filmed by his roommate Stéphane, while he is searching for a meaningful engineering job. Since he voluntarily resigned his job when he was to be moved to quality control, he does not get unemployment benefits, and goes to classes on how to contest the decision.

A bitter ad executive, who has reached his breaking point, finds himself in a mental institution, where his career actually begins to thrive with the help of the hospital's patients.

Groundbreaking author Anais Nin's diaries are explored in this docudrama. When young reporter Leah discovers Nin's provocative writings, she uncovers a life lived with freedom, liberation and passion. Blurring the lines between drama and doc, "Adventures" gives a glimpse into the life of a legendary artist.

Oliveiro is a young poet living in Buenos Aires where sometimes he has to sell his ideas to an advertising agency to make a living or exchange his poems for a steak. In Montevideo, he meets a prostitute, Ana, with whom he falls in love. Back in Buenos Aires, he accepts a contract with a publicity agency to get the money for three days of love with her. Will he get what he's searching for when his ideal of love's pleasure is literally going in levitation while making love?

In order to advance her career in the dynamic world of publicity in Mexico City, Raquel tries to reunite with her high school friend Cecy who has become the queen of social media. But unlike followers, friendships do not come instantly.

Amir is an illegal Pakistani immigrant smuggled into England in the 1960's to work, to send money to his family and perhaps even bring them over with him. A skilled laborer, he is forced to do unskilled work like shoveling sheep dung and processing wool. He lives in a boarding house with nearly a dozen other men, under the supervision of Hussein Shah. He befriends a young student, Sakib, who dreams of being a writer. Their existence is punctuated by secret movies, a visiting prostitute, fear of detection and deportation, and the gangster-like smuggler who comes by for his take every week. The household is shaken up by the arrival of a white girl, Shah's girlfriend, and the sense of femininity and family she brings.

In 1609, William Shakespeare published a collection of 154 sonnets, creating what is arguably the greatest lyric sequence in English literature - and at the center of this masterpiece lies a mystery that has endured for centuries. What are the identities of “the young man” and “the dark lady” to whom all but two of the sonnets allude? This moving performance brings to life the gritty reality of Shakespeare’s England, bits of the Bard’s plays and poems, and the consummate poet and dramatist himself as it exposes these personages unseen but so keenly felt in Shakespeare’s sonnets and in his life. Rupert Graves, Tom Sturridge, Indira Varma, Anna Chancellor, and Zoë Wanamaker star. Contains mature themes and explicit language. Some content may be objectionable. Produced by the Open University.