Best movies like Once Upon a Line

A 1968 animation/documentary that criticises the industrial system.

William Thacker is a London bookstore owner whose humdrum existence is thrown into romantic turmoil when famous American actress Anna Scott appears in his shop. A chance encounter over spilled orange juice leads to a kiss that blossoms into a full-blown affair. As the average bloke and glamorous movie star draw closer and closer together, they struggle to reconcile their radically different lifestyles in the name of love.

Bulldog Drummond is a British WWI veteran who longs for some excitement after he returns to the humdrum existence of civilian life. He gets what he's looking for when a girl requests his help in freeing her uncle from a nursing home. She believes the home is just a front and that her uncle is really being held captive while the culprits try to extort his fortune from him.

Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.

Huckleberry Finn, a rambuctious boy adventurer chafing under the bonds of civilization, escapes his humdrum world and his selfish, plotting father by sailing a raft down the Mississippi River. Accompanying him is Jim, a slave running away from being sold. Together the two strike a bond of friendship that takes them through harrowing events and thrilling adventures.

Two very bored shadowy characters try to think of something to do--and end up playing "Shadow Puppets."

Le Mirage is the perspective of a man in his thirties asking himself "what am I chasing?" Our society has become all about consumerism, if not excess. Success is determined by what and how much we have and "stuff" becomes the band-aid to a meaningless existence. Stuff fills the void of the existence we weren't meant to lead.

The Director reflects upon and seeks to understand the causes and the events that lead to her drug-addicted prostitute daughter being murdered at the age of 26.

A clerk sees his big chance to escape a humdrum existence, but his resolve is tested as many unexpected obstacles arise.

Elyse appears, on the surface, to have it all - a beautiful family, and enviable home, a charmed lifestyle. However, all is not what it seems, and her enviable existence starts to unravel. Institutionalised following a catastrophic accident, she is deeply traumatised and seemingly unreachable. Only the care from her doctor and the unconditional love from her nurse might lead to her recovery.

After World War II service changes them, a married couple dread their postwar reunion.

This film is about Japanese women, escape, glamour and dreams. The Takarazuka Revue is an enormously successful spectacular where the all-women cast create fantasies of erotic love and sensitive men. It is also a world for young girls desperate to do something different with their lives. In return for living a highly disciplined and reclusive existence, they will be adored and envied by many thousands of Japanese women. They will look, act and behave like young men while having no real men in their lives. Dream Girls explores the nature of sexual identity and the contradictory tensions that face young women in Japan today.

Jack is a wanderer whose aimless roaming leads him to a number of interesting locations and into the company of many interesting people, and despite his fascination with bullfighting he leads a largely peaceful existence. When a crime boss' daughter is accidentally gored to death, Jack is implicated in the unfortunate event and singled out for termination by a seemingly unending army of lethal hitmen. As Jack wages an uphill battle for survival against the harsh desert terrain and a hail of gun smoke and lead, his will to live depends on his ability to exercise his demons and come to terms with the fact that he may not live to see another sunrise.

Detective Amelia Van Helsing is on the desperate hunt for the killer responsible for a string of grisly murders targeting young women. Matters only worsen when all evidence leads to the seemingly untouchable Count Dracula. And when Van Helsing’s girlfriend vanishes, she is forced to question the very existence of monsters in a final showdown with the enigmatic count.

Four brilliant university students are forced to confront themselves in terrifying ways when their Quantum Physics experiment leads to an entangled parallel existence that leaves them questioning who they are and what is real.

Ella Peterson works in the basement office of Susanswerphone, a telephone answering service. She listens in on others' lives and adds some interest to her own humdrum existence by adopting different identities for her clients. They include an out-of-work Method actor, a dentist with musical yearnings, and in particular playwright Jeffrey Moss, who is suffering from writer's block and desperately needs a muse.

An American realtor living in England is dissatisfied with what he believes to be his humdrum life. One weekend while his wife is out of town, he gives a ride to a woman he sees stranded on the road. One thing leads to another, and he soon finds himself enmeshed in a plot involving a diamond robbery, gangsters and murder.

A spiritual search for answers leads the filmmaker to a California workshop run by a guru who promotes sexual adventure -- and the existence of aliens.

Spoiled single girl Angie Moore gets cut off 25 days before Christmas. When she discovers the existence of a sizable trust fund that she will inherit once she gets married, Angie decides to find a man to marry - by Christmas.

Recently released from prison, French chef Jacques pursues an obsession -- to leave his past behind and work for the great British chef Victor Ellwood. He knows Victor had an affair with his mother and may even be his dad. Working for iron-fisted Victor is back-breaking, but his existence is softened by the presence of a curious girl living in the downstairs flat. As he falls in love with her, he realises she not only has an aversion to restaurants, but food of all kinds. Is her eating disorder a force too resilient for anything, even love to cure?

Bill Goodman is a slick, wealthy, celebrated psychiatrist, who leads a double life. He has a wife and daughter in New York. At the same time, the bigamist has another wife in London. Despite his long absences on 'business trips', both little families lived in domestic bliss, totally oblivious of each-others existence. Alas the wives find out about each-other place in Bill's well-organized life, and let jealousy get the better of happiness; they even team up and turn on the man who so cunningly made everyone happy for so long...

This cheerfully humdrum rom-com presents a very homemade slice of first-lockdown life. But can its squabbling couple make it through a mysterious pandemic? Co-writers and filmmakers Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan play Kallia and Ram: young lovers vacationing to New York just as the pandemic unfolds. They’ve already descended into petty name-calling when the travel ban prolongs their trip indefinitely, trapping them in Kallia’s uncle’s apartment.

A dramedy redefining the existence of Cole Killian who's large heart and ill judgment leads him into twisted relationship issues causing life destructive consequences.

Paul Lamont, a corrections officer and law student, leads a comfortable if culturally bankrupt, middle-class existence. Lamont's marriage is already in trouble when he bails out a mysterious Haitian, Jean Baptiste, in the belief that Baptiste has been wrongly accused. Baptiste insinuates himself in Lamont's life and leads him on a journey of discovery. Lamont then finds that acts of conscience can have unforeseen consequences.

A cafe worker is violently jolted from her day-to-day existence when offered the startling revelation that this world may be on the brink of destruction, revolution—or both.

Set amid the glittering casino lights and deteriorating desert landscapes of the oasis city Las Vegas, QUEEN OF DIAMONDS revolves around the disaffected existence of of Firdaus (Tinka Menkes), a blackjack dealer whose world unfolds as a fragmented but hypnotic interplay between repetition and repressed anger.

Two young men and a sultry divorcee flee their drab hometown existence, taking to the road in a bubblegum pink chevrolet.

With unexpected expenses coming up and needing money to pay for tuition, Grace switch lives with her wealthy, successful identical twin sister Mercy. Mercy is planning on having one last weekend affair with her secret lover. Drew, Mercy's loving husband never knew of his wife's identical twin. He notices a behavior change in his wife and goes to the extreme to find out the cause. When the unexpected happens, Grace is forced to live a crazy double life. Which life will she choose: Her humdrum life, or her sister's adventurous life being married to a successful business typhoon?

Helen lives in London with her father and her kids. John, her husband, is an aid-worker in Eastern Europe. He has been gone many months. Helen is desperately anxious that he should come home. Taking the kids to school one morning, she is killed in a car accident. She remains caught in limbo, trapped between life and death. Many miles away, in war-torn Eastern Europe, John is unaware that his wife has died. As Helen herself is unaware that she is dead. Thus begins, a four-day Odyssey: Grandpa and the kids must come to terms with Helen's death; John must travel across a war-torn land as he tries to reach home; and Helen must stand helplessly observing her own existence as it comes back to haunt her - until at last she is reconciled with John, and thus released.

After retiring from his life as an outlaw, ranch owner Nathaniel Reed quietly leads an honest existence with his devoted wife, Laura Lee. But his gun-slinging past suddenly comes back to haunt him when he learns that the man he once maimed during a stagecoach robbery is now a U.S. Marshal who will stop at nothing to find vengeance.

A Texan paranormal radio host, Ridley Kay leads a fairly ordinary existence, until a strange orphan with a tragic past comes crashing into his life. Convinced other-worldly forces are after her, Kay attempts to protect the young girl from an onslaught of deadly alien and extra-terrestrial phenomena. However, as the strange lights continue to stalk her, he discovers the world of the paranormal might be far more sinister than anyone has possibly imagined.

A brilliant, but hermetic and hard-living woman discovers an anomalous cosmic force that projects the end of the universe to be a mere two weeks away. The terminal diagnosis for all existence compels her to confront her own fear and isolation, and leads her to pursue another woman who may offer the promise of salvation.

Sensitive wallflower Cara exists in her humdrum life until the appearance of charismatic Jay unlocks powerful desires within her. When Jay's beautiful French lover arrives, Cara's journey to self-discovery takes a dark and unexpected turn, with tragic consequences.

A teenage girl's bizarre attempt to ease the pain of her lonely existence leads to a psychosexual battle of wills between her and her sexually charged mother

Adapted by Alice Duer Miller from a novel by Alden Brooks, the film concerns a young man who forsakes the humdrum business world for the bohemian life of an artist. Josef von Sternberg had been the original director of Exquisite Sinner, but MGM was dissatisfied with the picture and refused to release it. When the film finally surfaced in 1926 (a full year after its completion), it had been radically altered by staff director Phil Rosen.