Best movies like Phoenix
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Phoenix Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Keiji Sada, Isamu Kosugi, Toyo Takahashi, and more. If you liked Phoenix then you may also like: A Year of the Quiet Sun, An Unfinished Affair, The War Widow, The Night House, Nina's Heavenly Delights and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A Japanese war widow recalls her love affair with her deceased husband.
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An Unfinished Affair
When a man ends a regretful love affair that occurred during his wife's illness, his mistress plots revenge by targeting his family's most treasured possessions, a priceless painting and his son.
The War Widow
Originally broadcast by KCET (PBS) on their dramatic showcase series, "Visions," this sweet, quiet film is set during World War I. It is the story of Amy, a proper, but lonely housewife whose husband is away at war. She finds solace in a friendship with a more worldly female photographer, only to have her entire world turned upside down when the friendship becomes genuine love and she is forced to choose. Groundbreaking for its powerful yet non-prurient portrayal of lesbian first love.
The Night House
Reeling from the unexpected death of her husband, Beth is left alone in the lakeside home he built for her. Soon she begins to uncover her recently deceased husband's disturbing secrets.
Nina's Heavenly Delights
A feisty young woman returns to Glasgow to run her deceased father's curry house.
Another Time, Another Place
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...
The Last Samurai
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
Till Death
After a romantic evening at their secluded lake house, a woman wakes up handcuffed to her dead husband. Trapped and isolated in the dead of winter, she must fight off hired killers to escape her late spouse's twisted plan.
The Lower Depths
Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.
Escape Me Never
A penniless composer marries a young widow with a baby—even though he is in love with his brother's fiancée.
Forever After
A wounded captain recalls his youth, his time at college, and the woman he fell in love with.
A Ghost Story
Recently deceased, a white-sheeted ghost returns to his suburban home to console his bereft wife, only to find that in his spectral state he has become unstuck in time, forced to watch passively as the life he knew and the woman he loves slowly slip away.
Love in the Time of Cholera
In Colombia just after the Great War, an old man falls from a ladder; dying, he professes great love for his wife. After the funeral, a man calls on the widow - she dismisses him angrily. Flash back more than 50 years to the day Florentino Ariza, a telegraph boy, falls in love with Fermina Daza, the daughter of a mule trader.
Suddenly
Four assassins led by Baron, pose as Secret Service agents to commandeer the house of war-widow ELLEN. Her home is a prime sniper position for their plan to assassinate the President on his visit to the small town of Suddenly. The men fool the local cops except for one, TODD. A washed-up former war hero and deputy who is now the town drunk, Todd served with Ellen’s deceased husband and has developed romantic feelings for her over the years. But she rebuffs his advances. Todd visits the house and is immediately suspicious of Baron, but no one will listen to the ravings of a drunk. Once Todd realizes what is going on, he manages to kill one of Baron’s crew, but is captured. Now he and Ellen must find a way to stop Baron and his men before they kill the President.
Homecoming
Self-absorbed Dr. Lee Johnson enlists with the Army medical corps during World War II, more out of a feeling that it's "the thing to do" rather than deep-seated patriotism. On his first day, he's put into place by 'Snapshot', a sassy and attractive nurse. Their initial antagonism blossoms into romance. Lee then finds himself torn with guilt over being unfaithful to his wife, Penny, who's waiting for him back home.
Horrors of Malformed Men
Hirosuke, a medical student with almost no recollection of his past, is trapped in an asylum, despite being perfectly sane. After escaping from the loony bin, and being framed for the murder of a circus girl, he spots the photo of a recently deceased man, Genzaburo Komoda, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. By pretending to have been resurrected, Hirosuke assumes the dead man's identity, fooling everyone, including Komoda's widow and mistress. Whilst at the Komoda household, Hirosuke recalls memories that convince him to travel to a nearby island, home of Jogoro, the web-fingered father of Genzaburo. Whilst on the island, Hirosuke not only discovers Jogoro's plans to build his 'ideal community' (by transforming perfectly normal humans into hideous freaks), but also the awful truth behind his own identity.
The Iron Lady
A look at the life of Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, with a focus on the price she paid for power.
Sweet Virginia
A former rodeo star, now a motel manager, meets a young man who is responsible for the violence that suddenly has seized his small town.
Talk of Angels
This is the story of a young Irish woman who comes to Spain to escape from the pressures she feels about her impending marriage to a political activist in Ireland. But in Spain in the 1930's, taking a job of governess in a wealthy family, she finds the same kinds of political unrest. In fact, it isn't long before she finds herself attracted to a married man who is similarly involved in the struggle against fascism and Franco. This awakens her to her nature that brings her to such men and resolves for her what she must do about the life she left in Ireland
Slattery's Hurricane
A pilot wants a life of ease, flying for drug smugglers and looking the other way until his conscience is tweaked by a woman he has misused. The story unfolds in flashbacks as the pilot battles the storm and recalls his failures, including a love affair with the wife of his best friend.
Bel Ami
Georges Duroy travels through 1890s Paris, from cockroach ridden garrets to opulent salons, using his wits and powers of seduction to rise from poverty to wealth, from a prostitute’s embrace to passionate trysts with wealthy beauties, in a world where politics and media jostle for influence, where sex is power and celebrity an obsession.
God Bless the Broken Road
The story of a young mother who loses her husband in Afghanistan and struggles to raise their young daughter in his absence.
Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor
This documentary recounts the difficult choice actress Mary Astor had to make after learning her personal, very intimate, diaries had been stolen. The film tells the story of Astor's 1936 child custody case.
The Sun Comes Up
Set in the rural south of the United States, a bereaved war widow learns to put aside her bitterness and grief as she grows to love a young orphan boy and his dog.
24 Hours in the Life of a Woman
Set in 1913, 1936 and 2001. When he returns to the casino and seaside resort of his early teens, Louis, a 78 year old man encounters Olivia, a 19 year old young woman madly in love with a violent cad. Louis tells the story of his own mother having a passionate, driven fling with his Italian tennis instructor in 1936, and of Marie Collins Brown, the slightly older widowed woman who helped him through his confusion and pain by recounting the story of her passionate 24 hour fling with a hopeless young Polish gambler in 1913.
The Lost Husband
Trying to put her life back together after the death of her husband, Libby and her children move to her estranged Aunt's goat farm in central Texas.
Gold Coast
Karen stands to inherit millions from her dead husband on one condition: she must stay away from other men. Two of the deceased's former associates seek his money by getting closer to Karen, not knowing that doing so places the fortune out of reach.
Resistance
The epic tale of an American reconnaissance pilot downed in occupied Belgium at the height of World War II. Hidden by resistance fighters, the pilot falls in love with the wife of the man who will save him. When their affair is exposed, an act of betrayal threatens their lives and the entire resistance movement, forcing the pilot to make a powerful choice that could change the course of the war.
Young Widow
A young bride tries to rebuild her life after she learns her husband has been killed in the war.
The Promise of Love
A teenage bride becomes a war widow when her Marine Corps husband is killed in Vietnam, until into her life comes a civilian recreation director who works at Camp Pendleton.
Captive Hearts
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.
Last Words
Nagisa, a high school girl who has been given three months to live. Without telling her widowed father where she is going, she sets out from the city to the small town where she was born. She recalls her childhood memories, and her love for Satoshi begins to grow stronger. However, she is shocked to discover that Satoshi is having an affair with Eriko, a married woman.
A Year of the Quiet Sun
Shortly after World War II an American soldier (Norman) and a Polish refugee (Emilia) fall in love. Eventually he will return to the U.S. and both expect that she will soon follow him with her mother. Emilia's mother is sick, but will recover with the right medicine. But the mother, and not Emilia, knows that there will only be one ticket...