Best movies like Secrets of 1979
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Secrets of 1979 Starring Chen Yu, Daphne Low, Sean Sun, Yu-Ting Hsu, and more. If you liked Secrets of 1979 then you may also like: Bad Girls, Banana Split, The Best of Times, Brad's Status, Café. Waiting. Love 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.
In the summer of 1979, during Taiwan’s martial law period, Bing-Kuan asks her college friend Shu-Lan to help out on her family’s banana plantation. As time goes by, the two girls secretly develop a romantic relationship, and decide to volunteer at the Formosa Magazine in order to promote democratic freedom of expression. Yet their youthful romance is threatened as the Kuomintang regime seeks to suppress dissident voices.
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Banana Split
Over the course of a summer, two teenage girls develop the perfect kindred spirit friendship, with one big problem: one of them is dating the other's ex.
The Best of Times
Although their characters and temperaments couldn't be less alike, 19-year olds Wei and Jie are best friends. They're also neighbours, living with widower fathers and problem siblings in the suburbs of Taipei. When Wei is promoted from the rank of nightclub parking valet to the rank of debt-collector in Brother Gu's gang, he persuades his boss to hire Jie to work alongside him. Things begin to go wrong when they are given a handgun to reward their success in the new job. Always excitable and volatile, Jie becomes reckless and dangerous when he has the gun in his hand. When they try to collect a debt from the boss of a rival gang, a fight erupts and Jie shoots the gang-boss. The boys find themselves on the run. But fate and their youthful dreams still have tricks to play.
Brad's Status
Although Brad has a satisfying career, a sweet wife and a comfortable life in suburban Sacramento, things aren't quite what he imagined during his college glory days. When he accompanies his musical prodigy son on a university tour, he can't help comparing his life with those of his four best college friends who seemingly have more wealthy and glamorous lives. But when circumstances force him to reconnect with his former friends, Brad begins to question whether he has really failed or if their lives are actually more flawed than they appear.
Café. Waiting. Love
College freshman Si-ying gets a part-time job at “Cafe. Waiting. Love” coffee shop, where she befriends Abusi, a tomboyish barista who can make any coffee the customers request, the beautiful and mysterious cafe owner, and Zeyu, the boy who always sits in the same spot in the cafe who seems to be very popular with girls and on whom Si-ying develops an instant crush.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
Four young women continue the journey toward adulthood that began with "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." Now three years later, these lifelong friends embark on separate paths for their first year of college and the summer beyond, but remain in touch by sharing their experiences with each other.
To All the Boys: Always and Forever
Senior year of high school takes center stage as Lara Jean returns from a family trip to Korea and considers her college plans — with and without Peter.
Detention
Set in Taiwan during the 'White Terror' period of martial law, a high school girl who awakens in an empty school, only to find that her entire community has been abandoned except for one other student. Soon they realize that they have entered a realm filled with vengeful spirits and hungry ghosts.
Eternal Summer
Three high school students experience the perks and pitfalls of love in director Leste Chen’s sensitive tale of friendship and yearning.
The Last Summer
Standing on the precipice of adulthood, a group of friends navigate new relationships, while reexamining others, during their final summer before college.
Set Me Free
A coming-of-age tale centered on Hannah, a young girl who is living a troubled family life. Set in 1963, Hannah develops a fascination with Jean-Luc Godard's then-recent film "Vivre sa vie". As she begins to model herself after the film's lead role, Hannah slowly begins to explore the confusing nature of her sexuality.
Some Freaks
A charming romance develops between a boy with one eye and an overweight girl, though when she loses weight after going to college, their relationship is tested in devastating ways they never dreamed would happen.
Formosa Betrayed
In the early 1980s, an FBI Agent is assigned to investigate the murder of a respected professor. Through his investigation, he unearths a spider web of international secrets that has been thriving within college campuses across America for decades. His investigation takes him across the Pacific to the island nation of Taiwan, where with the help of the outspoken widow and an unlikely spy, he learns that the Professor's killing was not a random act, but a desperate move by a scandalous government intent on keeping its nefarious activities under wraps. Our detective soon finds himself on a collision course against the U.S. State Department, the Chinese Mafia, and the Nationalist Chinese Government - in a land where the truth is not what it seems and the only people he can trust, cannot be trusted at all. Inspired by actual events.
Southside with You
Chronicles a single day in the summer of 1989 when the future president of the United States, Barack Obama, wooed his future First Lady on an epic first date across Chicago's South Side.
Freedom Road
Ex-slave and former Union soldier Gideon Jackson represents other ex-slaves at the constitutional convention, and is soon elected to the U.S. Senate despite opposition from white landowners, law enforcement and the KKK. He unites with sharecropper Abner Lait, who helps Jackson unite ex-slaves and white tenant farmers.
Testament of Youth
Testament of Youth is a powerful story of love, war and remembrance, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain, which has become the classic testimony of that war from a woman’s point of view. A searing journey from youthful hopes and dreams to the edge of despair and back again, it’s a film about young love, the futility of war and how to make sense of the darkest times.
The Lady Says No
The feminist author of a national best-seller titled The Lady Says No meets a sexist magazine photographer and decides she'd rather say yes.
On Happiness Road
Chi earned her American dream after persevering with her studies in Taiwan. Following her grandmothers’ death, Chi returns to her family on Happiness Road, where she begins to feel nostalgic about her childhood and starts to contemplate the meaning of “life” and “home”. What is happiness? Will Chi find her own happiness?
Promises in the Dark
A young doctor, Alexandra Kendall, seeking change while recovering from a recent heartbreak, moves from Chicago, Illinois to Hartford, Connecticut. She joins the West Hartford medical practice of Dr. Walter McInterny, a doctor approaching retirement age. 17-year-old Elizabeth "Buffy" Koenig is a precocious student at West Hartford's William Hall High School. Her boyfriend Gerry is a football player at Hall High. While Dr. McInterny is away on vacation, longtime patient Buffy hurts her leg while harmlessly kicking a soccer ball during Gerry's nearby football practice. At the hospital, Dr. Kendall finds that not only is the leg broken, but the bone was also weakened by cancer. Dr. Kendall treats Buffy and the two develop a bond that extends beyond the doctor-patient relationship; Dr. Kendall is drawn to Buffy's humor and raw honesty.
Law of the Tropics
Jim Conway, who works on a South American rubber plantation, leaves to meet a girl from the United States whom he is to marry. But he receives a telegram from her telling him she has married someone else. He goes to a waterfront café where he meets a singer, Joan Madison, and tells her his troubles. He asks her to marry him and return to the plantation with him using the name of the girl he was to marry. This strikes her as a great idea as she is a wanted fugitive.
Spark: A Burning Man Story
Each year, 60,000 people from around the globe gather in a dusty windswept Nevada desert to build a temporary city, collaborating on large-scale art and partying for a week before burning a giant effigy in a ritual frenzy. Spark takes a peek behind the curtain with Burning Man organizers and participants, revealing a year of unprecedented challenges and growth.
Chasing Freedom
New York attorney Libby (Juliette Lewis) is a go-getter who won't let anyone stand in the way of her success. But when she accepts a pro bono case involving young Afghan dissident Meena (Layla Alizada), Libby finds her corporate dreams replaced by a growing sense of idealism. Seeking asylum in the United States after years of oppression under the Taliban, Meena desperately wants freedom, and Libby is her only hope. But can Libby deliver?
Iron Neck Li
Iron Neck Li (Chi Kuan Chun) signs on as a personal bodyguard for a Chinese prince. The potentate plans to visit the lawless island of Formosa, where criminals lie in wait -- highwaymen who would love to take a crack at the rich prince. But garden-variety brigands are the least of Li's worries when he encounters a powerful clan. Li must now put everything on the line to save the young prince.
According to Greta
Dumped on her grandparents for the summer by her indifferent mother, acerbic and self-destructive teenager Greta disrupts the elderly couple's staid life on the Jersey Shore. Eventually, a romance helps Greta face down her demons.
Summer Love
Maya Sulliway is a struggling single mom who's studying to become an accountant. When her young daughter goes off to sleepaway camp, Maya accepts a summer internship at Kizzmit, a tech company known for developing a popular social app, in order to receive college credit.
Dance of Death
An orphan boy seeks revenge upon a villainous kung-fu sect that killed his friends. He chances upon two old kung fu masters who are fighting to determine who's the better fighter; one is a drunk, the other puffs constantly on a pipe. Fei Fei convinces them to teach him kung fu, and then he'll fight using both of their techniques and will discover which is superior. So Fei Fei ends up fighting his way up the ranks of the evil sect with the two old men trailing after him, evaluating the battles and counting how many of their individual moves Fei Fei uses. The final battle with the white-haired master of the sect, using new kung fu moves inspired by dancers in a brothel, is amazingly gymnastic. --Bret Fetzer
A Pretended Rebel
The Japanese ninja secretly invade China in the time of the Ming Dynasty.
The Lost Kung Fu Secrets
The morale of the army is low as the countess sets out to overthrow the enemy army..
Love and Sword
When Yueh Sin's father is brutally murdered, her lover Shao Fung, the #1 samurai ninja warrior of the martial world, seeks revenge on her behalf.
Seven and a Match
Seven college friends re-unite in the house where they used to spend summers. Some things have changed, some have stayed the same.
My DNA Says I Love You
Gigi and Marlene, two single women both in their late 20's, work at a bio-technology company, researching and developing medicine to suppress specific genes and observe their effects on the human body. Gigi is born with the "clean-freak" gene and her obsession with keeping things tidy causes problems in her relationships. Marlene, on the other hand, is born with the "fat gene" and needs to regularly take pills to maintain her weight. Marlene panics when she learns that her "anti-fat" pills will be taken off the market. Their personal problems coincide with romantic ones. Marlene grows frustrated maintaining her long-distance relationships via the Internet, and Gigi leaves her boyfriend when she discovers he's cheating on her.
Dear Santa
Crystal, a rich party girl, finds a little girl's letter to Santa asking for a new mother, and she vows to win over the father and daughter before the holidays.
Guns of Darkness
Committed pacifist Tom Jordan's decision to help former President Rivera escape a military coup is a simple act of mercy that takes him and his wife to the edge of despair. It turns them into outlaws and fugitives, hunted by a vicious regime; yet it could also bring them together in a way they have never been before.
Prince of Tears
A shameful period in Taiwanese history provides the backdrop for this emotional drama from writer and director Yonfan (aka Yang Fan). In 1949, in the wake of the 228 Incident (in which anti-government protesters launched a rebellion that was violently put down by authorities), Taiwan came under martial law, and through much of the 1950s brutal reprisals against suspected communists were commonplace. During the years of the "White Terror," thousand of supposed dissidents were killed, imprisoned or simply disappeared at the hands of the military police.
Bad Girls
S.H.E's Ella Chen (New Perfect Two) joins hands with screen heartthrob Mike He (Love Keeps Going) in Bad Girls! Ella plays spunky high-school girl A-Dan, who, along with her best friends Pei Pei ("otaku's goddess" Da Yuan) and Xiao Mi (Beatrice Fang), forms the notoriously prone-to-violence trio known as the "Bad Girls". She takes it upon herself to deal out justice, protect other girls from bullies, and, most importantly, punish the insufferable boys. This summer, young popular idol Justin (Mike He) comes to A-Dan's school to shoot his latest romantic movie, and that makes the girls in town crazy. But it is the nonchalant A-Dan who, by pure chance of fate, accidentally crashes into the filming lot, and is assigned the female lead role opposite the arrogant Justin! There is a problem - she has no prior romantic experience at all..