Best movies like Shangri-La

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Shangri-La Starring Show Aikawa, Shirō Sano, Yuu Tokui, Midoriko Kimura, and more. If you liked Shangri-La then you may also like: The Yellow Cab Man, Weapons, Night on the Galactic Railroad, Nightmare Detective, Red-Headed Woman 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.

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Shangri-La follows the lives of a group of homeless people in Japan who run into a man who nearly commits suicide and decide to help him out of his financial troubles. Using their various ingenious resources they embark on a complex scheme to blackmail a crooked businessman, whose bankruptcy claim has put people out of work. It’s a fun romp as these seemingly homeless people manage to outsmart the very people who cast them from society.

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Know any good movies to watch like Shangri-La 2002. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.

The Yellow Cab Man

Pirdy is accident prone. He has been denied insurance from every company in town because he is always getting hit or hurt in some way. On the day that he meets the lovely Ellen of the Yellow Cab Co., he also meets the crooked lawyer named Creavy. Pirdy is an inventor and when Creavy learns about elastic-glass, his new invention, he makes plans to steal the process. With the help of another con man named Doksteader, and the boys, he will steal this million dollar invention no matter who gets hurt.

Weapons

Weapons presents a series of brutal, seemingly random youth-related killings over the course of a weekend in a typical small town in America, and tragically reveals how they are all interrelated.

Night on the Galactic Railroad

Giovanni currently lives a dreary life of near non-stop work. At school, his peers ridicule him incessantly, and his employer at work is distant and cold. As his isolation from society becomes unbearable, he suddenly finds himself on a train heading far away from his miserable home. Accompanied by Campanella, an acquaintance from school, Giovanni embarks on a journey that will define the rest of his life.

Nightmare Detective

Three people in Tokyo take a surreal voyage of self-discovery through memory and nightmares. "O" intends suicide while talking on a cell-phone with a stranger he meets on line who plans a simultaneous suicide. Events take a horrifying turn. Keiko Kirishima is a cool, seemingly emotionless police detective, brilliant but off-putting. She's faced with two mutilated corpses who appear to have killed themselves, but she's not sure. A cell-phone number links the deaths. She calls on Akumu Tantei, a poor and suicidal young man who has the ability to enter people's dreams. He's reluctant to help. His past haunts him. A subconscious duel of terror and blood awaits the three.

Red-Headed Woman

Lil works for the Legendre Company and causes Bill to divorce Irene and marry her. She has an affair with businessman Gaerste and uses him to force society to pay attention to her.

Dinner at Eight

An ambitious New York socialite plans an extravagant dinner party as her businessman husband, Oliver, contends with financial woes, causing a lot of tension between the couple. Meanwhile, their high-society friends and associates, including the gruff Dan Packard and his sultry spouse, Kitty, contend with their own entanglements, leading to revelations at the much-anticipated dinner.

Good Deeds

Businessman Wesley Deeds is jolted out of his scripted life when he meets Lindsey, a single mother who works on the cleaning crew in his office building.

The Homeless Student

Based on an autobiography by Hiroshi Tamura, the film follows story of the author's experience of homelessness when this father suddenly decides to abandon his family. Hiroshi and his older siblings do all what they can to withstand the trouble they encounter along their way.

Double Suicide of Sonezaki

Suicide has long been used as a form of social protest in Japan. In this film, set in 1703, samurai culture is being transformed by the emergence of a new merchant class. Elements of the social contract are beginning to unravel, and some unscrupulous people took undue advantage of these changes before the social order was re-created. In this story, a rich merchant gives his clerk an I.O.U. instead of wages. When the impoverished clerk presents the paper to the merchant at the agreed upon time asking for payment, the man flies into a rage and pretends he never wrote it and claims the clerk is trying to defraud him. Then he sets his henchmen on the clerk to administer a beating.

Margin Call

A thriller that revolves around the key people at an investment bank over a 24-hour period during the early stages of the financial crisis.

Lift

An international heist crew, led by Cyrus Whitaker, race to lift $500 million in gold from a passenger plane at 40,000 feet.

Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard

Upstart payment firm Wirecard wowed the financial industry with its runaway success — until a tenacious team of journalists exposed massive fraud.

The Work and the Glory III: A House Divided

Joshua Steed returns to Missouri a wealthy man with a beautiful wife; however, the past has a way of catching up. Soon Joshua is tangled in a web of rumors, deception and betrayal that threatens to tear his family apart. Back in Kirtland, financial trouble riddles the foundations of the fledgling Church causing a division, and questioning of the Prophet Joseph Smith's divine calling. Has he lost his prophetic gift? Hundreds of Saints immigrate to Missouri, where Governor Boggs raises an army - with Joshua at its head - to address the "Mormon Problem." When the militia receives orders to attack the Mormon settlement, only Joshua can save his family from the gathering mob.

God Made Man

Leading double lives and seeking redemption, a transgender man, a drag queen and a corrupt lawyer collide in this urban purgatory.

The Tougher They Come

Set in a rugged Northwest logging camp, this drama follows the exploits of the lumberjack who inherits the camp. For a long time, he has been courting a pretty young thing, and now that she believes him wealthy, she decides to finally accept his proposal. When she finds out that the company has many financial woes and that living in the woods takes guts and courage, she turns into a nagging shrew, constantly urging him to sell-out to a major corporation. Meanwhile his treacherous foreman, an agent of the bigger company, uses sabotage to change the stubborn camp owner's mind.

Stolen Holiday

A young model is set up with her own fashion business by a crooked financier, who sells worthless bonds.

Human Lost

In the year 2036 man kind has revolutionized the medical field. Scientist have conquered death via the use of internal nanomachines and the “Shell System,” however, only the richest can afford to partake. Yozo Oba has been troubled by strange dreams and one day joins his friend’s biker gang. They embark to the “The Inside,” where society’s elite live, however, this begins a terrifying journey of discovery that will change Yozo’s life forever.

Man of a Stormy Era

The early years of the Showa period were turbulent times for Japan. The country suffered financial crisis and famine, women worked under intolerable employment conditions, and political corruption was a major issue. Out of fear that the great nation would soon fall, a group of young patriotic men gathered to lay out plans to assassinate the crooked politicians. One of these young terrorists was Shinsuke Kusaka. He receives orders to kill the Prime Minister.

Angels Over Broadway

Small-time businessman Charles Engle is threatened with exposure for embezzling $3,000 for his free-spending wife. Deciding on suicide, he scribbles a note, stuffs it in his pocket and goes for one last night on the town. He is pulled into a poker game by conman Bill O'Brien and singer Nina Barone, but when they discover the dropped note, they resolve to turn the tables, get Engle his $3,000 and save his life.

Samurai Cowboy

When his best friend dies of an heart attack due to permanent stress at work, the Japanese businessman Yutaka Soto quits and fulfills himself a dream: he buys a ranch in Montana to live on. However the ranch turns out to be due for demolition and the welcome by the people is less than friendly: Hotel owner Cord Wingate wanted the ranch himself and now sabotages Yutaka. Only veterinarian Jessy and an old Cowboy help him. -- Tom Zoerner

Paikaji Nankai Sakusen

Sasaki has had a difficult period, going through a divorce and losing his job. To take a break and start anew, Sasaki decides to visit Iriomote Island. While there, Sasaki's belongings are stolen by four homeless men. Sasaki then lives with three other people: a survivalist, a city man and a girl who speaks Kansai dialect. One day, Sasaki hears news about the four homeless men and decides to get revenge ...

The Trouble with Jessica

Sarah and Tom are in terrible financial trouble. On the brink of losing everything, they’ve managed to find a buyer for their stylish London home. When their best friends Richard and Beth come round for a final dinner, an uninvited old friend, Jessica, tags along. After a seemingly trivial argument, Jessica hangs herself in the garden. Tom goes to call the police when Sarah realizes if the buyer finds out, the sale will collapse, meaning definite financial ruin. The only solution - to convince Richard and Beth to take Jessica’s body to her flat and make it look like she killed herself there. If they’re clever enough about it, what could possibly go wrong?

The Match King

Unscrupulous Chicago janitor Paul Kroll uses deceit to fund a return trip to his homeland of Sweden. There, via ongoing continuing deceit and manipulation, he gradually attains a monopoly on the matchstick market in several countries and becomes an influential international figure. Based on the true story of Ivar Kreuger.

Homunculus

A homeless man meets a medical school student who pays him to volunteer for a surgical procedure known as trepanation, drilling a hole in his skull, which ends up giving him the ability to communicate with the dark side of people’s subconscious minds.

Amiko

Amiko isn’t like other children. Her endless energy makes her an outcast at school and gets her in trouble at home. When a painful family loss disrupts her seemingly idyllic seaside life, her sense of isolation intensifies, yet it doesn’t stop Amiko from inviting people into her world.

Akira and Akira

Akira Yamazaki and Akira Kaido are new employees at Industrial Central Bank. They are both outstanding at their jobs and fierce rivals, but they come from totally different backgrounds. When Akira Yamazaki was a child, his father's factory went bankrupt and his family ran away in the middle of the night. Because of that experience, Akira Yamazaki wants to work as a banker to save people. On the other hand, Akira Kaido was born into a family that runs a large company. He works with a calm demeanor. Due to a case, Akira Yamazaki receives a demotion. Akira Kaido continues to be successful at work, but his family's company is on the verge of bankruptcy due to their family-oriented management style. The employees there and their families are all in a crisis situation. With this desperate situation unfolding, the reversal of fate of these two men begin.

Flower & Snake 3

A businessman is ruthless with his competitors, and in response his competitors after being driven out of business kidnap aforementioned business man's wife and start training her to be a porn star, particularly of the S&M/bondage variety

Sisters of the Gion

Umekichi, a geisha in the Gion district of Kyoto, feels obliged to help her lover Furusawa when he asks to stay with her after becoming bankrupt and leaving his wife. However her younger sister Omocha tells her she is wasting her time and money on a loser. She thinks that they should both find wealthy patrons to support them. Omocha therefore tries various schemes to get rid of Furusawa, and set themselves up with better patrons.

River Lady

In the 1850s, in a logging town on the Mississippi River, a conflict between the people of a mill town and the lumberjacks who work downriver. Romance and deceit are catalyzed by the arrival of the gambling river boat, River Lady, owned by the beautiful Sequin. Bauvais, a representative of the local lumber syndicate and Sequin's business partner, is trying to convince H.L. Morrison, the mill owner, to sell his business.

Wait and See

A salaryman faces a major life change as his firm undergoes financial difficulties. To add to his troubles, a man claiming to be his long-estranged father shows up at his house requesting shelter. One of the best of Somai's seriocomic studies of the messiness of family life.

The Geisha House

Set in the late 1950s, when geisha culture was threatened by moral crusades, it tells the story of Omocha (Miyamoto Maki), a young girl who sees the geisha life as a way to lift her poverty-stricken family from their hand-to-mouth existence. Through her eyes, we see the protocols and complex financial relationships which dictate the running of the geisha house. Fukasaku's film is a work of great delicacy with moments of hypnotic beauty, and his tender direction, often touched with a sense of wonder, fills the screen with lovingly constructed scenes. At its heart is the poignant situation of the women who must sacrifice their normal relationships to live an ambiguous life in which they are a key part of society while being kept, for the most part, on its periphery, like perpetual mistresses.

Sexual Crime

Three people whose lives have taken a turn for the worse retreat into a world of erotic dreams made flesh in this drama from director Sai Yoichi. An executive with a large industrial corporation finds his job and his future is on the line when his firm is beset by labor troubles at the same time severe financial mismanagement has been discovered. As the executive looks for a way out of his situation, he becomes involved in a ménage à trois relationship with two fellow employees, a woman and another man. As real life becomes all the more unpleasant, the businessman and his lovers become deeply attached to one another as he explores sides of his sexual nature he's never been able to investigate in the past.

Boneless

Yuko has a rendezvous with her old boyfriend who has just returned to Tokyo. Blackmailers with evidence of this transgression force Yuko to work as a call girl to pay them. Yuko becomes the client of a foreigner who is in the employ of her husband, a prominent businessman.

Honto Ni Atta Kowai Hanashi 2016

For this 17th Anniversary Special, Inagaki Goro is our host once again for 6 spooky tales based on tales from real people and performed here by an all-star cast. A young man trying to become a hairstylist finds the run-down apartment he's in may have a troubled past; A new nurse finds work with an old hospital where her young patient moves a coin around pointing to who will die next; clumsy businessman finds his clumsiness being transmitted to others when he's given a cursed votive tablet; several high school girls visit a friend at the hospital only to find "something" may have gotten on the elevator with them; a pond out in the country sends a strange call out to a man on vacation with his family and finally a young woman having difficulty at her job worries she's seeing images of her dead father everywhere.

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