Best movies like Strange Tales of Love and Strangers
Meeting people of Fukushima countryside makes the foreign girl different
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Strange Tales of Love and Strangers Starring Aining Yao, Soko Wada, Chika Uchida, Mayuko Fukuda, and more. If you liked Strange Tales of Love and Strangers then you may also like: Weathering with You, The Land of Rain Trees, Creepy, My Neighbors the Yamadas, Good Morning 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 Taiwanese girl Yuwen comes to a village of Fukushima to study abroad. She thinks falling-in-love is a stupid thing and the land is unusually dry as Yuwen’s heart because of no rains. Yuwen struggles to speak Japanese but learns Japan culture and relationships from her host family and neighbors. As she opens her heart little by little, rain falls on the small village after a long time.
You may filter the list of movies on this page for a more refined, personalized selection of movies.
Still not sure what to watch click the recommend buttun below to get a movie recommendation selected from all the movies on this list
The Land of Rain Trees
Nobuyuki Sakisaka (Yuta Tamamori) is a salaryman. When he was in middle school student, he read light novel "Fairy Game”. He still has that light novel, because he was so shocked by the ending. One day, Nobuyuki Sakisaka browses the internet and comes across the blog "Rein Tsuri no Kuni.” He learns that the blog writer, Rika Hitomi (Mariya Nishiuchi), also was shocked by the ending in light novel "Fairy Game." Nobuyuki and Rika soon begin to exchange emails. Nobuyuki wants to meet Rika, but she refuses due to her secret.
Creepy
After having narrowly escaped an attempt on his life at the hands of a psychopath, detective inspector Takakura quits active service in the police force and takes up a position as a university lecturer in criminal psychology. But his desire to get to the bottom of criminals’ motives remains, and he does not hesitate long when former colleague Nogami asks him to reopen an old case.
My Neighbors the Yamadas
The Yamadas are a typical middle class Japanese family in urban Tokyo and this film shows us a variety of episodes of their lives. With tales that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking, we see this family cope with life's little conflicts, problems, and joys in their own way.
Good Morning
A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.
My Neighbor Totoro
Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.
Jack the Bear
Story of the relationships between two sons and their father, who moves the family to California and becomes a tv horror show host after the death of his wife.
Master Cheng
Cheng, 45, a restaurant owner from China, has travelled with his young son halfway around the world to a remote village in Finland. His wife died recently in an accident, and Cheng wanted to have a break from everything by traveling with his son to see an old Finnish friend who lives on a farm in the countryside of Finland. It’s the most remote place Cheng can imagine with endless forests, thousands of lakes, a country with entire population of one-fifth of Cheng’s home town, Shanghai.
Homeland
Jiro Sawada is a sophomore in high school when a false accusation drives him out his hometown: a small village in Fukushima Prefecture. The entire village is abandoned after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, but Jiro returns there to live. Before long, members of his family come and join him.
Left Luggage
While escaping from Nazis during the WWII, a Jewish man dug suitcases full of things dear to his heart in the ground two. The war deprived him of his family, and afterwards he endlessly turns over the soil of Antwerp to find the suitcases, which makes him look obsessed. He keeps checking old maps and keeps digging, trying to find, in fact, those he lost. His daughter Chaya is a beautiful modern girl looking for a part-time job. She finds a place as a nanny in the strictly observant Chassidic family with many children, although her secular manners clearly fly in the face of many commandments. One of the reasons she is accepted is that mother of the family is absolutely overburdened by the household, so she stays despite the resistance of the father, normally - an indisputable authority in the family. She develops a special bond with the youngest of the boys, four-year old Simcha, so far incapable of speaking.
Love Jones
Darius Lovehall is a young black poet in Chicago who starts dating Nina Moseley, a beautiful and talented photographer. While trying to figure out if they've got a "love thing" or are just "kicking it," they hang out with their friends, talking about love and sex. Then Nina tests the strength of Darius' feelings and sets a chain of romantic complications into motion.
Thy Neighbor's Wife
In 1841, in the small Morovian village of Skalni Hradec, a judge makes his much younger wife witness the public humiliation of an unfaithful wife who is bound with ropes to a wooden half-cross. He then tells her he'll kill her if he ever catches her being unfaithful. Things get tense when she falls for another man.
The Anthem of the Heart
Jun is a girl whose words have been sealed away so that she cannot hurt anyone with them. But, one day, she is nominated to become an executive member of the "community outreach council." On top of that, Jun is also appointed to play the main lead in their musical...
Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family
In his early twenties, Sam Cagnina, oldest son of a Mafia hit man, meets Steven, a handsome 19-year old college student and they fall in love. Then, after a few years Sam offers Steven a "visionary" idea. What if they could find a woman who would fall in love with both of them and agree to live in a "trio" relationship? They spend the next 7 years dating and looking for that special woman. Finally, they meet Samantha, a young, struggling actress. THREE OF HEARTS explores this very unique trio union as they negotiate their living arangements, fall in love and open one of the hottest wellness centres in New York City. Everyone who comes in contact with them is never quite sure how the relationship works. But the one thing which seems certain is their love for each other.
I Am Nipponjin
A Japanese-American college student travels to her grandfather's beloved homeland to see and experience the "real Japan" she has so often read and heard about. Yet when she arrives she discovers that the Japan of her dreams is so much more different from what she expected and struggles to adapt to her newfound life there.
Run Wild, Run Free
Directed by Richard C. Sarafian, this 1969 British children's film stars Mark Lester as a young boy, unable to speak, who befriends both a wild colt with blue eyes and a falcon named "Lady". The cast also includes John Mills, Gordon Jackson and Sylvia Sims.
Escapade in Japan
A plane is forced to land at sea just off the Japanese coast. A young American boy is later befriended by a fisherman's son, with the two setting off on an unintended journey across the country.
The Autumn Heart
When a school bus driving woman (Tyne Daly) has a heart attack, she makes one request of her three daughters (Ally Sheedy, Marla Sucharetza, Marceline Hugo) - she wants them to find their long lost brother, who was taken away by their father (Jack Davidson) 16 years ago. What they discover is that while they have struggled, their father has become a wealthy man and their brother is in school at Harvard.
Nostalgia for the Countryside
The dynamics of a Vietnamese rural village change when an urban woman returns to the village she originally belonged to and begins a love triangle.
Demon Pond
Outside of a small village in Japan, a mysterious pond is inhabited by mythic creatures. Their story is of revenge, tragedy, and the power of real love. A classical tale which translates wonderfully to film.
Village of Dreams
Tells of the childhood of two nine-year-old twins in a rural village in Japan after World War 2. Includes the boys relationships with their schoolteacher mother, civil servant father, elderly landlord, a rough new boy at the school, and three mysterious spirits in the form of old women.
The Dry Land
A U.S. soldier returning home from war struggles to reconcile his experiences abroad with the life and family he left in Texas.
The Slave Wife
When a stuck-up and privileged lady of a wealthy family is left to fend for herself, her butler decides to teach her some overdue humility through BDSM. His spiral of debauchery is soon overtaken by madness, and his sex games threaten to harm more than just her social standing and pride.
Love's Everlasting Courage
Clark Davis struggles to maintain his land and support his family during a long drought. With a bank loan to repay, his wife, Ellen, takes a job in town as a seamstress, but soon becomes ill with scarlet fever. Devastated to lose his beloved wife, Clark and his young daughter Missie turn to his parents Irene and Lloyd for support. Clark must find a way to save his farm and survive Ellen's death without losing the person he loves most: his daughter.
Voices in the Wind
In her search for answers, 17-year-old Haru sets out on a long journey across the country to the town where, in 2011, the devastating tsunami swept away her brother and parents. This road trip takes the young woman, who is still haunted by her loss, from Hiroshima to Tokyo and Fukushima and all the way to Ōtsuchi, where her family home once stood. On the way she encounters other people, other stories, other lives and other losses. Landscapes and faces. The journey ends in the middle of a garden in full bloom among the scarred surroundings of her coastal hometown.. In it stands a telephone box which, even though it is no longer connected, is used to speak to those who cannot be reached any other way.
The Long Ride
This movie is about the love and protection of a man from another culture for the lowly horsemen of the the plains in Hungary during World War II.
The Ramen Girl
An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.
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
Romantically Speaking
A young lady who has grown up with her father being a radio DJ, becomes one herself. Falls in love and hosts a 'Romantically Speaking' show.
Step Up Love Story: Second Kiss
Upon marriage a wife and husband were virgins. They steadily improve their sexual skills day after day. After six months of marriage they are having sex every night. The wife, however, feels things are becoming stale given her husband's lack of new maneuvers in bed. One day the sister-in-law comes to meet her brother's wife and she is having relationship problems with her boyfriend. The sister-in-law insists that the man will get bored if a woman is always available for sex prompting the wife to restrain herself for three weeks.
A Couple
"A Couple" is a film about a long term relationship between a man and a woman. The man is Leo Tolstoy. The woman is his wife, Sophia. They were married for 36 years, had 13 children nine of whom survived. Each kept a diary. Although they lived together, in the same house, they wrote letters frequently to each other. Leo Tolstoy insisted that they read their diaries aloud to guests at dinner parties. The Tolstoy’s were also a dysfunctional couple, arguing frequently and being very unhappy with each other while occasionally enjoying passionate moments of reconciliation. The film is Sophia’s monologue about the joys and struggles of their life together, loosely drawn from their letters to each other and their diary entries.
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.
Twilight of the Cockroaches
The cockroaches of Saito's apartment live in peace with their human host, who gives them lots of space to breed and plenty of leftovers to munch on. In the midst of these high living times, Naomi and Ichiro plan to get married and start a family. But when a hard-bitten stranger roach named Hans appears with news of war with the humans across the lawn, it foretells disruption-not only of Naomi and Ichiro's relationship, but of the hive's entire way of life.
Same Old, Same Old
Focusing on the lives (and a few deaths) of three filmmakers, Rikiya Imaizumi (Their Distance, Sad Tea) tackles weighty themes in this new ensemble drama set in Tokyo and Fukushima. Director Kajiwara, struggling to earn a living from film, gets an offer to do a music video. But it doesn’t go well and he finds himself in an unexpected situation. Actress Aoba witnesses her filmmaker boyfriend's suicide and decides to hide his body. Gardener Taro plans to close the family business he inherits from his father, but receives a phone call one night from the self-declared girlfriend of his estranged twin, Jiro.
Our Brief Eternity
In Tokyo, the new type of virus called Emanon has spread out. Once people infected by the virus, they lose their most important person's memory. Teru, a guy who spends his life lazily, met his previous girlfriend Mio. But she has infected by the virus and forgot about him. Because of the virus, the world has plunged into confusion and it's been growing as a global pandemic. In the meantime, Teru and Mio restarted their relationship but he also infected and lost the memory about Mio. Tokyo fall into a turmoil and shattered. Teru and Mio ended up in the countryside where they've been before.
Weathering with You
The summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo, and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits. The weather is unusually gloomy and rainy every day, as if taking its cue from his life. After many days of solitude, he finally finds work as a freelance writer for a mysterious occult magazine. Then, one day, Hodaka meets Hina on a busy street corner. This bright and strong-willed girl possesses a strange and wonderful ability: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky.