Best movies like Tell Me a Riddle

An elusive serial killer known as the Zodiac terrorizes the San Francisco Bay in the late 1960s, while detectives aim to stop him before he claims more victims. Based on a true story.

Widowed mother Mildred must suddenly redefine herself and find an outlet for her nurturing side when her adult daughter moves out of the family home. Though Mildred thinks she's found her purpose when her neighbor, overworked single mother Monica, asks her to look after her little boy, she has great difficulty learning to strike a healthy balance between giving selflessly to others and remembering to take care of herself.

A reflective look at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco and how individuals rose to the occasion during the first years of the crisis.

Two aged sisters reflect on life and the past during a late summer day in Maine.

Wild Combination is a visually absorbing portrait of the seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, and disco producer Arthur Russell. Before his death in 1992, Arthur prolifically created music that spanned both pop and the transcendent possibilities of abstract art. Now, over fifteen years since his passing, Arthur's work is finally finding its audience. Wolf incorporates rare archival footage and commentary from Arthur's family, friends, and closest collaborators to tell this poignant and important story.

With Babies and Banners: Story of the Women's Emergency Brigade is a 1979 documentary film directed by Lorraine Gray about the General Motors sit-down strike in 1936–1937 that focuses uniquely on the role of women using archival footage and interviews. It provides an inside look at women's roles in the strike. The film was one of the first to put together archival footage with contemporary interviews of participants and helped spur a series of films on left and labor history in the US utilizing this technique. The film was also important in helping bring into view the history of American women being active in the public sphere, particularly in union and labor actions. The film was, further, ground breaking because it was produced and directed by women. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

An aging, booze-addled father takes a trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim what he believes to be a million-dollar sweepstakes prize.

Mixing narrative and documentary filming in a unique way the story is autobiographical and is about a date rape dissecting the characters and circumstances around it.

Based on the book by anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff, this Academy Award-winning short documentary offers a tender portrait of a community of elderly yet resilient Jews living, loving, and at times struggling, in Venice, California. From everyday trials to traditional celebrations, this compassionate portrayal of Eastern European survivors cuts straight to the heart of every viewer and reminds us of the joys and realities of long life.

Rebel in Paradise is a 1960 American documentary film on the artist Paul Gauguin produced by Robert D. Fraser, a San Francisco real estate developer. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

A blending of documentary and experimental narrative strategies, combining stunning 16mm landscape cinematography with a bold, lyrical voice-over to share two San Francisco stories: the history of the Golden Gate Bridge as “suicide landmark,” and the story of a butch dyke in San Francisco searching for love and self-discovery. The Joy of Life is a film about landscapes, both physical and emotional.

Two cabbies search San Francisco's Chinatown for a mysterious character who has disappeared with their $4000. Their quest leads them on a humorous, if mundane, journey which illuminates the many problems experienced by Chinese-Americans trying to assimilate into contemporary American society.

A retired farmer and widower in his 70s, Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. Then he hits on the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.

The young Harold lives in his own world of suicide-attempts and funeral visits to avoid the misery of his current family and home environment. Harold meets an 80-year-old woman named Maude who also lives in her own world yet one in which she is having the time of her life. When the two opposites meet they realize that their differences don’t matter and they become best friends and love each other.

After a rough divorce, Frances, a 35 year old book editor from San Francisco takes a tour of Tuscany at the urgings of her friends. On a whim she buys Bramasole, a run down villa in the Tuscan countryside and begins to piece her life together starting with the villa and finds that life sometimes has unexpected ways of giving her everything she wanted.

All but abandoned by her family in a London retirement hotel, an elderly woman strikes up a curious friendship with a young writer.

A young woman in a photography class begins taking pictures of black men out of fear they will soon be extinct.

This winner of the 1993 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature details the case that the 1989 invasion of Panama by the US was motivated not by the need to protect American soldiers, restore democracy or even capture Noriega. It was to force Panama to submit the will of the United States after Noriega had exhausted his usefulness.

A Russian emigre prides himself on the way he's molded himself into a real Yankee in the USA, though the world he lives in, New York's Lower East Side in the late 19th century, is almost exclusively populated by other Jewish immigrants. When his wife finally arrives in the New World, however, she has a lot of assimilating to do.

An elderly widow must find meaning and activity in her life when her son suggests she is no longer capable of handling her own affairs.

Interview with Jason Holliday aka Aaron Payne. House-boy, would-be cabaret performer, and self-proclaimed hustler giving one man's gin-soaked, pill-popped view of what it was like to be coloured and gay in 1960s Unites States. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

Tweek City is a week in the life of Bill, a potentially closeted, half-Latino, small-time speed dealer in San Francisco's Mission District. Bill is stuck on an endless walk from one empty experience to the next. Only Bill's friend Jerm has the ability to connect and ground him in reality. When Jerm makes an ill-advised stage dive, Bill plunges into a downward spiral that takes him on a nocturnal journey through the streets of San Francisco and ultimately down to Los Angeles where he crashes his high school sweetheart's wedding. From his sleep-deprived, hallucinogenic state, Bill fails miserably in a desperate attempt to reconnect with his first and only love. With nowhere else to go, Bill jacks a car and ends up at the deserted drive-in theater of his childhood where he is forced to confront the ghosts that he had tried to leave behind.

Jenny is carrying the child of a young man who dies in the San Francisco earthquake (1906). After giving birth, she decides to place her child in the custody of a wealthy married couple. Years later, thanks to the protection of a corrupt politician, she becomes the main "madame" of San Francisco, in addition to participating in various illegal activities.

Carlo Roma and his foster-son, Toma, and their friend Beppo, are living a happy fisherman's life in San Francisco until Carlo's widowed sister-in-law, Stella, shows up with her brat-son, Rudolph, and takes over. Poor Toma gets his feelings hurt and the idea he "isn't wanted" and runs away

Catherine Tate's iconic character Nan hits the big screen as she goes on a wild road trip from London to Ireland with her grandson Jamie to make amends with her estranged sister Nell. Militant vegan arsonists, raucous rugby teams, all night raves and crazed cops on motorbikes all make for a proper day out. An origin story that mixes Nan's present with her past where we finally find out what's made her the cantankerous old bastard she is today.

In this verité-style drama, Anthony, a newcomer to San Francisco, attempts to come to terms with his abusive ex-lover when he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a street hustler.

This documentary film tells the dramatic story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple living in Virginia in the 1950s, and their landmark Supreme Court Case, Loving v. Virginia, that changed history.

A kid plays the old novelty song "Purple People Eater" and the creature actually appears. The two then proceed to help an elderly couple who are being evicted by their greedy landlord.

Lesbian porn star Sharon Mitchell and her girlfriend, Tigr, navigate the ups and downs of being in love while working in the sex industry.

Documentary look at the 1996-97 effort of the dancers and support staff at a San Francisco peep show, The Lusty Lady, to unionize. Angered by arbitrary and race-based wage policies, customers' surreptitious video cameras, and no paid sick days or holidays, the dancers get help from the Service Employees International local and enter protracted bargaining with the union-busting law firm that management hires. We see the women work, sort out their demands, and go through the difficulties of bargaining. The narrator is Julia Query, a dancer and stand-up comedian who is reluctant to tell her mother, a physician who works with prostitutes, that she strips.

A fascinating and unlikely reinvention story, The Royal Road simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes, and the passions found in butch identity to achieve an achingly beautiful and poetic defense of remembering. Probing roads from El Camino Real, to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, to the road right outside the front door, Olson crafts a deeply intelligent and transcending observation of the human condition that reaches for redemption in the embrace of history, nostalgia, mindfulness, and sheer beauty. If you give yourself over to it, it will crack you wide open.

Hannah and Rachel grew up as little girls in the same small Midwest town, where traditional gender expectations eventually challenge their deep love for one another.

A talented, but distracted photographer, Lola, on the verge of success in both love and work, could lose it all if she doesn't make it to a crucial meeting on time. But, as usual, Lola is late. With her job and girlfriend on the line, she has three chances to make it right. In a desperate race through the streets and back rooms of San Francisco, time grows short-will Lola make it? Will she come at all? With a pop sensibility that mixes live action, animation and still photography, And Then Came Lola explores love's age old question in a fresh new way, "If you try, try again, will you finally get it right?" (Written by M. Siler and E. Seidler)

Aspiring Master Sommelier Jenna returns to her family vineyard to study and is intrigued by the natural methods of the handsome new, Argentinian winemaker, Marcelo.

Penelope Campbell loves her annual summer vacations visiting her Grandma Dot, despite Dot's constant attempts to set her up with every single man in town. This year, she bumps into Jason Humphrey, her childhood sweetheart. In order to evade the efforts of their matchmaking grandmothers, they make a pact pretending to date each other, but will the old sparks return?

A woman moves back to New York and hires a ditzy New Age woman to redecorate her apartment in this Odd Couple styled comedy. The movie takes a turn as the two escape to a New Age retreat in upstate New York to get away from a murderer who is pursuing them.

The heroine, Peggy Cameron, is a high-society debutante with a mind of her own. After making a public spectacle of herself once too often, Peggy is bundled off to Scotland, where she is to be looked after by her no-nonsense uncle Andrew Cameron (William H. Thompson). If Peggy's family had hoped that she would straighten up and behave herself in Scotland, they were sorely mistaken. Restored in 2018 by the Academy Film Archive with restoration funding provided by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation.

San Francisco has long enjoyed a reputation as the counterculture capital of America, attracting bohemians, mavericks, progressives and activists. With the onset of the digital gold rush, young members of the tech elite are flocking to the West Coast to make their fortunes, and this new wealth is forcing San Francisco to reinvent itself. But as tech innovations lead America into the golden age of digital supremacy, is it changing the heart and soul of their adopted city?

Three longtime college friends who discover a mysterious, antique veil fabled to unite its bearer with her true love. After discovering a long-lost painting, museum curator Avery and successful, new board member Peter investigate the artwork's origins as they plan a charity fundraiser to unveil its restoration.

Craig, a fiercely determined New Brunswick farmer, sets out to build a more suitable house for his ailing wife, Irene, despite their children's concerns. As he starts building, he is blindsided by the bureaucratic codes and officials. As Irene becomes increasingly ill, Craig fights back. Based on a true story.

The Wongs struggle to cope with life, love, and family dysfunction in the suburbs of New York.

Late Bloomers stars Isabella Rossellini and William Hurt as a married couple pulled apart by the threat of old age. Each reacts in a different way: Hurt’s distinguished architect chases after his glory days, while Rossellini’s housewife installs handrails about the house.

In a rundown apartment complex in San Francisco's Tenderloin, a septuagenarian seer is waiting for his final message. For decades the eccentric recluse has chronicled the phrases of the Wheel of Fortune and deciphered their hidden meaning - the details of a mission to save his neighbors from their troubles.

A cowboy helps a pretty young woman find lost gold. Restored by the Academy Film Archive with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A community comes together to organize a miracle for a teen battling terminal brain cancer while two men find their own restoration in his healing journey.

The story of Sausalito's houseboat war and the struggle of the people to survive an onslaught by cops, lawyers and courts all stacked against them. Joe Tate and the Redlegs star as the ragtag leaders of the resistance.

Mr. Wilson hires Mantan to travel out West and clean out an old property. Mantan runs into trouble in believing the house is haunted while a gang uses it as a hideout. A race film Western produced by the Toddy Company; made for $500 over two days. Restoration by the Academy Film Archive and Blackhawk Films with funding from the estate of David Shepard from the only surviving 35mm nitrate print donated by Giancarlo Esposito and Laurence Fishburne.

Oscar winner William Wyler directed this 1944 "newsdrama," narrated by Lieut. Robert Taylor, USNR (Bataan), and photographed in zones of combat by the U.S. Navy. The film follows one of the many new aircraft carriers built since Pearl Harbor, known as THE FIGHTING LADY in honor of all American carriers, as it goes into action against the Japanese in the Pacific Ocean in 1943. See the ship and its pilots undergo their baptism of fire, attacking the Japanese base on Marcus Island. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation.

A beautiful expression of two differing cultures brought together by the warmth and dedication of a great musician and humanitarian. In 1979, as China re-opened its doors to the West, virtuoso Isaac Stern received an unprecedented government invitation to tour the country. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2000.

This film recounts the murder of Vincent Chin, an automotive engineer mistaken as Japanese who was slain by an assembly line worker who blamed him for the competition by the Japanese auto makers that were threatening his job. It then recounts how that murderer escaped justice in the court system. Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in association with the Museum of Chinese in America. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, with additional support provided by Todd Phillips.