Best movies like The Courtyard of the Ballads

An actor at the pinnacle of his Hollywood career finds himself buckling to temptation after he accepts the lead in a classic tale of good versus evil. Michael Steele has just been nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards. In the wake of that announcement, Michael is cast in what may be the role of a lifetime. He's set to play the lead in an incredible story of monumental conflict, but will all of the swirling gossip around Michael cause him to stumble on the path of righteousness? His marriage is in jeopardy and his career is on the line. This man who has always tried to do the right thing must find the courage and conviction needed to set his life straight.

Two escaped cons' only prayer to escape is to pass themselves off as priests and pass by the police blockade at the border into the safety of Canada.

Sergio is a brooding, alienated man who works as a trash collector in Lisbon by day and roams the city streets by night seeking rough, anonymous sex with men. One night he meets a man who seems to be the embodiment of his tormented fantasies, and he becomes obsessed with the stranger until loneliness and unfulfilled desire propel him finally into a dark and dangerous animalistic state.

Lisbon, 1989. A middle-aged poor man, tormented by an illness, lives in a cheap room in a family boarding house, in the old section of the city's waterfront.

In Manhattan, the aspirant writer Jabez Stone is a complete loser: he is not able to sell his novels, he lives in a lousy apartment and he does not have success with women. When one of his friends Julius Jenson sells his novel for US$ 190,000.00 to an editor, Jabez fells envy and promises to sell his soul to the devil for success and accidentally kills a woman with his typing machine. The Devil knocks on his door, fixes the situation and seals a contract with Jabez. His low quality novels have bad reviews but become best-sellers; Jabez enriches; has success with women, but has no time for his friends. Jabez meets with the publisher Daniel Webster who offers him a chance to break the contract with the devil.

A cinema remake of the classic sitcom Dad's Army (1968). The Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard platoon deal with a visiting female journalist and a German spy as World War II draws to its conclusion.

Day breaks on the eighth floor in a suburban neighbourhood of Lisbon and 14-year-old David’s grandfather is still in hospital. Doctors give him only a few days to live. The imminence of death and the void that it will leave force David to become the man of the house, where he lives with his mother Mónica, who is in her 30s, and his three-year-old sister.

One hundred years in the future... Due to overpopulation and the effects of global warming, sex has been declared illegal on Earth. When a crew of astronauts hear of a distant planet inhabited by insatiable female creatures who exist only to satisfy man’s desires, they decide to take a detour from their routine mission in search of the mythical star system known as the Sex Galaxy. But like all expeditions fueled solely by lust and carnality, risk lurks around every corner, danger and regret at every turn.

For Capt. Robert John Evans, smuggling black-market goods is nothing out of the ordinary. But one day he's hired by Aristides Mavros for a more involved assignment -- sneaking an imprisoned American out of communist-controlled territory. The job seems challenging enough, but when he meets the prisoner's sultry wife, Sylvia, he realizes his mission comes with a startling catch: Not only must he rescue this man, he must bring him back from the dead.

Lisbon Story is Wim Wenders' homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterious postcard from a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.

The tragic story of the many lives of Father Dinis, his dark origins and his pious works, and the different fates of all those who, trapped in a sinister web of love, hate and crime, cross paths with him through years of adventure and misfortune in the convulsed Europe of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

On one of his bratty son Eric's annual visits, the plutocrat U.S. Bates takes him to his department store and offers him anything in it as a gift. Eric chooses a black janitor who has made him laugh with his antics. At first the man suffers many indignities as Eric's "toy", but gradually teaches the lonely boy what it is like to have and to be a friend.

Chinese kid Julian, who was adopted by the black family of Joe and Annabelle Lee and Asian exchange student May-Ling, who is housed with a black family, are trying to adapt to their mostly black neighbourhood of South Central.

Jane, a struggling but perpetually stoned actress, has a busy day ahead. She has several important tasks on her list, including buying more marijuana. Even though she already has a good start on the day's planned drug use, she eats her roommate's pot-laced cupcakes and embarks on a series of misadventures all over Los Angeles.

It’s 1942, and Portugal languishes under dictatorship and WWII rages just beyond its borders. Secrets, half-truths, and mistrust prevail in the state security office of chief inspector Varga, who makes professional privilege a cover for his unprofessional interest in a boldly carnal refugee and her alleged brother. Director/writer Saboga (screenwriter for Raúl Ruiz’s MYSTERIES OF LISBON) saturates the dark world of this predatory tale with steamy eroticism and paranoia, starting with the incestuous desires of his bi-curious adolescent daughter and including the family maid.

Lena disappears mysteriously during the winter of 1976. This is the last stop on a journey that begins in colonial Mozambique on new year's eve at 1957 gives way to 1958. Ningo, a black boy brought up by Lena's parents, and her childhood friend, comes to Lisbon to help find her, at the request of Lena's mother. Using the letters that Lena has left behind as a testament to her life, in wich she has rebelled against the challenged the powers that be, Ningo discovers the identity of her kidnapper - Jorge Matos - a former secret policeman who has followed her from Lourenço Marques, motivated by morbid desire. Lena's kidnapper dies from two inexplicable snake bites to the neck, in accordance with a legend and ritual that had been part of Lena and Ningo's childhood.

Which language shall we use to tell the stories we have been told? In which language shall we write a declaration of love? Lisbon, Bairro das Colónias, third floor. Conveying and translating an insightful encounter between different worlds, Fatumata and Aissato, mother and daughter, discuss love and the happiness. Their feelings have been determined by narratives and languages acquired at different stages of life and in different places. At 7pm, from the third to the fifth floor, where I live, a regular sound, always the same, like the beating of a heart, reverberates through the building.

There's a new police chief in the neighbourhood who is disappointed with Officer Dibble's performance. The chief and his army of robots declare war on Top Cat and his gang of feisty felines.

Spira comes home from a juvenile detention center and reconnects with his loved ones in Reboleira (Lisbon), a slum on the verge of being destroyed. Kikas makes it clear that he’s not welcome.

Summer of 1870. Two writers, Eça de Queiroz and Ramalho Ortigão, decide to write a four-handed whodunit for the daily "Diário de Notícias". Could it be that the story they wrote as fiction is based on a real case? This question fuels the conflict between the two writers and drives them to a nearly fatal duel. Lisbon is in commotion. One crime follows another in a story in which love is stronger than tradition. Everything happens at frenzied pace, as in a game.

Inspired by the biography of the portuguese painter Maria de Lourdes Ribeiro, known as Maluda, who found the stage of her art in Lisbon.

When an aspiring rapper goes viral for the wrong reasons, he thinks his career is sunk. But a wild party gives him one more chance to make it right.

After leaving his wife and his job to find happiness, Anders begins a clumsy, heartbreaking quest to reassemble the pieces of his fractured life.

John Mulaney and his kid pals tackle existential topics for all ages with catchy songs, comedy sketches and special guests in a nostalgic variety special.

A portrait of the relations between neighbours in a Lisbon courtyard. A story made of small episodes of humour, friendship, rivalry, love.

Vasco is a medical student in Lisbon, supported by his rich aunts, whom he had falsely told he had already graduated. In fact, he devotes himself to a bohemian life, preferring the popular fairs and pretty women, especially Alice, a seamstress from the Castelinhos quarter, which rather upsets her ambitious father, tailor Caetano, who is familiar with Vasco's debts. After failing yet another final exam, he is surprised by his aunts' announcement that they will visit him in Lisbon to see his practice.

Lazarus de Jesus is the adopted son of a wealthy lady from Lisbon, whom he calls Grandmother. It is she who introduces him to Godfather, a great businessman who takes him as his protégé, and Angelina, the woman Grandma wants him to marry. But Lazarus has other hidden interests, the most important of which is an obsessive fixation on female armpits. When he sees the violinist Maria Pia playing, Lazarus immediately falls in love and starts to live for her, which will precipitate an absolutely unpredictable ending.

How happy and proud they are those two ladies back in Oporto! Thanks to them, their bright nephew can study medicine in Lisbon and may already have become a doctor. Little do they know, not only Vasco wastes all his time drinking, dancing and picking up girls but he has just failed his final exam! And in that same day, he receives an email from the two aunts announcing their visit to Lisbon! Will he be able to make them believe he is such a good student as they think?

"Filme da Treta" is inspired in a previous work called "Conversa da Treta", which can be translated as "Blather" or "Foolish Talk". In fact it all begun with a radio show (with that name) where two friends, "Toni" and "Zezé", talk about their lives and their neighbourhood (located somewhere in a typical district of Lisbon!). Because of the colloquial and comic language it used to be funny. Then it passed to the stage (kind of a dialog play) and later to a TV-show. As you can see it was a success here in Portugal and the audiences applauded it… Now, the film! "Filme da Treta" is, then, just an adaptation to the movies of this succeeded show, but it was, at least in my point of view, a regression! To be honest it was a disappointment, as I expected a lot more from it. I used to appreciate "Conversa da Treta", but now with the movie it lost all the fun!

Geninha and Fortunato are couple who loves music. He's a good songwriter, she sings well. Despite this, their parents hate each other and do not seem willing to allow their marriage, nor the creation of a local radio for them.

The brutes and the belles. The gadflies and the good ol' boys. The taboos and the profound truths. They're all part of a tennessee state of mind -- a realm of places, personalities and ideas. Williams is front and center for this exploration, reading from his works, placing them in the context of his life, and serving as guide in visits to his career-shaping refuge in New Orleans and his later-day writing quarters in Key West. Also, dramatizations by distinguished actors -- including Jessica Tandy, Broadway's original Blanche DuBois, in a recreation of her A Streetcar Named Desire triumph -- give flesh-and-bone immediacy to some of the writer's famed works. In his own words. In his own places. The resilient character and memorable characters of one of our greatest writers reside in Tennessee Williams' South.

Inês is a teenager from a wealthy family. However, after classes, he participates in risky sexual games, compulsively uses the internet and attends the nightlife of Lisbon, entering a spiral of total destruction.

Lisbon, today. In a room of a house at Douradores Street, a man invents dreams and theorizes about them. The essence of the dreams itself becomes physical, palpable, visible. The text itself materializes in its musicality. And, in front of our eyes, this music can be felt with the ears, brain and heart. It spreads itself in the street where the man lives, in the city that he loves above all and over the entire world.

Mozart's genius in setting to music da Ponte's comic play of love, infidelity and forgiveness marks COSI FAN TUTTE as one of the great works of art from the Age of Enlightenment. Nicholas Hytner's beautiful new production, with its sure touch and theatrical know-how, lives up to its promise to be "shockingly traditional" as Iván Fischer teases artful performances from an outstanding international cast of convincing young lovers.

Mitó lives in a small village and is the son of the local Comunist Party leader, she is 18 years-old and is about to graduate from the high-school she must attend at Beja - the nearest town. News that she killed her German boyfriend, at 4 a.m. on a desert road, do not excite much the editor of a Lisbon newspaper. He sends in a tyro reporter, Joaquim Peixoto, just in case. The young man, already considered hopless in his profession, will uncover more than a sex scandal to be used for political purposes. Written by Artemis-9