Best movies like The Lure of Crooning Water

An unknown judge invites a guilty governess and others to a 1930s safari, for justice one by one.

In a small Russian town at the turn of the century, three sisters and their brother live but dream daily of their return to their former home in Moscow, where life is charming and stimulating meaningful. But for now they exist in a malaise of dissatisfaction. Soldiers from the local military post provide them some companionship and society, but nothing can suffice to replace Moscow in their hopes. Andrei marries a provincial girl, Natasha, and begins to settle into a life of much less meaning than he had hoped. Natasha begins to run the family her way. Masha, though married, yearns for the sophisticated life and begins a dalliance with Vershinin, an army officer with a sick and suicidal wife. Even Irina, the freshest, most optimistic of the sisters, begins to waver in her dreams until, finally, tragedy strikes.

Dramatization of the real-life shooting of Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw.

A wealthy young man from Yorkshire visits a London nightclub and meets a performer. She decides to take him for every penny he is worth, and he decides to let her.

Simon Haldane works in the office of the Faulkner Iron Works, but he has been raised by his two maiden aunts in an extremely sheltered manner and is basically afraid of everyone and everything. One morning he finds a strange girl shivering in his bedroom, and although he's terrified of her, he manages to call a doctor for her. This starts a rumor that Simon is married. Complications ensue.

Quietly competent young Joanna moves with her scatterbrain mother to a country village to take up her first job as District Nurse. She soon overcomes the suspicion of her patients used to someone rather older, while becoming romantically involved with a local farmer - at least until he tries to evict a newly-arrived expectant couple who park their caravan on his land.

Recently orphaned David must move to the Isle of Man to live with his grandfather, Adam, who's a sheep farmer. Both long for the end of the summer, having nothing in common but their love for dogs, notably Adam's precious champion sheepdog Bob. David strikes a friendship with Maggie, the sassy daughter of friendly neighbor Keith Moore, but Adam hates that family on account of an old canine competition-related tragedy. Other neighbors suspect Bob and the Moore's dog of the recent series of nocturnal sheep-kills.

Director Roy Rowland's 1953 drama, depicting the rocky marriage of a young model and her Broadway playwright-husband, stars Victor Mature, Jean Simmons, Jane Darwell, Dabbs Greer, Nicholas Joy, Lillian Bronson and George Cleveland.

Socialite Anatol Spencer, finding his relationship with his wife lackluster, goes in search of excitement. After bumping into old flame Emilie, he lets an apartment for her only to find that she cheats on him. He is subsequently robbed, conned, and booted from pillar to post. He decides to return to his wife and discovers her carousing with his best friend Max.

A jealous wife is chasing her unfaithful husband during a parade, after he starts to flirt with a pretty woman.

A rich woman who uses meditation to deal with pain is visited by her niece who returns from Paris. The woman can be a handful and one of her employees suggests to her husband that he kill her freeing them both. When an affair starts between the husband and the niece murder becomes a real possibility. However some people won't stay dead.

London, 1888: on the night of the third Jack the Ripper killing, soft-spoken Mr. Slade, a research pathologist, takes lodgings with the Harleys, including a gloomy attic room for "experiments." Mrs. Harley finds Slade odd and increasingly suspects the worst; her niece Lily (star of a decidedly Parisian stage revue) finds him interesting and increasingly attractive. Is Lily in danger, or are her mother's suspicions merely a red herring?

A struggling actress tries to help a friend prove his innocence when he's accused of murdering the husband of a high-society entertainer.

A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.

The film tells the tale of Maggie, a film star whose world collapses when her film director husband is outed by the paparazzi when it’s discovered his new leading lady is pregnant with his baby. Seeking solace and healing Maggie escapes to her ex-pat cousin’s beautiful hotel in Nevis. After a week in paradise she discovers herself and meets a new love interest. Then the outside world comes crashing back in.

A woman's life is torn apart when her husband and infant son are killed in a suicide bombing at a soccer match.

Ontario - 1972. Miles, a young theatre actor from Toronto, arrives in Huron County at the home of Angus and Morgan, two aging bachelor farmers. Miles stays with the two farmers in order to gather stories about rural life and make a play abut it. All three of their lives are irrevocably altered when art attempts to imitate life and the line between truth and fiction is crossed.

Successful middle-aged farmer Samuel Sweetland becomes widowed, then his daughter marries and leaves home. Deciding he wishes to remarry, Sweetland pursues some local women he considers prospects.

Sportswriter Andy Farmer moves with his schoolteacher wife Elizabeth to the country in order to write a novel in relative seclusion. Of course, seclusion is the last thing the Farmers find in the small, eccentric town, where disaster awaits them at every turn.

The third of the "Doctor" films. Newly qualified doctor Simon Sparrow goes in search of a job. He applies for a surgery position at the hospital where he studied, but manages to insult the senior surgeon and one of the hospital's governors. So, instead he ends up as assistant to with a niggardly and rather scary GP with an amerous wife, followed by cushy but rather unmedical job with a Harley Street doctor, and then a job with a very nice GP whp is the opposite to the first one. But after getting the chance to rescue the hospital governor from a group of angry ladies at a resort in France, he finally lands a job at his beloved hosdpital.

In a dreary North London flat, the site of perpetual psychological warfare, a philosophy professor visits his family after a nine-year absence and introduces the four men - father, uncle and two brothers - to his wife.

Algernon Moncrieff is surprised to discover that his affluent friend -- whom he knows as "Ernest" -- is actually named Jack Worthing. Jack fabricated his alter ego in order to escape his country estate where he takes care of his charge, Cecily Cardew. Cecily believes that Ernest is Jack's wayward brother and is keen on his raffish lifestyle. Algernon, seeing an opportunity, assumes Ernest's identity and sneaks off to woo Cecily.

After marrying a dour and disinterested lord for status, a young woman falls in love with a stage actor while her best friend from boarding school enters an affair with her husband.

After ten years absence Toni, Chris's best friend, suddenly reappears in London to bring chaos and doubt into Chris's calm, tranquil, slightly boring, predictable life. Chris starts to remember his carefree youth as a photographer in Paris when he lived with and enjoyed a torrid affair with Annick. It was also in Paris that he first met and fell in love with Marion. The temptations and pressure exerted on Chris by Toni to return to their former carefree life of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll soon starts to have an impact on Chris's marriage. He starts to question his values, his lifestyle choices and his relationship with Marion and even suspects her of starting an affair with Toni whom she dislikes! Eventually circumstances come to a head and Chris is forced to decide whether to follow Toni back to the hedonistic, irresponsible life of his youth or face the harsh realities of the present and stay with Marion.

When Orestes returns to his Greek island homeland after several years in London to settle his late father's estate, he begins an affair with Elena, who is married to his childhood friend Yanni. Their adultery soon leads to violence and tragedy.

A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.

Struggling artist Geoffrey Carroll meets Sally while on holiday in the country. A romance develops, but he doesn't tell her he's already married. Suffering from mental illness, Geoffrey returns home where he paints an impression of his wife as the angel of death and then promptly poisons her. He marries Sally but after a while he finds a strange urge to paint her as the angel of death too and history seems about to repeat itself.

In 1880s London, pornographic bookseller Verloc is a double agent for the Russian government, providing information to Chief Inspector Heat about a lazy anarchist organization. In order for the anarchists to be arrested, an act of terrorism must occur. So Verloc decides to set up bombs – which leads to tragedy – not only for himself but also for his family, including wife Winnie and brother-in-law, Stevie.

Childhood friends Diana, Neville and David are caught in a love triangle as adults. Diana and Neville have long been smitten with each other, but her father disapproves of the relationship, resulting in her eventual marriage to David. It's not long after their wedding, however, that tragedy strikes, sending Diana on a downward spiral. When Neville reappears in her life, will he be able to save her from her own misery?

The Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse London and Broadway musical hit Stop the World, I Want to Get Off is given literal treatment in this filmization. Newley stars as Littlechap, whose allegorical rise to success is countered by the instability of his private life. Like the play, the film is staged impressionistically, with Newley decked out in mime makeup and periodically stopping the action to address the audience, and with all the women in his life -- German, American and "Typically English" -- played by a single actress (Millicent Martin, taking over from the stage version's Anna Quayle). In Wizard of Oz fashion, the play itself is lensed in color, while the brief prologue, showing the actors preparing for their performance, is in black-and-white. The production includes such standards (and perennial audition pieces) as What Kind of Fool Am I? and Gonna Build a Mountain.

In Southern Rhodesia in the 1940s, city-dweller Mary marries farmer Dick Turner and is plucked from the comforts of her cosmopolitan life and forced to live on his unsuccessful farm. Mary slowly goes insane and has a sexual affair with her black servant, Moses. When the affair is discovered, Mary asks Moses to leave the farm, but he returns and murders her.

After a woman fervently wishes for another chance after a terrible tragedy, she is mysteriously granted one year of her life to be lived over.

English aristocrat Tony Last welcomes tragedy into his life when he invites John Beaver to visit his vast estate. There Beaver makes the acquaintance of Tony's wife, Brenda. Together, they continue their relationship in a series of bedroom assignations in London. Trusting to a fault, Tony is unaware that anything is amiss until his wife suddenly asks for a divorce. With his life in turmoil, Tony goes on a haphazard journey to South America.

A tangled web of affairs is weaved around actress, Desirée Armfeldt, and the men who love her: a lawyer by the name of Fredrik Egerman and the Count Carl-Magnus Malcom. When the traveling actress performs in Fredrik's town, the estranged lovers' passion rekindles.

This documentary recounts the difficult choice actress Mary Astor had to make after learning her personal, very intimate, diaries had been stolen. The film tells the story of Astor's 1936 child custody case.

The true story of the famed British actor David Garrick and his love for Ada Ingot.

A taped version of the stage play about a hideously deformed 19th-century London man and how he managed to triumph over his disease.

Immediately after 9/11, rumors emerged of someone who had 'surfed' the debris to safety. A Discovery Channel documentary on the 11th anniversary of the tragedy told the story of survivor Pasquale Buzzelli, who may or may not be the surfer.

The filmed version of the one-woman stage show written by Jane Wagner and starring Lily Tomlin, which won the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. The film stays true to the original stage performance. For her efforts on film and stage, Tomlin received a Tony Award, and Funniest Actress in a Motion Picture in the American Comedy Awards.

Cordelia ia a troubled, damaged soul who is only just recovering after some unnamed trauma; she is an actor rehearsing a play and comes to stay in a creepy London mansion flat occupied by her twin sister Caroline and Caroline’s boyfriend Matt. When they leave her alone there Cordelia strikes up a friendship with Frank the charming, but strange and unreliable young man they can hear practising his cello in the upstairs flat – a relationship which quickly becomes very disturbing.

When an old adversary threatens Rome, the city calls once more on her hero and defender: Coriolanus. But he has enemies at home too. Famine threatens the city, the citizens’ hunger swells to an appetite for change, and on returning from the field Coriolanus must confront the march of realpolitik and the voice of an angry people.

Kathryn is distraught at the news of her husband's death delivered by a stranger from the airline for whom he was a pilot. She starts however to uncover information which leads to her arrival in London for further investigation...and further devastation.

On a bitterly cold London evening, schoolteacher Kyra Hollis receives an unexpected visit from her former lover, Tom Sergeant, a successful and charismatic restaurateur whose wife has recently died. As the evening progresses, the two attempt to rekindle their once passionate relationship only to find themselves locked in a dangerous battle of opposing ideologies and mutual desires.

A flat in Ladbroke Grove, West London. 1952. When Hester Collyer is found by her neighbours in the aftermath of a failed suicide attempt, the story of her tempestuous affair with a former RAF pilot and the breakdown of her marriage to a High Court judge begins to emerge. With it comes a portrait of need, loneliness and long-repressed passion. Behind the fragile veneer of post-war civility burns a brutal sense of loss and longing.

A new English adaptation of the classic French tragedy Phèdre by Jean Racine (1639-1699). It retells the ancient Greek tale of the wife of the Atenian King Theseus, who conceived a forbidden love for his son (by an earlier wife) Hyppolytus. All ends badly for all.

Gino is a drifter, down-at-heel and magnetically handsome. At a road side restaurant he encounters husband and wife, Joseph and Hanna. Irresistibly attracted to each other, Gino and Hanna begin a fiery affair and plot to murder her husband. But, in this chilling tale of passion and destruction, the crime only serves to tear them apart.

A World War I veteran takes on the Ku Klux Klan when he loses his wife to a womanizing Klansman.

Actor Edmund Davey becomes a star overnight when his wife and co-star teams up with the secretary of a noted stage critic to produce a glowing review of his 'Othello'.

An Iowa farmer's wife makes him move to Hollywood so their daughter can become a star.

John Stonehouse (William Russell) checks into a hotel, intending to commit suicide. But instead he winds up helping a girl, Gilberte Bonheur (Fritzi Brunette), out of a jam. He finds her bending over a man who she has apparently killed, and since he's about to kill himself anyway, he offers to assume the blame. Throw a valuable emerald into the works, and the fact that the dead man suddenly comes back to life, and Stonehouse -- not to mention the audience -- becomes thoroughly befuddled by it all. Everything clears up, however, when Gilberte gives him a theater ticket -- it turns out that everything he went through was the plot to a stage play, enacted in real life by the actors. The critics roasted the play, saying it wasn't true to life, and this was their proof that the situations really could happen. Gilberte retires from acting when Stonehouse proposes.