Best movies like The Music Man

In the mid-80s, three women (each with an attorney) arrive at the office of New York entertainment manager, Morris Levy. One is an L.A. singer, formerly of the Platters; one is a petty thief from Philly; one teaches school in a small Georgia town. Each claims to be the widow of long-dead doo-wop singer-songwriter Frankie Lyman, and each wants years of royalties due to his estate, money Levy has never shared. During an ensuing civil trial, flashbacks tell the story of each one's life with Lyman, a boyish, high-pitched, dynamic performer, lost to heroin. Slowly, the three wives establish their own bond.

The mysterious disappearance of a kindergarten teacher during a picnic in the north of Iran is followed by a series of misadventures for her fellow travelers.

Ralph and Annabell Willart are a feuding couple who are constantly bickering over their worthless, good-for-nothing son Berry-Berry. When Berry-Berry begins yet another meaningless love affair, this time with an older woman named Echo O’Brien, he really gets his parents at each others’ throats.

Henry Thomas tries to overcome the horrors of his childhood and start a new life with his wife and kid. However, his abusive step-mother and his dependence on alcohol threaten to ruin his future.

An old villager deeply in love with his cow goes to the capital for a while. While he's there, the cow dies and now the villagers are afraid of his possible reaction to it when he returns.

In their nice Connecticut home, Agnes and Tobias have grown used to the imperfection and fragility of their marriage. Quietly nursing their grief over the death of their son, they get by well enough together. Agnes' boozy sister wanders in and out, and they allow anxiety-stricken friends to move into an upstairs room. But, when their daughter, Julia, shows up announcing her fourth divorce, long-repressed emotions come to the surface.

Delilah Miller is looking for an anchor in her life. She starts a romance with rock musician Ryland Yale, but soon it shows he can not be such an anchor - he's possessive, undependable and even a heroin addict.

Over the course of one day in August 1912, the family of retired actor James Tyrone grapples with the morphine addiction of his wife Mary, the illness of their youngest son Edmund and the alcoholism and debauchery of their older son Jamie. As day turns into night, guilt, anger, despair, and regret threaten to destroy the family.

A man contemplates life and compares it to a pear tree in his yard which stops producing fruit.

Juggling increasing career success and a growing heroin habit, a television comedy writer attempts to go down a path of improvement.

Jo, the mother of seven children, divorces her second husband in order to marry Jake, a successful but promiscuous screenwriter. Though they are physically and emotionally compatible, they are slowly torn apart.

A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.

A sensation when released in 1999 in Iran, Two Women charts the lives of two promising architecture students over the course of the first turbulent years of the Islamic Republic. Tahimine Milani creates this scathing portrait of those traditions - aided by official indifference - which conspire to trap women and stop them from realizing their full potential; the inclusion of frank depictions of domestic violence was hailed by many as a breakthrough in dealing with a long taboo subject.

In Cape Cod, Missy and Michael, the two children of Nancy Eldridge, are kidnapped by a man who has disturbing intentions for them. Local police chief Ed Coffin wrongfully suspects that Nancy is behind the disappearances.

A down-on-his-luck divorced father struggles to get his life and family back together before it's too late.

Gabriel is a man who on the surface has it all-successful professional life as an architect, a beautiful wife, Annie, and a devoted young daughter, Elizabeth. But slowly it dawns on him that he is not really happy. Gabriel decides that he wants to write a play about the sorry state of his life. He quits his job, gets a pushy literary agent friend to represent him and starts writing. Although his marriage ends in a divorce, the play is success and although his life is different than it was, he is happier.

Rouhi, a young bride-to-be, is hired as a maid for an affluent family in Tehran. Upon arriving, she is suddenly thrust into an explosive domestic conflict. The wife is convinced her husband is having an affair and enlists Rouhi as a spy, to follow her husband, and confirm her suspicions. What Rouhi discovers, however, threatens not only their marriage but her own future.

The Glass Agency is the story of a war veteran living in post war Iran. It depicts veterans who are suffering from social problems after the war. Society does not understand them and the standard social norms are not in harmony with their personalities.

The wife of Nasim, an Afghan immigrant in Iran, is gravely ill. He needs money to pay for her care, but his day labor digging wells does not pay enough. A friend connects Nasim to a two-bit promoter who sells tickets to watch Nasim ride a bicycle continuously for a week. The promoter brings in sick and aged spectators, haranguing them to find hope in Nasim's strength. Aided by his son, who feeds him as he rides, Nasim grinds out the days and shivering nights. Local officials believe this may be a plot and Nasim may be a spy; they try to sabotage him as do those who bet he won't finish the week. Will desperation alone get Nasim the money? Is any triumph an illusion?

An official is sent from his home in Tehran to hear the final appeal of a woman sentenced to death, a political prisoner. The official's wife of nearly 20 years, Fereshteh Samimi, writes him a letter to read when he reaches the hotel - the story of her student days during the revolution of 1978. We see the story in flashbacks as he reads: she leaves her province on scholarship, joins a Communist youth group, avoids arrest, and comes under the sway of a suave older man, Roozbeh Javid, a literary-magazine editor. As she tells her husband about the hidden half of her life, Fereshteh asks that he listen to the woman facing execution, a woman and therefore one of Iran's hidden half.

This film tells the story of a semi modern Iranian couple, who are trying to fight the old beliefs & old generation. This is a failing battle because the man is not strong enough.

Angel celebrates the birth of his daughter by taking his first hit of crack cocaine. With the hesitant support of his wife, Monika, he joins a friend of his to deal drugs for a short time--enough time to get out of debt and buy some nice things for the family. Three years later, Angel is still dealing, and has not saved any money, instead spending it on crack. His addiction grows, straining his friendship and his family life, and he gradually loses control.

Look Back in Anger is a love triangle involving the brilliant-but-disaffected young Jimmy Porter, his upper-middle-class, impassive wife Alison Porter, and her aristocratic best friend Helena Charles). Cliff , an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace.

The story of singer Rosemary Clooney's rise to fame, her marriage to Jose Ferrer, and her nervous breakdown.

Marzieh is a young female actress living in Tehran. The authorities ban her theatre work and, like all young people in Iran, she is forced to lead a secret life in order to express herself artistically. At an underground rave, she meets Iranian born Saman, now an Australian citizen, who offers her a way out of her country and the possibility of living without fear.

Lili is a young medical student who lives a normal life with her mother until one night that being raped changes Lili's life.

Brick, an alcoholic ex-football player, drinks his days away and resists the affections of his wife, Maggie. His reunion with his father, Big Daddy, who is dying of cancer, jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.

Somaieh, the youngest daughter of an indigent family, is getting married and fear is overwhelming each and every member of the family regarding how to overcome their difficulties after she's gone.

Over the course of one night, a woman drives across LA with her heroin addict brother in search of a detox center, with his two-year-old daughter in tow.

What appears to be a grand love story turns sour when parents-to-be discover that their unborn child will likely be born with serious birth defects, as a result of the mother's exposure to chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war. The father does not want to have a disabled child, but the mother insists on going through with the pregnancy.

Youssef, a blind university professor, is suddenly diagnosed with a fatal disease and must undergo treatment in France. Back home, will he find the life he had before?

Tuba works daily at a grueling textile factory in Iran, returning home every night to deal with the rest of her problematic family, which includes: a pregnant daughter whose husband beats her regularly; a teenage son, who's been getting into trouble due to his burgeoning career in radical politics; and an older son who goes to great lengths--such as attempting to sell the family's meager house--in order to get an engineering job in Japan as a means of getting out of Iran.

The struggle to survive, for a generation, torn between wanting to leave its country, yet bound by blood to home.

After a family tragedy in the chaotic city, Chris and Maggie Conley, in a last-ditch effort to save their dying marriage, purchase an isolated home in the deepest woods, to which they quickly discover evil has a key.

Filmmaker Saman Moghadam details the struggles of three women living in an antiquated district of Tehran in this emotionally resonant drama. Fabria's husband has been morally corrupted, and now it's up to her to take charge of the small café that proves the only source of income to the couple. Saloomeh is a beautiful young woman who dreams of marrying Ebi, but how will the couple survive on the salary of a simple mechanic? Lastly, middle aged Moluk has fallen for a much younger man, and her heart breaks when she discovers that her love is unrequited.