Best movies like The Only Son

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Only Son Starring Chōko Iida, Shinichi Himori, Masao Hayama, Yoshiko Tsubouchi, and more. If you liked The Only Son then you may also like: The Whistle, Who Has Seen the Wind, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Won't Back Down, No More Orchids 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.

movie

A silk factory worker is persuaded to support her son's education up to a college level despite their poverty. Many years later, she travels to Tokyo to visit her son.

selected filters: Sort: Default

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

Know any good movies to watch like The Only Son 1936. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.

The Whistle

Robert must avenge his son who was killed in a workplace accident.

Who Has Seen the Wind

The coming-of-age of adolescent Brian O'Connal in small town Depression-era Saskatchewan is told. The son of the local pharmacist Gerald O'Connal, Brian is in many ways a typical boy, who dislikes school if only because of his run-ins with the nervous schoolteacher, Miss MacDonald, and who tries to catch gophers with his friends, Artie and Forbsie. His best friend and protector is slightly older Jonathan Ben, better known as The Young Ben (as his father is referred to as The Ben), who is highly regarded as a problem by those in town who see themselves as the moral authority if only because of The Young Ben's association to The Ben, the town still keeper and drunk. Brian's life takes a turn when his parents have to leave town temporarily, while Brian stays on his Uncle Sean's farm. That stint leads to a series of events which make Brian see life around him through slightly older and wiser eyes.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

When eccentric candy man Willy Wonka promises a lifetime supply of sweets and a tour of his chocolate factory to five lucky kids, penniless Charlie Bucket seeks the golden ticket that will make him a winner.

Won't Back Down

Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.

No More Orchids

Despite loving another man, a young woman is talked into marrying a wealthy and boorish prince in order to help her financially-strapped father.

Over the Hill to the Poorhouse

The mother of a large family is abandoned by her children and faces consignment to the poorhouse. But one of her offspring, the one no one had faith in, returns to rescue her.

A Japanese Tragedy

At the close of the war in Japan, a widowed mother makes every possible sacrifice to bring up her ungrateful son and daughter who are unimpressed with their poor standard of living at home. They gradually reject her in search of the material comforts that working as a maid cannot provide. The mother's despair becomes interminable.

A Child Is Waiting

Dr. Matthew Clark is the head of a state institution for intellectually disabled children. Jean Hansen, a former music teacher anxious to give her life some meaning, joins the staff of the hospital. Jean, who tries to shelter the children with her love, suspiciously regards Dr. Clark's stern training methods. She becomes emotionally involved with 12-year-old Reuben Widdicombe, who has been abandoned by his divorced parents.

Holler

In a forgotten pocket of Southern Ohio where American manufacturing and opportunity are drying up, a determined young woman finds a ticket out when she is accepted to college. Alongside her older brother, Ruth Avery joins a dangerous scrap metal crew in order to pay her way. Together, they spend one brutal winter working the scrap yards during the day and stealing valuable metal from the once thriving factories by night. With her goal in sight, Ruth finds that the ultimate cost of an education for a girl like her may be more than she bargained for, and she soon finds herself torn between a promising future and the family she would leave behind.

Educating Rita

Rita, a witty 26-year-old hairdresser, wants to 'discover' herself, so she joins the Open University where she meets the disillusioned professor of literature, Dr. Frank Bryant. His marriage has failed, his new girlfriend is having an affair with his best friend and he can't get through the day without downing a bottle or two of whisky. What Frank needs is a challenge... and along comes Rita.

Dancer in the Dark

Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, escaping life's troubles - even if just for a moment - by dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.

Deliverance

The story of Helen Keller and how she overcame her disabilities.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum

In late 19th century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that he is only praised for his acting due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated by this, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully follows him.

The Sins of the Children

A barber turns down a promising business venture in order to take his sick son to a drier climate out west.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Academy Award-honoree Peter O'Toole stars in this musical classic about a prim English schoolmaster who learns to show his compassion through the help of an outgoing showgirl. O'Toole, who received his fourth Oscar-nomination for this performance, is joined by '60s pop star Petula Clark and fellow Oscar-nominee Michael Redgrave.

A Boy and His Samurai

A samurai from the Edo Period time travels to present day Japan where he meets a divorcee and her son. Soon, he discovers a passion for making pastries.

An Inn in Tokyo

Kihachi, an unemployed worker, wanders around the industrial flatlands of Tokyo's Koto district with his two young sons, Zenko and Masako. He is unable to find a job and has to rely on his sons catching stray dogs to earn reward money for their meals. As days go by, Kihachi and the boys no longer have enough money to stay at an inn for the night. Luckily for him, he encounters an old friend, Otsune, who finds him a job and allows them to stay at her eatery house.

Possessed

Marion is a factory worker who hopes to trade the assembly line, for a beautiful penthouse apartment. Mark Whitney, a wealthy and influential lawyer can make her dreams come true, but there is only one problem, he will give her everything but a marriage proposal. Will this affair ever lead to marriage?

Street of Shame

The lives of five prostitutes employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

There Was a Father

Shuhei Horikawa, a poor schoolteacher, struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, despite neither money nor prospects.

Tokyo Chorus

Mr. Omura, a teacher, leads a group of male students in an outdoor drill. One slight, comic young man, Shinji Okajima, has no shirt under his jacket; he scratches at fleas and makes faces behind Omura's back. Jump ahead several years, Shinji is married with three children. He sells insurance, and on the company's annual bonus day, he protests when an older worker is fired. Shinji loses his own job as a result, and he and his wife must find ways to cope. Lassitude, pride, the demands and needs of young children, and relationships from bygone school days all play a part in the outcome of their struggle.

Tokyo Story

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

The Lottery

Four children enter a high-stakes lottery. If they win, they can attend one of the best schools in New York. A look at the crisis in public education, The Lottery makes the case than any child can succeed.

Death Water

Newspaper correspondent Kyoko Togakure visits a nursing home in the outskirts of Tokyo. She finds the dead body of a resident. It was an apparent suicide. He's holding a piece of paper with the mystifying word "Death Water" written on it. Nearby are blood-stained scissors, and his eyes are squashed. She has no idea that this death is just the beginning of a horrendous nightmare.

Tokyo Shutter Girl

The movie Tokyo Shutter Girl, based on the comic series by Kenichi Kiriki, consists of three separate works by three separate directors, each set in Tokyo. It is about three Japanese schoolgirls in a photo club.

The Hiding Place

A son visits his aging mother and sees tragic, intermittent signs of senility, but she pleads with him not to send her to a sanitarium.

The Migrants

A look at the lives of migratory farm workers, focusing on one family.

Silk Hat Kid

Eddie Howard, a fast-thinking, two-fisted bodyguard, is hired by nightclub-owner Tim Martin to protect him from chiseling gangsters operating an extortion-racket. But Eddie meets and falls in love with Laura Grant, Tim's sweetheart, and complications quickly arise.

Mills of the Gods

Fay Wray plays Jean Hastings, the wealthy and spoiled scion of a factory-owning family led by her irrepressible grandmother. Sparks fly when Jean meets Jim Devlin, the labor leader who’s spearheading a tense worker’s strike against the factory. After circumstances force Jean and Jim to spend a night together in his cabin, she begins questioning her family’s ruthless tactics. This hard-to-see Columbia film by British director Roy William Neill not only features Wray as a brunette but also includes an explosive depiction of labor strife. (Block Cinema)

The Colour Room

A pioneering ceramic artist Clarice Cliff roares to prominence in the 1920s while working in Britain’s Stoke-on-Trent pottery industry.

Siddharth

A chain-wallah from Delhi travels across India in search of his missing son, in the hopes that whoever took him, returns him unharmed.

730

A modern day urban tale centered around a young man named Tru, who recently came home from jail and is fighting to stay on the right path for the sake of his son. Not too long after his release, Tru finds himself struggling to be an average man while he battles with his son's mother, the law, and the streets.

Passing Fancy

Two Tokyo co-workers come across a destitute young lady in search of a place to live.

Flame of My Love

A woman's struggle for equality in Japan in the 1880s. Eiko Hirayama leaves Okayama for Tokyo, where she helps the fledgling Liberal Party and falls in love with its leader Kentaro Omoi, just as the party is being disbanded by the government.

Samurai

A young Japanese-American orphan in California is taken in by a priest who is actually a Japanese secret agent and a samurai warrior. Due to the samurai's training, the boy murders his English teacher, kills the American parents who have adopted him, smuggles Japanese secret plans into the country, and eventually becomes the governor of California with plans to infiltrate Japanese spies into the state so they can take over.

More related lists

Sort results by:

X close
Default
Clear filters
...