Best movies like The Ordinary People

Two assistant managers of a corporate grocery store vie for a coveted promotion.

A rich industrialist is brutally kidnapped. While he physically and mentally degenerates in imprisonment, the kidnappers, police and the board of the company of which he is director negotiate about the ransom of 50 million euro.

A humble copy editor becomes a personal assistant to her favorite actress and eventually loses herself both in the actress' demands and her own ego.

A young professional woman (Simpson) unwittingly becomes the pawn of two business executives in their bid to oust the head of a mega-conglomerate.

Bobby Walker lives the proverbial American dream: great job, beautiful family, shiny Porsche in the garage. When corporate downsizing leaves him and two co-workers jobless, the three men are forced to re-define their lives as men, husbands and fathers.

A teaching assistant at a private Buenos Aires school begins obsessively spying on her students in the early 1980s, as the public rises up against the military dictatorship.

Amélie, a young Belgian woman, having spent her childhood in Japan, decides to return to live there and tries to integrate in the Japanese society. She is determined to be a "real Japanese" before her year contract runs out, though it precisely this determination that is incompatable with Japanese humility. Though she is hired for a choice position as a translator at an import/export firm, her inability to understand Japanese cultural norms results in increasingly humiliating demotions. Though Amelie secretly adulates her, her immediate supervisor takes sadistic pleasure in belittling her all along. She finally manages to break Amelie's will by making her the bathroom attendant, and is delighted when Amelie tells her the she will not renew her contract. Amelie realizes that she is finally a real Japanese when she enters the company president's office "with fear and trembling," which could only be possible because her determination was broken by Miss Fubuki's systematic torture.

An IT company hires an actor to serve as the company's president in order to help the business get sold to a cranky Icelander.

When a western Pennsylvania auto plant is acquired by a Japanese company, brokering auto worker Hunt Stevenson faces the tricky challenge of mediating the assimilation of two clashing corporate cultures. At one end is the Japanese plant manager and the sycophant who is angling for his position. At the other, a number of disgruntled long-time union members struggle with the new exigencies of Japanese quality control.

A young Parisian advertising executive becomes so captivated by the unsettling charm of his mysterious new employer that he eventually abandons his family and friends, viewing it a privilege to let the ubiquitous employer take over his home, his life, his desire. Only his wife remains suspicious, recognizing both the pathos and the evil in the man’s soul-stealing power.

A chemist loses his job to outsourcing. Two years later and still jobless, he hits on a solution: to genuinely eliminate his competition.

Guy is a young film executive who's willing to do whatever it takes to make it in Hollywood. He begins working for famed producer Buddy Ackerman, a domineering, manipulative, coldhearted boss. When Guy also finds out that his cynical girlfriend, Dawn, has been using sex as a career move, he reaches his limit. Guy decides to exact revenge on Buddy by kidnapping him and subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment.

Two business executives--one an avowed misogynist, the other recently emotionally wounded by his love interest--set out to exact revenge on the female gender by seeking out the most innocent, uncorrupted girl they can find and ruining her life.

After being passed over for a promotion, secretary Deidre turns to murder and blackmail.

Matthieu and Eric are two brothers who work at the same factory as their father in Normandy. When his father is dismissed for smoking on the factory floor, Matthieu is incensed and tries to have him reinstated, in vain. His brother has just got married and, with a child and mortgage on the way, is reluctant to stir up trouble...

A princess is determined to restore her homeland's throne to its rightful heir, a young prince with whom she falls in love.

Transport Minister Bertrand Saint-Jean is awoken in the middle of the night by his head of staff. A bus has gone off the road into a gully. He has no choice but to go to the scene of the accident. Thus begins the odyssey of a politician in a world that is increasingly more complex and hostile.

In the sterile setting of a powerful multinational, a ruthless corporate executive and her ambitious protégée bare their claws in a vicious battle for supremacy.

An executive manager, his wife and his family, at the point when his professional choices are about to overturn all their lives. Philippe Lemesle and his wife are separating, their love irretrievably damaged by pressures of work. A successful executive in industrial conglomerate, Philippe no longer knows how to respond to the contradictory demands of his bosses. Yesterday they wanted a manager, today an enforcer. Now he must decide what his life really means.

Emilie is a bright young workaholic manager in Human Resources, working for a huge French agro-food company. But, one day, one of the employees commits suicide at the company in front of her. While an investigation is underway, stuck between her traumatized colleagues and under pressure of a powerful hierarchy, she will have to get by on her own.

Middle-aged middle-manager Jim Fry, with the same company for fifteen years, is in a comfortable rut. But life becomes less predictable when he doesn't receive an invitation to an important luncheon being held by the new company president. Convinced that he's about to lose his job, Jim begins to mull over his limited prospects when his wife confirms that she's pregnant.

A single mother takes a job with the government where she is confronted with corruption.

A mild-mannered secretary discovers that she has a talent for murder as she ascends the corporate ladder.

After promising 1100 employees that they would protect their jobs, the managers of a factory decide to suddenly close up shop. Laurent takes the lead in a fight against this decision.

Cosmetics mogul Mary Kay Ash faces competition from a driven newcomer, who plots to take apart her control of the makeup industry

Upwardly-mobile executive Jane (Sarah Butler) uncovers evidence that that her high powered boss may have been murdered, prompting the corporation to dispatch a "crisis manager" (D.B. Sweeny) to ensure that the truth never gets out. Now, trapped in an elevator during a holiday weekend, Jane realizes that she must climb for her life to avoid taking a fatal plunge.

America! Built on a better pill. Karly Hert has spent the last ten years selling drugs. Legally, that is. Karly is a pharmaceutical sales representative. She sells pills to doctors. She makes lots of money. She has a company car. She has a nice fat expense account. But there's a growing pit in Karly's stomach. Something isn't right behind the scenes at big pharma. Based on the director's decade working directly for the industry.

Tommy is a vacuum cleaner salesman gripped by the fever of closing the deal. He lives on puffa rice stored in his glove compartment, listens to motivation tapes of his own voice shouting 'Sell, sell, fucking sell' and his punters are up to their eyes in debt. Even Tommy admits his 'soul's in holes'. He's sure the Golden Vac (the holy grail of vacuum salesmanship) can be his - if only he hadn't been saddled with Pete, a meek sales trainee trying to help his girlfriend quit stripping.

Joel Goodman is a hotshot advertising executive angling for a promotion, but he feels stuck - not least of all in traffic. A seeming answer to his prayers comes in the form of a homeless man whom Joel pays to sit in his passenger seat so he can use the carpool lane. The two form an unexpected bond, and Joel comes to realize that sometimes changing lanes can change your life.

Paul Reynolds is a Gatsby-like figure: owner of a magnificent house, the host of great parties, and a collector of interesting people. He persuades Lizzie Thomas, a secretary at a local estate agent's, to come and work for him as his assistant, to bring some order to his chaos. He inspires her with his enthusiasm and imagination, and frustrates her with his apparent carelessness and destructiveness, which culminates in her calling the police as one of his parties is attacked by local troublemakers, seemingly with his tacit approval. But their paths are destined to cross again and again as Lizzie, with the help of some of the people that she met at Paul's house, rises through the changing landscape of corporate Britain. This is the tale of a meaningful and powerful relationship that isn't a love story; it's about those rare people who profoundly influence and shape our lives.

Brian Cruver, an ambitious 26-year-old lands a job at Enron. As he assimilates to the company's get-rich-quick mantra, spending sprees and wild corporate "gatherings" become the norm. But when Enron files for bankruptcy, Cruver discovers he's just a pawn in a failing game of corporate greed--one that made the rich richer...while the rest lost everything.

When a famous playwright invites the cast of his new play - including his enchanting assistant, his ex-wife and her new lover - to his country estate, a series of seductions and surprising alliances ensue.

Conrad Lang, a handyman in a rich family - he has been raised like a brother with Thomas, who has the same age -, accidentally puts fire to the big holiday house he keeps. He returns to the town he grew up in, to the family home, where Philippe, Thomas's son, and Simone are getting married. Conrad's frequent memory loss and behavioural problems rapidly reveal a neurological disease (Alzheimer's is suggested by doctor Cohen when he examens Elvira) which leads Elvira, Thomas's stepmother, to install Conrad in a guesthouse on the property, with the help of a nurse. When Conrad looses more and more his landmarks in present and past, memories of his youth come back to surface. They intrigue Simone, since these memories do not entirely fit together with the official family history...

At the start, Christine Blanc is a temp, her boyfriend has gone. Near the story's end, she's been offered a steady job, she has a fiancé, other men seem interested in her, she's passed her driving test, and, after she wins 1000 Euros in a scratch-off, her colleagues sing that she's a jolly good fellow ("one of us"). But something's askew: her gaze is too direct, her eyes open too widely; conversational gambits hit odd notes; she parrots others' words; she cooks too much food when she invites a supervisor to dinner. When the supervisor takes Christine on a spontaneous outing that disorients her, her oddities become something else. Can things ever be normal?

Mathieu, a piano virtuoso, goes home to help his brother Paul to take care of their sick mother. Paul is into reenacting old battles, dressing up and getting into character, even dueling if necessary. Mathieu gets involved in this world and play becomes real.