Best movies like The River

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The River Starring Thomas Chalmers, and more. If you liked The River then you may also like: Valley of the Giants, Wild River, Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike, Kedi, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 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.

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This short Depression-era documentary describes the importance of the Mississippi River to the United States and laments the environmental destruction committed in the name of progress, particularly farming and timber practices and their impact on impoverished farmers.

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Valley of the Giants

A lumberman takes on a sleezy corporate giant wanting to move in and do whatever it takes to drive everyone else out of business.

Wild River

A young field administrator for the TVA comes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam on the Tennessee River. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of an elderly woman from her home on an island in the River, and the young man's love affair with that woman's widowed granddaughter.

Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike

The second film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series. It introduces Germany as a nation whose aggressive ambitions began in 1863 with Otto von Bismarck and the Nazis as its latest incarnation.

Kedi

A profile of Istanbul and its unique people, seen through the eyes of the most mysterious and beloved animal humans have ever known, the Cat.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

From chicken thief to cabin boy, riverboat pilot to circus performer, Huck Finn outsmarts everyone on his way down the muddy Mississippi.

The Biggest Little Farm

The successes and failures of a couple determined to live in harmony with nature on a farm outside of Los Angeles are lovingly chronicled by filmmaking farmer John Chester, in this inspiring documentary.

A Corner in Wheat

On a whim, a greedy tycoon decides to corner the world market in wheat. This doubles the price of bread, forcing grain producers into charity lines and others further into poverty. The film contrasts the differences between the lives of those who work to grow the wheat and the life of the man who dabbles in its sale for profit.

The Cure

Erik, a loner, finds a friend in Dexter, an eleven-year-old boy with AIDS. They vow to find a cure for AIDS together and save Dexter's life in an eventful summer.

Mudbound

In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.

Listen to Britain

A depiction of life in wartime England during the Second World War. Director Humphrey Jennings visits many aspects of civilian life and of the turmoil and privation caused by the war, all without narration.

The Mississippi Gambler

Mark Fallon, with partner Kansas John Polly, tries to introduce honest gambling on the riverboats. His first success makes enemies of the crooked gamblers and of fair Angelique Dureau, whose necklace he won. Later in New Orleans, Mark befriends Angelique's father, but she still affects to despise him as his gambling career brings him wealth. Duelling, tragedy, and romantic complications follow.

Paul Bunyan

A retelling of the classic Canadian / American tall tale of the enormous lumberjack and his loyal companion, an equally huge blue ox.

Places in the Heart

In 1930s Texas, a widow and her family fight to save their home by harvesting cotton.

The Plow That Broke the Plains

A documentary about what happened to the Great Plains of the United States and Canada when uncontrolled farming destroyed the soil and led to the Dust Bowl.

Show Boat

Despite her mother's objections, the naive young daughter of a show boat captain is thrust into the limelight as the company's new leading lady.

The Big Trees

In 1900, unscrupulous timber baron Jim Fallon plans to take advantage of a new law and make millions off California redwood. Much of the land he hopes to grab has been homesteaded by a Quaker colony, who try to persuade him to spare the giant sequoias...but these are the very trees he wants most. Expert at manipulating others, Fallon finds that other sharks are at his own heels, and forms an unlikely alliance.

Fighting Caravans

Clint Belmet (Gary Cooper) is a bit of a firebrand and is sentenced to at least 30 days in jail, but his partners, Bill Jackson (Ernest Torrence) and Jim Bridger (Tully Marshall) talk a sympathetic Frenchwoman named Felice (Lili Damita) into telling the bumbling, drunken marshal that Clint had married her the previous night. Clint is released so he can accompany Felice on the wagon train heading west to California.

The Flame of New Orleans

In old New Orleans, a beautiful adventuress juggles the attentions of a rich banker and a dashing sea captain.

Cameraperson

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

The Iron Mistress

In this biopic, Jim Bowie goes to New Orleans, where he falls for Judalon and befriends her brother, Narcisse. Soon, Jim is forced to avenge Narcisse's murder, but Judalon takes up with another man. Jim eventually has another romantic interlude with Judalon and is forced to kill one of her suitors in self-defense. Jim leaves town, and falls for the daughter of a Texas politician, but his entanglement with Judalon continues to bedevil him.

Steamboat Round the Bend

A Louisiana con man enters his steamboat into a winner-take-all race with a rival while trying to find a witness to free his nephew, about to be hanged for murder.

Dixie Jamboree

A medicine man on the last show boat on the Mississippi is mistaken by two gangsters as a bootleger, and has to envade them.

Banjo on My Knee

A young husband leaves his river shantyboat community in Pecan Point, Tennessee and travels to New Orleans in search of his runaway wife.

Swamp Fire

Buster Crabbe and Johnny Weissmuller battle it out in Cajun country! Johnny, a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, is seduced away from his fiance (Carol Thurston) by a rich outsider (Virginia Grey) who's nursed him back to health after a serious accident. She owns a large piece of the swamp and has outlawed hunting on her property. His rival Mike (Crabbe) is a trapper who harbors deep resentment for Johnny and his new wealthy friends. When he feels Johnny is responsible for the hunting ban, he resorts to destructive acts of vengeance.

Satchmo the Great

In this 1957 biography film of the jazz-great Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, he and his band tour the world as American good-will ambassadors bring jazz at its best to the people of the world. Within the film, the life of Louis Armstrong is portrayed through the music. One of the outstanding scenes in this "biography/docudrama" shows blind songwriter W. C. Handy, with tears streaming down his face, as Armstrong, backed by Leonard Bernstein leading the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, play Handy's immortal "St. Louis Blues."

The River Rat

On the lazy banks of the Mississippi, a young girl is reunited with her time-served but innocent father. But the reunion is tainted with the whereabouts of the stolen loot, and those who come looking for it...

Lady from Louisiana

Northern lawyer John Reynolds travels to New Orleans to try and clean up the local crime syndicate based around a lottery. Although he meets Julie Mirbeau and they are attracted to each other, the fact that her father heads the lottery means they end up on opposite sides. When her father is killed, Julie becomes more and more involved in the shady activities and in blocking Reynolds' attempts at prosecution.

Mississippi River Sharks

Sharks attack a fish rodeo on the Mississippi River, and it is up to a group of locals to stop them.

Duel on the Mississippi

In bustling era of 19th-century Louisiana, sugar is as valuable as gold, and pirates like Lili Scarlet (Patricia Medina, Mr. Arkadin) will do anything to get it. After robbing Jules Tulane’s (John Dehner, The Boys from Brazil) estate of his crop, Scarlet takes over Tulane’s land debt and forces him to pay or go to prison. In exchange for postponing his debt, Scarlet allows Tulane’s son, André (Lex Barker, Robin Hood and the Pirates), to work as her servant. When André and Scarlet fall in love, it leads to jealous rage from Scarlet’s former paramour, expert swordsman Hugo (Warren Stevens, Forbidden Planet) — and when Hugo looks to raid the Tulane estate again, it is up to André and Scarlet to take him down and save the estate.

Banjoes, Fiddles & Riverboats: John Hartford and the General Jackson

Steamboatin' stories from those who lived them, river history, authentic footage and stills, along with music and narration by John Hartford.

River Lady

In the 1850s, in a logging town on the Mississippi River, a conflict between the people of a mill town and the lumberjacks who work downriver. Romance and deceit are catalyzed by the arrival of the gambling river boat, River Lady, owned by the beautiful Sequin. Bauvais, a representative of the local lumber syndicate and Sequin's business partner, is trying to convince H.L. Morrison, the mill owner, to sell his business.

Rainbow on the River

A young boy is forced to leave his family in the South and move in with relatives he doesn't know in New York.

Kiss the Ground

Sheds light on an alternative approach to farming called “regenerative agriculture” that could balance our climate, replenish our vast water supplies, and feed the world.

Freedom on My Mind

In 1961 Mississippi was a virtual South African enclave within the United States. Everything is segregated. There are virtually no black voters. Bob Moses, enters the state and the Voter Registration Project begins. The first black farmer who attempts to register is fatally shot by a Mississippi State Representative. But four years later, the registration is open. By 1990, Mississippi has more elected black officials than any other state in the union.

Planet of the Humans

Forget all you have heard about how “Renewable Energy” is our salvation. It is all a myth that is very lucrative for some. Feel-good stuff like electric cars, etc. Such vehicles are actually powered by coal, natural gas… or dead salmon in the Northwest.

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