Best movies like The Shadow Battalion

After losing the woman of his dreams, Anderson is convinced he'll never fall in love again. But at the urging of his best friend, he spontaneously proposes to a dissatisfied waitress named Katie and an innocent dare evolves into the kind of love that both have been looking for all along.

New York, 1980: airplanes have replaced cars, numbers have replaced names, pills have replaced food, government-arranged marriages have replaced love, and test tube babies have replaced ... well, you get the idea. Scientists revive a man struck by lightning in 1930; he is rechristened "Single O". He is befriended by J-21, who can't marry the girl of his dreams because he isn't "distinguished" enough -- until he is chosen for a 4-month expedition to Mars by a renegade scientist. The Mars J-21, his friend, and stowaway Single O visit is full of scantily clad women doing Busby Berkeley-style dance numbers and worshiping a fat middle-aged man.

Adam, an awkward teen, spends a summer with his older sister, who is part of New York City's lesbian and trans activist scene. He meets the girl of his dreams but can't figure out how to tell her he's not the trans man she thinks he is.

Alex Owens, a teen juggling between two odd jobs, aspires to become a successful ballet dancer. Nick, who is her boss and lover, supports and encourages her to fulfil her dream.

Juan and Carmen are a humble couple living in Madrid. She does the housework and he works as an electrician in a film studio. Their dreams of wellness come true when they win a contest sponsored by a soap brand.

A young woman wishes to fulfill her mother's dream of opening her own bakery in Notting Hill, London. To do this, she enlists the help of an old friend and her grandma.

The collar awarded to the winners of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France (Best Craftsman in France) is more than the ultimate recognition for every pastry chef - it is a dream and an obsession. The 3-day competition includes everything from delicate chocolates to precarious six foot sugar sculptures and requires that the chefs have extraordinary skill, nerves of steel and luck. The film follows Jacquy Pfeiffer, founder of The French Pastry School in Chicago, as he returns to France to compete against 15 of France's leading pastry chefs. The filmmakers were given first time/exclusive access to this high-stakes drama of passion, sacrifice, disappointment and joy in the quest to have President Sarkozy declare them one of the best in France.

Caye is a young prostitute whose family is unaware of her profession. She meets her striking Dominican neighbour Zulema, an illegal immigrant, after she finds her in the bathroom, badly beaten up. They strike up a close friendship unbeknownst to Caye's xenophobic co-workers.

A Gay-Nineties musical set in NYC's Bowery and East-Side explores the life of its inhabitants---an Irish policeman and his tap-dancing daughter and music-hall wife; a German professor of music and his singing daughter; and an Italian café-owner, a kindly priest, a struggling young doctor and a saloon-keeper. And a political ward-heeler, Terrence Dowd, who has a deceptive and dishonest plan to sell them all out in order to build a fight arena. But he meets his match in property-owner Claire Adamson.

Ricardo, a young law student in his home town of Madrid, is a carefree playboy who loves nightclubs and courting pretty girls. His father hopes to instill a more serious attitude in his son by transferring him to a school in the rural town of Santiago. At Santiago, his father's old friend is to be his guardian. When Ricardo arrives at Santiago he joins a fraternity, and continues his carefree lifestyle while serenading and courting his guardian's daughter, Carmina.

Bored 15-year-old school chums Rai Manu and Javi dream of sexual adventures and exotic resorts while the well-off population of Madrid flock to the beaches on a summer holiday. The youths hang around the concrete wasteland killing time by reading the sex classifieds and pushing their luck. They masturbate, thieve, fight with their families and get involved in a drug bust. Finally Rai, the most daring and restless of the trio - gets shot while trying to steal stereo gear from a car. Each adolescent faces a dreary home life but when they get together they enjoy each other's company to the full. The film is an engaging mixture of comedy drama and the pathos of life in a Madrid neighborhood.

From a country famous all over the world as the birthplace of cinema, Impressionism and the humble pain au chocolat, comes four award-winning films about gay life and growing up. Much like their sought after paintings and pastry treats, these delights prove that when it comes to finesse and flavour in filmmaking - you can't beat the French. The short films are: Falling [Tomber] (2018); The Return [Le retour] (2014); Footing (2012); The Swimming Trunks [Le maillot de bain] (2013).

A rags-to-riches story of two friends, a small-time inventor and a sharky salesman, who hit rock bottom before coming up with a gizmo that becomes a worldwide phenomenon.

In the Mumbai, India, tenement community of Pavanpul, young female courtesans sing, dance and perform sexual favors for male clientele. Directors James Ivory and Ismail Merchant blend documentary footage and dramatic reenactments in their exploration of this seamy underworld, the flip side of the Bollywood film industry, where aspiring actors and dancers -- some even sold into prostitution by their own families -- end up, with their innocence lost and their hopes for movie stardom shattered.

Sofia receives the news of her mother's suicide with apparent calmness. From this moment on, her husband Eduardo finds her behavior suspicious, and hires a detective, Lamarca. Lamarca is a lone investigator obsessed by a recurring dream. He tries to figure out this mysterious dream by involving those connected with his current investigation in it.

A pair of women leave their small town and dud boyfriends behind for fun in Madrid.

Three young and desperate inhabitants of Madrid attempt to rise above their circumstances by any means available to them in that sun-drenched city. This tight-knit trio must scramble when their hasty plans become derailed by a demanding matriarch, an abusive older brother, and the entire corrupt underclass with which they deal.

Holly has everything it takes to be a star; the voice, the dream and the dedication, but she lacks the means to break away from her humble Texas upbringing. Then she gets the chance to attend an art and music school on the East coast and her future suddenly looks bright. But the road to stardom is a bumpy one.

Your job as a hostess in Malaga allows Hippolyta meet many men. One of them is a Chinese traveler, just in time to take her to her room, is killed. So, the blame falls on another Hippolyta customers.

In this light and lovely romantic musical, a Hungarian woman attends a Viennese fair and buys a card from a gypsy fortune teller. It says that she will meet someone important and is destined for a happy marriage. Afterward she gets a job as a baker's assistant. She then meets a handsome army drummer who secretly dreams of becoming a famous composer and conductor. Unfortunately the military forbids the young corporal to create his own music. But then Ilonka secretly sends one of the drummer's waltzes to the Austrian Emperor with his weekly order of pastries. Her act paves the way toward the tuneful and joyous fulfillment of the gypsy's prediction.

Adele has grown up in a tenement, but she longs for greater things. She gets her chance at the stage when her mother runs into an old friend, Blanche. Blanche has been working steadily in the theater, and she helps Adele get work. The young girl finds romance with Vincent Harvey, an aspiring composer. One day Adele suffers an accidental fall out of a window.

Disturbed loner Montgomery Goth struggles to maintain his sanity while working a thankless job as a pizza delivery man. Montgomery's miserable life perks up after he meets the girl of his dreams in the form of the sweet Bibi. However, things go awry and Montgomery's inner demons push him to go off the murderous deep end.

An inventor moves his family into a prototype smart home in order to work out the kinks and sell the program. But the AI gets the idea that its human inhabitants are standing in the way of its goals and tries to eliminate them.

Two women and a girl of about ten find themselves shipwrecked and living on a not-so-deserted island. After one of the inhabitants makes himself known, romance and passion result. Yet, what are the love-birds to do about a band of nasty pirates who decide to explore the area?

Out of prison on a work release program, Mike is doing his best to stay on the straight and narrow, but his job as a locksmith threatens to undermine his efforts when the nutty and profane Margo calls seeking his services. After helping Margo in her quest to find out whether her fiance's been fooling around, Mike has a twinge of conscience that only ends up pulling him deeper into a dicey and chaotic situation.

Ernest Wright's peerless prowess as a locksmith comes to the attention of a tough big-time crook, who feels that the little man would be a valuable asset to his crime kingdom. In order to inveigle him into a series of jobs, he sets up a beautiful hostess as a trap, into which the hapless Ernest inevitably falls..!

María works in a hostess bar in Madrid because, forced by the Puritans of her little village, she had to leave accused of public scandal just for having kissed her boyfriend. María, together with her three sisters, decides to return and builds a club in the village faced with the scandalized don Florencio, a repressed banker and overlord who secretly desires María. In order to go unnoticed, María and her sisters run the club through a wax-chandler's shop where the majority of men of the village will parade, which excites even more the lascivious and hypocritical don Florencio.

Fifty years after his death, this musical and psychological portrait of Ralph Vaughan Williams explores the passions that drove a giant of 20th-century English music.

Fleeing to Tokyo with the hopes that she can fulfil her dream of becoming a dancer, Yume is met with the harsh reality that success isn’t something that comes quickly or easily. Whilst juggling her job as a hostess in Tokyo’s red-light district, Yume throws herself headfirst into studying the artform and integrating herself into the underground dance community.

The Spanish family Gabarre-Mendoza is celebrating a birthday, when it is interrupted by a police inspection. In ‘La Cañada Real’, a shanty town just outside Madrid, the inhabitants are forced to leave their illegal homes. Each member of the family struggles in their own way with their unstable position.

The lives and loves of a group of U.S. Air Force test pilots on a sprawling airbase called "Joshua Tree."

At Occidental College in 1981, a loner snorts cocaine and smokes marijuana, secretly hoping to one day become someone important. His dream - and much more - comes true when Satan appears, promising the world. There is one caveat, though, as a deal with the Devil requires consideration. In this case, not just the delivery of the young man's soul, but millions more... With an agreement procured, Satan and his new protégé plot, plan and scheme a long term agenda that ultimately ends with the United States presidency, transforming the Earth's greatest democracy into a communist fiefdom, ruled by a ruthless dictator.

Is this a film about Scrooge? About a composer’s life? An opera within an opera? The Passion of Scrooge blurs these lines between performance, documentary, and fiction, into a cinematic concert experience that’s seasoned with magical reality. Composer Jon Deak has adapted Charles Dickens’ timeless tale into a contemporary opera that melts the heart, but doesn’t avoid the darkness in Scrooge that’s still resonant with the material concerns of our time. Using neither period costumes, nor set pieces to reconstruct old England, the film invites you to experience A Christmas Carol with the imaginative possibilities of a radio play. And then, to meet those visions in your head, filmmaker H. Paul Moon‘s floating camera intimately captures musicians performing the score as characters themselves, in this ageless haunted redemption story about “us, every one.”

When a fiercely independent pastry chef cautiously agrees to the big step of accompanying her hunky dream man home for the holidays, things quickly devolve as he reverts into a momma’s boy and she finds herself caught in a tug-of-war with his smothering mother.

The Red Shoes is a tale of obsession, possession and one girl's dream to be the greatest dancer in the world. Victoria Page lives to dance but her ambitions become a battleground between the two men who inspire her passion. Matthew Bourne’s magical adaptation of the classic Powell and Pressburger film is set to the achingly romantic music of golden-age Hollywood composer Bernard Herrmann, the production is orchestrated by Terry Davies, with stunning designs by Lez Brotherston, lighting by Paule Constable, sound by Paul Groothuis and projection design by Duncan McLean. Filmed live at Sadler’s Wells in London especially for cinemas.