Best movies like Tropical Manila

No matter how difficult, life must go on.

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Tropical Manila Starring Jerald de Vera, Kim Su-nam, Maries Chanel Rebucas, Marife Necesito, and more. If you liked Tropical Manila then you may also like: The War Zone, The Quiet, Run, Ken Park, The Brown Bunny 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.

Kim-Dusik, who committed a murder in Korea, fled to Manila and has lived there nearly 15 years. He lives with his Filipino wife, Medusa, and their 15-year old son, Philip. Dusik, his irresistible yearning for his mother, turns into violence inflicted on his son, and sexual abuse inflicted on his wife. He only looks forward to going back to Korea as the 15 year statute of limitations runs out. As Philip grows up he confronts his father about his mistreatment of his mother. Philip, in spite of himself, takes after his father's violent behavior. Medusa finds out that Dusik is leaving for Korea in a few months and begs him to take Philip with him to raise him as a Korean.

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The War Zone

An alienated teenager, saddened that he has moved away from London, must find a way to deal with a dark family secret.

The Quiet

After her widowed father dies, deaf teenager Dot moves in with her godparents, Olivia and Paul Deer. The Deers' daughter, Nina, is openly hostile to Dot, but that does not prevent her from telling her secrets to her silent stepsister, including the fact that she wants to kill her lecherous father.

Run

A former boyracer, who married his first love and took a job in one of the fish factories, now has a 17 year-old-son of his own following in his footsteps and can no longer ignore the fact he’s going nowhere. Unable to be physically or emotionally present with his family, he takes his son’s car out for one final joy ride and risks losing the love that surrounds him

Ken Park

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

The Brown Bunny

Bud Clay races motorcycles in the 250cc Formula II class of road racing. After a race in New Hampshire, he has five days to get to his next race in California. During his road trip, he is haunted by memories of the last time he saw Daisy, his true love.

Caught

A middle-aged couple has a drifter enter their lives. The fish-store owners find that the mysterious young man awakens the couple in ways they didn't expect. Things get tense when the drifter begins an affair with the woman of the house.

Run for Your Life

A journalist must make a decision to flee with her two children from her abusive ex-husband or kill him before he kills her.

Moebius

A wife, overwhelmed with hatred for her husband, inflicts an unspeakable wound on their son, as the family heads towards horrific destruction.

This Boy's Life

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

The Mother

A grandmother has a passionate affair with a man half her age, who is also sleeping with her daughter.

Damage

The life of a respected British politician at the height of his career crumbles when he becomes obsessed with his son's lover.

Intimacy

Jay, a failed musician, walked out of his family and now earns a living as head bartender in a trendy London pub. Every Wednesday afternoon a woman comes to his house for graphic, almost wordless, sex. One day Jay follows her and finds out about the rest of her life. This eventually disrupts their relationship.

Distant Voices, Still Lives

The second film in Terence Davies's autobiographical series (along with "Trilogy" and "The Long Day Closes") is an impressionistic view of a working-class family in 1940s and 1950s Liverpool, based on Davies's own family. Through a series of exquisite tableaux Davies creates a deeply affecting photo album of a troubled family wrestling with the complexity of love.

Fireflies in the Garden

The semi-autobiographical story centers on the complexities of love and commitment in a family torn apart when faced by an unexpected tragedy.

Bullies

When the peaceful Morris family move to a small town and buy the town grocery store, they run afoul of the Cullen family. The Cullen's have been bullying the town's folk for years, and now they are harassing the Morris family every chance they get. Matt meanwhile meets and starts seeing a lot of Becky who also likes him. Unfortunately her last name is Cullen, and when the rest of the family finds out about their relationship, they decide to get even, and their harassment is elevated to vicious assault.

If Someone Had Known

A young wife and mother is abused by her husband and keeps the secret from her friends and family.

Inconceivable

A mother looks to escape her abusive past by moving to a new town where she befriends another mother, who grows suspicious of her.

May December

Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.

The Pornographer

Jacques Laurent made pornographic films in the 1970s and '80s, but had put that aside for 20 years. His artistic ideas, born of the '60s counter-culture, had elevated the entire genre. Older and paunchier, he is now directing a porno again. Jacques's artistry clashes with his financially-troubled producer's ideas about shooting hard-core sex. Jacques has been estranged from his son Joseph for years, since the son first learned the nature of the family business. They are now speaking again. Joseph and his friends want to recapture the idealism of 1968 with a protest. Separated from his wife, Jacques strives for personal renewal with plans to build a new house by himself...

Mesmerized

An orphan weds an older man in circa-1900 New Zealand, then finds out he's a miser who spies on her.

Paper Boys

A ragtag bunch of teenage door to door salesmen wreak havoc and spread the news of their coming of age in this summer before they begin their college lives. It centers around Sean, a sexually confused and drug afflicted teen who just can't seem to shake off his dysfunctional family history. Paper Boys is an adventure into the psychology of sales as a metaphor for life as these young "Glengarry Glen Ross" wannabes terrorize a suburban neighborhood near everyone!

Service

A struggling family owns a Filipino porn theater where prostitutes conduct their business.

The Tracey Fragments

Tracey Berkowitz, 15, a self-described normal girl, loses her 9-year old brother, Sonny. In flashbacks and fragments, we meet her overbearing parents and the sweet, clueless Sonny. We watch Tracey navigate high school, friendless, picked on and teased. She develops a thing for Billy Zero, a new student, imagining he's her boyfriend. We see the day she loses Sonny and we watch her try to find him.

Crutch

An autobiographical film taken from the experiences of writer-director Rob Moretti, CRUTCH is a coming-of-age tale about a young man's struggle with family problems and substance abuse. Behind a facade of suburban middle class perfection, David's home life is falling apart. As he tries to cope with the impossible situation, the troubled and impressionable teenager falls under the spell of Kenny, a georgous, thirty-something, has-been actor turned theatre coach. When Kenny's "support" escalates into seduction, David slowly decends into an abyss of drinking and drug addition from which he must escape if he is to survive. CRUTCH is a dramatic tale of the confusion of youth and the difficulties in finding oneself.

Absent

Documentary on the social pandemic of fatherlessness afflicting today's societies.

Wildhood

Link and his brother flee their abusive father and embark on a journey where Link discovers his sexuality and rediscovers his Mi’kmaw heritage.

Little Boy Blue

Living in rural Texas is a dysfunctional family: an abusive dad, a Vietnam vet with a war wound that's left him impotent; a compliant wife and a son of about 20, two small sons who look a lot like their brother. The dad harbors a secret, and he goes to murderous lengths to keep it hidden. The young man, Jimmy, who has suspicions, but little comes out until a Yankee woman comes to town.

Boulevard

A street prostitute takes in an abused young woman on the run from her misogynist boyfriend, leading to both facing off against the prostitute's dreaded pimp and a relentless police detective out to arrest all of them.

Fiona

Fiona is abandoned at six months of age, raised in foster and adoptive homes, abused, and, still a teen, hustles on the streets of New York. We watch her use heroine, fall in love with other women, be pursued by men, engage in murderous violence, hide out in a crack house, and decide to leave the city. We see her mother, also a streetwalker and drug user, occasionally talk about her lost daughter. Fiona has a necklace she was clutching when a foundling. Will mother and daughter meet? Is there a silver lining?

No Way Out

Joaquin, an unassuming fisherman, is forced to confront his homosexuality when his sex-starved wife Cynthia returns from her overseas job eager to get pregnant. His young and impulsive lover, Waldo, flees to Manila in disgust. After a month of hesitation, Joaquin leaves his wife to follow Waldo. His search takes him on a seamy yet colorful trip through Manila's gay underbelly. He discovers Waldo's dangerous flirtation with Rufo, a bisexual rogue cop who holds the clue to Waldo's disappearance. Rufo lures Joaquin into his home and introduces him to his submissive wife, Beng. A sadist who beats up Beng regularly, Rufo turns Joaquin into a prisoner and sex slave as he did to Waldo. When Joaquin is finally reunited with Waldo, he discovers that Rufo is about to sell them like fish to an international sex trafficking ring, along with his personal harem of male and female captives.

Portraits of Andrea Palmer

Andrea Palmer ekes out an existence as a cam girl to support her drug habit. After experiencing a particularly enraging online encounter, she begins to branch out as she looks for more ways to make money with her body. This sets her off on a harrowing journey, far darker than she could have ever imagined.

The Masseur

Iliac works in a massage parlor where the gay clients are given more than a shoulder kneading and back rub. When Iliac's father dies he must reconcile his job as a sex worker with the rest of his family.

Prostitution

Soo-hyeon and Hye-ji are sitting on a pile of debt thanks to their husband and father who ran away in the middle of the night. Tae-san the loan shark demands the money no matter what. He rapes the mother and daughter and requires them to join prostitution. They survive day by day selling themselves until one day, Tae-san suggests a way they can clean slate over one night and that is for the mother and daughter to have the most extreme sex with one man.

5.0 / 10 2010 Drama
suggested by: user162b34vmaw1

Father Is a Dog

A mentally-handicapped young man, a sex-obsessed tortured artist, and their responsible but somewhat prideful brother are all grief-stricken in the wake of their mother's death. The three brothers live with their father, a withdrawn and abusive parent who offers no consolation to his mournful sons. The dysfunctional family's dynamic is further complicated when the father strikes up an eccentric sexual affair with a Chinese man who is nearly the same age as his own sons.

A Wife's Secret

Frank and Bethany are happily married in a loving but unfulfilled relationship. To satisfy her carnal urges, Bethany begins working night at an upscale brothel - not for the money, but simply for the thrill of it! She lives happily until one night she is recognized by Paul, a client of her husband's business. When Paul threatens to blackmail her, she decides to tell Frank the truth, hoping he will forgive her. But what Frank sees instead is an opportunity to explore his own dark fantasies! Will Bethany's secret ruin their marriage, or open the door for them to a new era of sexual possibilities?

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