Best movies like Trumbo

A documentary on American political campaign marketing tactics and their consequences.

Adapted from the TV and radio series of the same name, the producer of said show reads letters from three woman providing the framing story for this melodrama anthology film. The tales focus on parenting and family struggles.

Spanning several decades, this powerful biopic offers a glimpse into the life of famed Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas, an artist who was vilified for his homosexuality in Fidel Castro's Cuba.

The career of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo is halted by a witch hunt in the late 1940s when he defies the anti-communist HUAC committee and is blacklisted.

A historical drama that illustrates Russian author Leo Tolstoy's struggle to balance fame and wealth with his commitment to a life devoid of material things. The Countess Sofya, wife and muse to Leo Tolstoy, uses every trick of seduction on her husband's loyal disciple, whom she believes was the person responsible for Tolstoy signing a new will that leaves his work and property to the Russian people.

A cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.

This feature film is a portrait of John Grierson, the first Canadian Government Film Commissioner and founder of the National Film Board in 1939. Interweaving archival footage, interviews with people who knew him and footage of Grierson himself, this film is a sensitive and informative portrait of a dynamic man of vision. Grierson believed that the filmmaker had a social responsibility, and that film could help a society realize democratic ideals. His absolute faith in the value of capturing the drama of everyday life was to influence generations of filmmakers all over the world. In fact, he coined the term "documentary film."

A man tricked into enlisting in the Confederate army is later thrown into a hellish stockade on desertion charges. He eventually breaks out of the prison camp, reunites with his old partner and sets out to kill the man who was responsible for his being in the camp in the first place. However, after accidentally killing a Confederate officer, he finds himself pursued by a gang of vicious bounty hunters intent on collecting the reward put up by the dead officer's widow.

Set in 1951, a blacklisted Hollywood writer gets into a car accident, loses his memory and settles down in a small town where he is mistaken for a long-lost son.

A comedy about a screenwriter (Wuhl) whose old movie script is read by a producer (Landau) and the search for financial backers begins. But it seems that each money source (Aiello, DeNiro, Wallach) has his own mistress that he wants put into the film. Gradually, the screenwriter is forced to make changes to his script to accommodate these backers until he finally sees no semblance of his original ideas in the writing.

Point of Order is compiled from TV footage of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, in which the Army accused Senator McCarthy of improperly pressuring the Army for special privileges for Private David Schine, formerly of McCarthy's investigative staff. McCarthy accused the Army of holding Schine hostage to keep him from searching for Communists in the Army. These hearings resulted in McCarthy's eventual censure for conduct unbecoming a senator.

Michael has written a schollarly book on the revolutionary war. He has sold the film rights. The arrival of the film crew seriously disrupts him as actors want to change their characters, directors want to re-stage battles, and he becomes very infatuated with Faith who will play the female lead in the movie. At the same time, he is fighting with his crazy mother who thinks the Devil lives in her kitchen, and his girlfriend who is talking about commitment.

Documentary by lifelong friend that supports the innocence of Alger Hiss (convicted in January 1950 on two counts of espionage-related perjury)

Chris & Don chronicles the lifelong relationship between author Christopher Isherwood and his much younger lover, artist Don Bachardy, and it combines present-day interviews, archival footage shot by the couple from the 1950s, excerpts from Isherwood's diaries, and playful animations to recount their romance.

This documentary explores the incredible life of Merian C. Cooper, from his time as a soldier and pilot in three different wars, to his exploits in Hollywood, as a director, producer and cinematic innovator.

Jewel stays with her grizzled, angry grandfather while her parents are overseas on business. Family squabbling is brought to heel through love and understanding from Jewel's pure love for others and trust in Divine Love. Complete copies are held by many film archives in Europe and the United States.

Based upon the final confession of Adolf Eichmann, made before his execution in Israel, of his role in Hitler's plan for the final solution.

U.S. Marshall Duke Donovan is imprisoned, accused of being an accomplice in a bank robbery. After discovering that his partner is planning to kill his wife, he must escape prison in time to save his wife and clear his name.

Heironymus Merkin is an internationally successful singer approaching middle age who retells his life story in a series of production numbers on a seashore in front of his two toddlers and aged mother. Merkin's promiscuous relationships with women are explored, particularly Polyester Poontang and the adolescent Mercy Humppe. Merkin is constantly surrounded by a Satan-like procurer, Goodtime Eddie Filth, and an angelic 'Presence' who interrupts Merkin's biography with cryptic Borscht Belt-level jokes to denote births and deaths in Merkin's life. Newley periodically steps out of character to complain about his 'Merkin' role with an unseen director, two screenwriters, the film's producers and a trio of blasé movie critics who are turned off by the story's eroticism and lack of plot.

An intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma, Jacinta follows a young woman in and out of prison as she attempts to break free from an inherited cycle of addiction, incarceration, and crime.

Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (working under the pseudonym “Sally Stubblefield”) tells a rough-edged tale of life inside a 1950s women’s reformatory. Set in the Martha Washington School for Girls—an institute for wayward teenagers and unwed mothers—THE GREEN-EYED BLONDE tackles a range of topical social issues as the inmates band together to help out one of their own when she refuses to give up her child.

Six years in the making, this documentary film follows outspoken indie-rock hero Bob Forrest, through his life-threatening struggle with addiction, to his transformation into one of the most influential and controversial drug counselors in the US today. BOB AND THE MONSTER crafts contemporary footage, animation and compelling interviews with archival performances and personal videos from Bob's past to reveal the complex layers of this troubled, but hopeful soul. Testimony from his peers, including Courtney Love, Anthony Kiedis and Flea add texture, but it's the depth of Bob's music, interwoven throughout the film, that illuminates this unforgettable and inspirational story.

Through dramatic re-creation, archival newsreel footage and revealing interviews, director Fred Baker's docudrama explores the controversial murder case centered on Black Panther activist and political exile Assata Shakur. In 1977, Shakur was dubiously convicted for the shooting death of a New Jersey state trooper and was sentenced to life in prison, only to escape two years later and seek refuge in Cuba.

A look at the famous director written and presented by Lindsay Anderson.

The story of Tasmanian-born actor Errol Flynn whose short & flamboyant life, full of scandals, adventures, loves and excess was largely played out in front of the camera - either making movies or filling the newsreels and gossip magazines. Tragically he was dead from the effects of drugs and alcohol by the time he was only 50 & the myths live on. But there is another side of Flynn that is less well known - his ambitions to be a serious writer and newspaper correspondent, his documentary films and his interest in the Spanish Civil War and Castro's Cuba

Lederer is a Hessian soldier who defects to the Americans during the Revolutionary War.He falls in love with a Yankee girl, but a thuggish local militiaman jealously makes things hard for him while he's a prisoner of war.

Showtime's "In the 20th Century" is a millennium-related strand of feature-length documentaries in which famous directors take on major subjects of their choosing. In the fourth of the six films, "The Pursuit of Happiness," filmmaker Robert Zemeckis delves into the history of America's relationship with mind-altering substances over the past 100 years, presenting interviews with historians and professionals in the drug treatment field, interspersed with a treasure trove of film and television clips depicting the highs and lows of smoking, drinking and drugging in the 20th century

In 1986, Louis Malle (himself a transplant to the United States) set out to investigate the ever-widening range of immigrant experience in America. Interviewing a variety of newcomers — from teachers to astronauts to doctors — in communities from coast to coast, Malle paints a humane portrait of their individual struggles in an increasingly polyglot nation.

This one-hour film, narrated by Actor BURT LANCASTER, explores the lingering effects of The Hollywood Blacklist, which occurred in the late forties and early fifties as part of the Anti-Communist witch-hunts that terrorized the nation. This film is seen through the eyes of the wives and children of the now deceased Hollywood figures whose careers were destroyed when studio bosses, along with guild and union officials capitulated to the demands of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Eight hundred German filmmakers (cast and crew) fled the Nazis in the 1930s. The film uses voice-overs, archival footage, and film clips to examine Berlin's vital filmmaking in the 1920s; then it follows a producer, directors, composers, editors, writers, and actors to Hollywood: some succeeded and many found no work. Among those profiled are Erich Pommer, Joseph May, Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, and Peter Lorre. Once in Hollywood, these exiles helped each other, housed new arrivals, and raised money so others could escape. Some worked on anti-Nazi films, like Casablanca. The themes and lighting of German Expressionism gave rise in Hollywood to film noir.

Playwright James Lee adapted his off-Broadway play for the screen in this high-strung adaptation, directed by Joseph Anthony. In this simplistic, backroom show-business-success saga, Anthony Franciosa plays Sam, a struggling young actor who will forsake his family and take any type of menial job in order to become a Broadway star. Dean Martin is on hand as Maury, an aspiring director also trying to claw his way up the ladder of success. When Maury gets his big break, Sam wants a part in his show, but when Maury, who is unwilling to cast Sam in the production, turns down Sam's request, Sam seduces and marries Maury's girlfriend (Shirley MacLaine). In spite of everything, Maury wants his girl back, and Sam agrees to a divorce on the stipulation that Maury cast him as the star in his next show. Once again, Maury reneges and, before Sam can exact his revenge, Uncle Sam comes to the rescue and he is drafted into the army.

Honing his craft as an indie filmmaker in Germany in the early 90s, Uwe Boll never could have imagined the life that lay before him. From working with Oscar-winning actors and making films with US$60million budgets to having actors publicly disparage him and online petitions demanding he stop making films, Boll continued to work; he has a filmography of 32 features, a career that has led to his new life as a successful high-end restauranteur. Already a cult legend, he will be remembered forever in the film world; for some, as a modern-day Ed Wood, who made films so bad, they're good, while for others, a prolific filmmaker who came from a small town in Germany and never compromised his integrity while forging his own unique Hollywood trajectory.

The film evolves around questions of identity, popular memory and culture. While focusing on aspects of Vietnamese reality as seen through the lives and history of women resistance in Vietnam and in the U.S, it raises questions on the politics of interviewing and documenting.

A detailed look at the events leading up to the blacklisting of Hollywood writers and artists. In October 1947 nineteen Hollywood personalities were subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities to testify about their knowledge or possible involvement in the American Communist Party. The first ten to be called refused to cooperate, claiming their first amendment rights, were cited for contempt of Congress and sent to prison. They became known as the "Hollywood Ten" and this is their story.

When World War II broke out, John Ford, in his forties, commissioned in the Naval Reserve, was put in charge of the Field Photographic Unit by Bill Donavan, director of the soon-to-be-OSS. During the war, Field Photo made at least 87 documentaries, many with Ford's signature attention to heroism and loss, and many from the point of view of the fighting soldier and sailor. Talking heads discuss Ford's life and personality, the ways that the war gave him fulfillment, and the ways that his war films embodied the same values and conflicts that his Hollywood films did. Among the films profiled are "Battle of Midway," "Torpedo Squadron," "Sexual Hygiene," and "December 7."