Best movies like What They Had
A family united by the past. Divided by the present.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like What They Had Starring Hilary Swank, Michael Shannon, Robert Forster, Blythe Danner, and more. If you liked What They Had then you may also like: 28 Days, You're Not You, Unexpected, Hitting Home, One Fine Morning 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.
A woman must fly back to her hometown when her Alzheimer's-stricken mother wanders into a blizzard. The return home forces her to confront her past.
What They Had
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You're Not You
A drama centered on a classical pianist who has been diagnosed with ALS and the brash college student who becomes her caregiver.
Unexpected
An inner-city high school teacher discovers she is pregnant at the same time as one of her most promising students and the two develop an unlikely friendship while struggling to navigate their unexpected pregnancies.
Hitting Home
Canadian businesswoman Dinah Middleton's is devastated when her teenage son, Alex, is killed by a hit-and-run driver. When the police fail to turn up any suspects, she turns private detective to track the killer down. She traces the murderer to New York, only to discover that the crime is not covered by the extradition treaty between Canada and the US. She becomes obsessed with bringing the criminal to justice.
One Fine Morning
With a father suffering from neurodegenerative disease, a young woman lives with her eight-year-old daughter. While struggling to secure a decent nursing home, she runs into an unavailable friend with whom she embarks on an affair.
The Only Game in Town
Fran walks into a piano bar for pizza. She comes back home with Joe, the piano player. Joe plans on winning $5,000 and leave Las Vegas. Fran waits for something else. Meanwhile, he moves in with her.
Ordinary Love
An extraordinary look at the lives of a middle-aged couple in the midst of the wife's breast cancer diagnosis.
Our Friend
After learning that his terminally ill wife has six months to live, a man welcomes the support of his best friend who moves into their home to help out.
James White
James White is a troubled twentysomething trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. As he retreats further into a hedonistic lifestyle, his mother's battle with a serious illness faces a series of setbacks that force him to assume more responsibility. With the pressure on him mounting, James must find new reserves of strength or risk imploding completely.
The Kids Are All Right
Two women, Nic and Jules, brought a son and daughter into the world through artificial insemination. When one of their children reaches age, both kids go behind their mothers' backs to meet with the donor. Life becomes so much more interesting when the father, two mothers and children start to become attached to each other.
Cairo Time
In Cairo on her own as she waits for her husband, Juliette finds herself caught in a whirlwind romance with his friend Tareq, a retired cop. As Tareq escorts Juliette around the city, they find themselves in the middle of a brief affair that catches them both unawares.
A Child Is Waiting
Dr. Matthew Clark is the head of a state institution for intellectually disabled children. Jean Hansen, a former music teacher anxious to give her life some meaning, joins the staff of the hospital. Jean, who tries to shelter the children with her love, suspiciously regards Dr. Clark's stern training methods. She becomes emotionally involved with 12-year-old Reuben Widdicombe, who has been abandoned by his divorced parents.
Committed
After her husband, Carl, suddenly leaves, Joline travels from New York to Texas to track him down. Although Joline tries to remain upbeat, she is discouraged when she discovers that Carl already has a new girlfriend, the lovely Carmen. Familiarizing herself with Carl's new home and friends, Joline gets company in the form of her brother, Jay. Will Joline win Carl back, or are there other romantic possibilities on her horizon?
Concussion
After a blow to the head, Abby decides she can't do it anymore. Her life just can't be only about the house, the kids and the wife. She needs more: she needs to be Eleanor.
Marvin's Room
A leukemia patient attempts to end a 20-year feud with her sister to get her bone marrow.
The Father
A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages and, as he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.
Pieces of a Woman
When a young mother's home birth ends in unfathomable tragedy, she begins a year-long odyssey of mourning that fractures relationships with loved ones in this deeply personal story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss.
The Trip to Bountiful
Carrie Watts is living the twilight of her life trapped in an apartment in 1940s Houston, Texas with a controlling daughter-in-law and a hen-pecked son. Her fondest wish – just once before she dies – is to revisit Bountiful, the small Texas town of her youth which she still refers to as "home."
A Kid Like Jake
On the eve of the admissions cycle for New York City kindergartens, Alex and Greg Wheeler have high hopes for four-year-old Jake. The director of Jake's preschool encourages them to accentuate Jake's gender expansive behavior to help him stand out. As Alex and Greg navigate their roles as parents, a rift grows between them, one that forces them to confront their own concerns about what's best for Jake, and each other.
I Never Sang for My Father
Hackman plays a New York professor who wants a change in his life, and plans to get married to his girlfriend and move to California. His mother understands his need to get away, but warns him that moving so far away could be hard on his father. Just before the wedding, the mother dies. Hackman's sister (who has been disowned by their father for marrying a Jewish man) advises him to live his own life, and not let himself be controlled by their father.
Marjorie Prime
A service which creates holographic projections of late family members allows an elderly woman to spend time with a younger version of her deceased husband.
Ethel & Ernest
This hand drawn animated film, based on the award winning graphic novel by Raymond Briggs, is an intimate and affectionate depiction of the life and times of his parents, two ordinary Londoners living through extraordinary events.
Still Alice
Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, is a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words. When she receives a devastating diagnosis, Alice and her family find their bonds tested.
Everybody's Fine
Eight months after the death of his wife, Frank Goode looks forward to a reunion with his four adult children. When all of them cancel their visits at the last minute, Frank, against the advice of his doctor, sets out on a road trip to reconnect with his offspring. As he visits each one in turn, Frank finds that his children's lives are not quite as picture-perfect as they've made them out to be.
Four Good Days
A mother helps her daughter work through four crucial days of recovery from substance abuse.
In the Gloaming
Danny, dying of AIDS, returns home for his last months. Always close to his mother, they share moments of openness that tend to shut out Danny's father and his sister.
Lianna
Lianna's life is a succession of domestic errands and boring faculty parties, however her heaviest cross to bear is dealing with her waning marriage to Dick. In order to find intellectual stimulus, Lianna takes a college extension child-psychology course taught by Ruth. When Lianna catches Dick having an affair with a young coed, she finds comfort and eventually true love in the arms of Ruth. However, this comes with a price as everything in her life is turned upside down.
Puzzle of a Downfall Child
Lou Andreas Sand, a once famous model, recalls her past as she tries to make success in the modeling world of New York, her stressfull workdays, her affair with Mark, an advertising executive, her friendship with photographer Aaron, and her downward spiral into ruin.
The Savages
A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.
The Best Man Holiday
When college friends reunite after 15 years over the Christmas holidays, they discover just how easy it is for long-forgotten rivalries and romances to be reignited.
The Taking of Deborah Logan
What starts as a poignant medical documentary about Deborah Logan's descent into Alzheimer's disease and her daughter's struggles as caregiver degenerates into a maddening portrayal of dementia at its most frightening, as hair-raising events begin to plague the family and crew and an unspeakable malevolence threatens to tear the very fabric of sanity from them all.
Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
Rita, a middle aged New York City homemaker, finds herself in an emotional crisis which forces her to re-examine her life, as well as her relationships with her mother, her eye doctor husband, her alienated daughter and estranged son.
The Farewell
A headstrong Chinese-American woman returns to China when her beloved grandmother is given a terminal diagnosis. Billi struggles with her family's decision to keep grandma in the dark about her own illness as they all stage an impromptu wedding to see grandma one last time.
The Nest
Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.
Infinitely Polar Bear
A manic-depressive mess of a father tries to win back his wife by attempting to take full responsibility of their two young, spirited daughters, who don't make the overwhelming task any easier.
Hateship Loveship
A shy caretaker believes that the father of her teenage charge is falling in love with her, unaware that she is actually the victim of the girl's prank.
The Perfect Family
Kathleen Turner stars as suburban mother and devout Catholic Eileen Cleary, who has always kept up appearances. When she runs for the Catholic Woman of the Year title at her local parish, her final test is introducing her family to the board for the seal of approval. Now she must finally face the nonconformist family she has been glossing over for years...
Innocent
17-year-old Eric follows his parents to immigrate to Canada and is thus forced to confront different emotional and cultural problems. He must not only adjust to the new environment, but also come to terms with his homosexuality. Standing at the brink of adulthood, he encounters a series of potential romantic interests - his handsome cousin, a schoolmate, a middle aged lawyer and finally a kitchen helper. They represent different stages in Eric's development, from infatuation, sex, love to a sense of responsibility.
Little Men
Jake is a quiet, sensitive middle schooler with dreams of being an artist. He meets the affably brash Tony at his grandfather's funeral, and the unlikely pair soon hit it off. The budding friendship is put at risk, however, when a rent dispute between Jake's father, Brian, and Tony's mother, Leonor, threatens to become contentious.
The Lovers
The separation of a long married couple goes awry when they fall for each other again.
Safe Passage
Recently estranged from her husband, and mother of seven sons, Mag Singer stands poised to pursue a whole new way of life. But when one of her children is involved in an explosion while on duty in the Middle East, Mag must rexamine everything she cherishes.
Touching Home
The true story about a father struggling to make amends with his twin sons as they pursue their dreams of professional baseball.
The Town Christmas Forgot
An urban family that can’t seem to get along gets stranded in a remote, impoverished lumber town two days before Christmas. When they become involved in the town’s home-grown Christmas pageant, they not only help solve the town’s problems but learn to connect with each other just in time for the holidays.
Because Why
After five years of travelling abroad, Alex arrives back in Montreal. All he has with him are a back-pack and a slip of paper with an ex-girlfriend's address scrawled on it.
One Special Night
Builder Robert is visiting his ailing wife in a nursing home and is having problems getting a taxi home due to an intense snow storm. One of the doctors, Katherine offers him a lift home however their car gets stuck and they have to spend the night in an empty cabin nearby. They talk and bond, but afterwards seem to have difficulty beginning a relationship.
28 Days
After getting into a car accident while drunk on the day of her sister's wedding, Gwen Cummings is given a choice between prison or a rehab center. She chooses rehab, but is extremely resistant to taking part in any of the treatment programs they have to offer, refusing to admit that she has an alcohol addiction.