Top 250 Movies Like Shadows Of The Past

Emilio Fernandez directs Dolores Del Rio and Pedro Armendariz in a classic tale of family and obsession. Raimunda's daughter Acacia hates her stepfather Esteban, and in order to escape her suffocating home life she's accepted a marriage proposal from a man she doesn't even love. But Esteban has become obsessed with Acacia, and in order to ensure that she doesn't leave he's plotting to murder the girl's unsuspecting fiancée. As Esteban's true nature emerges, mother and daughter must band together to support one another and make sure that their family bond remains strong even in the darkest of times.

A cattle baron takes in an orphaned boy and raises him, causing his own son to resent the boy. As they get older the resentment festers into hatred, and eventually the real son frames his stepbrother for fathering an illegitimate child that is actually his, seeing it as an opportunity to get his half-brother out of the way so he can have his father's empire all to himself.

A history professor and his wife entertain a young couple who are new to the university's faculty. As the drinks flow, secrets come to light, and the middle-aged couple unload onto their guests the full force of the bitterness, dysfunction, and animosity that defines their marriage.

An oil company is exploring two Arctic sites for oil. The needed blasting at the first site rocks Santa Claus' North Pole village. He realizes that any blasting at the second site will destroy his home. He enlists the aid of a woman and her children to convince her husband (who works for the company) that the first site is where the oil they want is. Along the way, Santa explains all his secrets in delivering presents all around the world.

Pilar loses the one thing in life that mattered to her and, from that moment on time stops. The present begins blending with the past, and the heroine withdraws into a world of her own. An intimate drama about the extreme emotions connected to the loss of someone on whom our lives depend.

For Norman and Ethel Thayer, this summer on golden pond is filled with conflict and resolution. When their daughter Chelsea arrives, the family is forced to renew the bonds of love and overcome the generational friction that has existed for years.

After the divorce from Michael, Tessa raises her daughters Kate and Lara alone. None of them can stand Michael's new young wife Carolyn, a model. But when Tessa learns that she's suffering from cancer and soon will die, she tries to get her kids to accept Carolyn as new mother. She takes them on a trip across the country to her father Jacob's ranch in Wyoming. During this trip, Tessa tries to teach Carolyn about the responsibilities involved in raising kids.

Based on the Helen Hunt Jackson novel of 1884 about a young woman of partial Native American descent, who experiences love and loss in 1800s California.

Headstrong Thomas Dunson starts a thriving Texas cattle ranch with the help of his faithful trail hand, Groot, and his protégé, Matthew Garth, an orphan Dunson took under his wing when Matt was a boy. In need of money following the Civil War, Dunson and Matt lead a cattle drive to Missouri, where they will get a better price than locally, but the crotchety older man and his willful young partner begin to butt heads on the exhausting journey.

This movie reveals the incredible, never-before seen answer to every child's question: "So how does Santa deliver all those presents in one night?" The answer: Santa's (Jim Broadbent's) exhilarating, ultra-high-tech operation hidden beneath the North Pole. But at the center of this movie is a story about a family in a state of comic dysfunction and an unlikely hero, Arthur (James McAvoy), with an urgent mission that must be completed before Christmas morning dawns.

A kindly but desperate Alsatian innkeeper named Mathias murders and robs a rich Jewish merchant staying at his inn, but the ghost of his victim will not let him rest. Meanwhile, a mysterious Mesmerist has come to town, claiming he has made many criminals confess their crimes...

A young man without surname inherits a big indebted ranch and has to prove his worthiness managing a cattle drive.

An American-born Chinese economics professor accompanies her boyfriend to Singapore for his best friend's wedding, only to get thrust into the lives of Asia's rich and famous.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, finds out that his uncle Claudius killed his father to obtain the throne, and plans revenge.

Two naive high-school students must deal with the unexpected consequences after a night of passion.

King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.

The Dashwood sisters, sensible Elinor and passionate Marianne, whose chances at marriage seem doomed by their family's sudden loss of fortune. When Henry Dashwood dies unexpectedly, his estate must pass on by law to his son from his first marriage, John and wife Fanny. But these circumstances leave Mr. Dashwood's current wife, and daughters Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, without a home and with barely enough money to live on. As Elinor and Marianne struggle to find romantic fulfillment in a society obsessed with financial and social status, they must learn to mix sense with sensibility in their dealings with both money and men.

Sam Burton's second wife is a Kiowa, and their son is therefore born mixed-race. When a struggle starts between the whites and the native Kiowas, the Burton family is split between loyalties.

After an abandoned young woman in late 19th Century England is taken in by a rural couple with three handsome sons, tragic consequences result.

A haunting and powerful psychological thriller. Set in icy upstate New York in the winter of 2002, "After" is about the Valentinos, a middle class clan facing financial hardship--their family stone cutting business is slowly failing--and coping with the usual rivalries and resentments that affect all but their absent daughter, Samantha, who has recently escaped Rochester for a new life in lower Manhattan. At their center is matriarch Nora (Quinlan), whose cheerful exterior masks an emotional fragility of which the entire family is painfully aware and fiercely protective. But, their delicate balance is threatened by a carefully concealed secret that, once revealed, will change their lives forever.

The story of the Buckman family and friends, attempting to bring up their children. They suffer/enjoy all the events that occur: estranged relatives, the 'black sheep' of the family, the eccentrics, the skeletons in the closet, and the rebellious teenagers.

When Eve, an interior designer, is deserted by her husband of many years, Arthur, the emotionally glacial relationships of the three grown-up daughters are laid bare. Twisted by jealousy, insecurity and resentment, Renata, a successful writer; Joey, a woman crippled by indecision; and Flyn, a budding actress; struggle to communicate for the sake of their shattered mother. But when their father unexpectedly falls for another woman, his decision to remarry sets in motion a terrible twist of fate…

A young, troubled city girl decides to move to her family owned horse ranch in a small, southern town for the summer to care for her dying mother.

A cop finds that his wife and daughter are involved in a New Age cult when he returns home after eight months.

Johnny Case, a freethinking financier, has finally found the girl of his dreams — Julia Seton, the spoiled daughter of a socially prominent millionaire — and she's agreed to marry him. But when Johnny plans a holiday for the two to enjoy life while they are still young, his fiancée has other plans & that is for Johnny to work in her father's bank!

A woman accused of murder refuses to defend herself in any way, in order to avoid tarnishing the family name and the reputation of her long-lost son.

A young woman named Julia brings her fiance and his mother to a village in India to meet her father and brother. Hospitality proves in short supply and things take a turn for the worse when Julia's seductive younger sister arrives.

In old Spanish California, dashing cattleman Juan Obregon returns to the rancho of his friend Gaspar Melo, to find he's fathered a son on Rosa, one of Gaspar's identical twin daughters. Overjoyed, he plans to formalize his "unofficial" marriage. But trouble brews; Melo's land is of unclear title and the new Don Domingo hopes to grab it for his own profit. Violence results. Without even knowing who survived, Juan (accompanied by Rosa's tomboy sister Tonya) rides for revenge, through spectacular pastoral and wilderness scenery.

Gwen's family is rich, but her parents ignore her and most of the servants push her around, so she is lonely and unhappy. Her father is concerned only with making money, and her mother cares only about her social position. But one day a servant's irresponsibility creates a crisis that causes everyone to rethink what is important to them.

A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.

After several years of supporting parts, Victor McLaglen once more landed a leading role in Republic's City of Shadows. McLaglen plays Big Tim Channing, an ageing but powerful gangster who raises young newsboy Dan Mason as his own son. Upon reaching adulthood, Mason (John Baer) becomes a law student, with the covert (and illegal) help of Channing. Despite his checkered past, Mason opts for honesty when he falls in love with Fern Fellows (Kathleen Crowley). This decision ultimately spells the doom for Mason's mentor Big Tim.

Based on a true story set in 1948, customs officer Mehti is faced with the duty of formally setting up the border between Turkey and Syria, dividing his hometown. He is unaware of the pain that will eminently unfold, as families, languages, cultures and lovers are both ripped apart and clash head on in a village once united.

In the remote Alpine village of Tolzbad at the turn of the century, people talk quietly and restrain their movements lest avalanches come and kill them. This atmosphere lends itself to repressed emotions - shown through the parallel stories of butler student Johann lusting after his mother (an old flame of the mysterious Count Knotkers) and Klara's attraction to her father (who lusts after his other daughter), leading to duels and suicidal plunges galore. All this is shot in the style of an early German sound film, complete with intertitles, deliberately crackly soundtrack and 'hand-tinted' colour effects.

A family man becomes innocently involved in an embezzlement.

Young playboy Charles Grandet is sent to live with his miserly uncle after his father loses his fortune. He and his cousin Eugenie fall in love, but his uncle sends him away and tries to arrange a marriage more to his liking (and profit!). Will true love triumph?

An ageing monarch. A kingdom divided. A child’s love rejected. As Lear’s world descends into chaos, all that he once believed is brought into question. One of the greatest works in Western literature, King Lear explores the very nature of human existence: love and duty, power and loss, good and evil.

Arthur Moore, a missionary preacher, attempts to fit into the cowboy community so he can set up a church in the local saloon. Gwen, daughter of the "Old Timer," is injured in a stampede and loses her ability to walk. Though rejected by the townsfolk, the preacher's wisdom and love are needed if the young girl is to be healed. Shot in 'Vidor Village', Vidor's ill-fated studio property in California's High Sierra.

Grace Leonard, a typical woman of the New York stage, beautiful but old in sin, seduces William Craig, who becomes a thief in order to shower luxuries upon her. He is sentenced to prison and emerges five years later as a sad-faced, gray-haired man, entirely cured of his mad passion for La Valencia. But she sees him and her old passion is stirred, meaning nothing to her that since his release from prison, he has fallen in love and married a good woman who knows nothing of his past. When William is not swayed by her fascinations, Grace threatens to expose his past life.

King Calhoun comes to the aid of "Ma" Jackson, who is fighting to regain control of the family ranch after her husband's death. Her daughter, June, is desired by the ranch foreman, Pete Miller, who threatens revenge after his is fired.

With her husband jailed for Wall Street-based fraud, Faith has to leave behind her luxury life in New York to return home to North Carolina and the widower father and dutiful older sister she left behind. Together, they have to deal with the buried emotions of sudden death of Faith’s mother years ago, and learn to be a family again. Like the Prodigal story, Heart of the Country is a tale of a father’s unconditional love. He simply wants a relationship with his children, and once that relationship is restored, he begins to create healing for his broken daughter. Her marriage has to be rebuilt, her belief in herself, and her peace with her mother’s death all come together through the quiet, selfless guidance of her loving father. The novel, written by Rene Gutteridge from the original screenplay by filmmaker John Ward, takes us from the glamour of Manhattan to the open beauty of the fields of rural Columbus County, North Carolina as the timeless tale of the Prodigal Son is reborn!

The continued Westward journey of settlers Missie and Willie Lahaye. Their roots now firmly planted as they set up homestead in the far West, Missie begins to realize her passion for teaching as Willie cares for the couple's young daughter Kathy while expanding the family ranch with a little help from sons Jeff and Matthew. When the frontier railroad comes to town, the pleasure of a long-promised visit from Missie's father Clark is suddenly offset by the tragic death of young Kathy. As the untimely demise of their beloved daughter begins to drive an emotional wedge between Missie and Willie, the devastated father unexpectedly accepts an offer made by the powerful Samuel Doros to assume the role of town sheriff. Their faith shaken and their once close-knit bond suddenly torn asunder, Missie and Willie desperately attempt to bring their crumbling family back together as son Jeff faces a series of dangers while hopelessly falling for Doros' beautiful daughter Colette.

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.

A suburban architect loves his wife but is bored with his marriage and with his work, so he takes up with the neglected, married beauty who lives down the street.

Gordon Covington is a man who tries to make time for his family despite the demands of his job. But sometimes Covington's boss prevents him from keeping the promises he makes to his kids, and when he misses spending Christmas with the family, an elf named Randy decides to teach Gordon a lesson by turning him into someone else who has to work on Christmas -- Santa Claus.

During the Second World War, tens of thousands of blonde, blue-eyed Polish children were snatched from their parents and given to German families. Lebensborn was part of Hitler's plan to expand the Aryan master race within the Third Reich. Eight-year old Jerzy returns home at the end of the war to a joyful reunion with his long-lost mother and grandfather. But problems arise as he is taunted by his peers and, longing for his missing father, burns with resentment for his new communist stepfather.

A grieving woman suffers terrifying visions of her own demise after she and her husband move into a country mansion.

In 1973, the Loud family became a television sensation of a new kind. It was long before a metal rock star showed his eccentric family on the small screen and decades before housewives had screaming matches with each other on camera in public. CINEMA VERITE tells the behind-the-scenes story of the groundbreaking documentary "An American Family," which chronicled the lives of the Louds in the early 1970s and catapulted the Santa Barbara family to notoriety while creating a new television genre: the reality TV series.

Over the course of a day in a California hospice, three terminally ill patients are observed with their families reflecting on life and death.

Delilah Potts has always had her choice of men to work her ranch and fill her bed. But from the moment Clay Hewitt, a handsome drifter with a mysterious past, arrives at her door, Delilah knows that her life will never be the same. And when he spurns her affections, she unleashes a torrent of forbidden passions and deadly secrets that will prove to Clay that the only thing darker and more dangerous than the past he's escaping... is the one he's about to discover.

As the drug war rages, a powerful Mafia kingpin and rich drug lord battle for control of Los Angeles streets.

Love, pride and jealousy are aroused when a ranch owner's daughter, called Lizzie, has an affair with a cowboy. Meanwhile a mysterious woman seduces the various lovers of Lizzie, who has fled to New Orleans to escape her arranged marriage.

The son and daughter of feuding ranchers defy their fathers in the name of love.

An aging King invites disaster when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters and rejects his one loving, but honest one.

Hamlet comes home from university to find his uncle married to his mother, and his father's ghost haunting the battlements and scaring the watch. Then his father's ghost directs him to seek revenge.

La Belle Bête is a powerful study of the conflict between beauty and ugliness, hate and love. The story revolves around three main characters. At the center, Patrice, a beautiful but mindless youth stands gazing at his image in the water. Around him move his ugly sister Isabelle-Marie, and his frivolous mother Louise, the first lost in love and hate for her brother's beauty, the second seeing it as an adornment for herself. Into this small, obsessed universe come a blind boy and an elegant fop from the outside world. At once, the pattern breaks and events move forward into a terrifying denouement.

Powerful story about love, struggle and passion of an over protective mother and her piano prodigy.

The Christmas Board of Directors has decided to cancel Christmas since children everywhere have lost the true spirit of giving. But Santa Claus, not willing to give up his favorite holiday without a fight, demands 30 days to prove them wrong. The board assigns him what seems like an impossible mission: he must change the hearts of two self-absorbed kids and make them see the true meaning of Christmas.

The naive cowboy Tod Lohman accidentally kills the son of the powerful land baron Hunter Boyd. Tod runs for his life, pursued by the dead man's vengeful brothers. Tod shelters on the ranch of Amos Bradley and he falls in love with his daughter Juanita. However, Tod is concerned that he'll eventually have to leave when his pursuers catch up with him.

A snake-charmer falls in love with a circus trapeze artist who trains her and has her debut in this discipline.

Returning to his grandmother's ranch, this northerner falls in love with the daughter of a great criminal. He will have to confront murderous gunmen trying to steal his land and the woman he adores.

Desperate because of his son's illness, the peasant Eufemio steals a pearl from the image of Santa Lucía in the village church.

An unknown assailant spikes a family's Christmas punch with a military-grade drug, leaving them fighting to survive the night.

Back in Vietnam, Major Whittmar sold out his comrades to save his own skin. Now, he's a rich, ruthless land baron who's getting richer by squeezing out or killing off his neighbors. But when he and his cronies murder a rancher who threatens to expose them, the man's son, Will, swears vengeance.

A sharecropper and his daughter, a swarthy beauty, flee from the hacienda on which they live and join the Mexican Revolution.

Mexican feature film

Based on the novel Tomochic by Heriberto Frías; tells the story of the rebellion of the inhabitants of the village of Tomochi, Chihuahua, against the government of Porfirio Diaz in 1891. Mexico's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1976.

A mysterious bandit known as "The Wolf" steals the payroll from a country ranch.

Rich man who owns an island sanctuary is involved in some shady business. Meanwhile, his daughter... and also meanwhile, the tribe of hippies that are racing around on dune buggies...

Band of ex-soldiers embark on a life of crime; their leader, meanwhile, wants to track down the man who murdered his parents.

Young nightclub performer, down on her luck, falls in with a portrait-cartoonist who works the streets and a terminally-ill singer-songwriter and goes to live on their houseboat. They consider doing a crime.

A writer goes back to the family ranch to write an article about her passion for horses and discovers what ended her marriage and why she stopped riding horses.

Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne are glamorous, rich, reckless…and divorced. Five years later, their love for one another is unexpectedly rekindled when they take adjoining suites of a French hotel while honeymooning with their new spouses. This chance encounter instantly reignites their passion, and they fling themselves headlong into a whirlwind of love and lust once more, without a thought for partners present or turbulences past. This Chichester Festival Theatre production of Noël Coward’s Privates Lives was filmed live at London's Gielgud Theatre.

At the end of an unhappy romance, a Mexico City cabdriver decides he's fed up with big-city classism and hypocrisy, and goes home to his ranch. Soon, a group of city-folk are stranded on his property and dependent on him for help and sustenance.

A spoiled girl is sent to her family's ranch to work during summer vacations.

Rosario, the niece of the rancher, returns to the ranch after ten years of absence. She takes in Margarito, a worker at the ranch, who is immediately smitten by her. Rosario is rescued from a runaway horse by the Seven Men, an outlaw a la Robin Hood that steals from the rich and gives to the poor. He also happens to be the twin brother of Margarito, unbeknownst to him. The confusion between Margarito and the Seven Men generates great comical situations in the film.

They are not wild and crazy anymore, or at least they think so. Now, thanks to an offer nobody can't refuse, they will try to recapture that old rock and roll magic and give themselves a second chance.

Bitter Melon is a "home for the holidays" dark comedy where a Filipino-American family plots to kill an abusive member.

Songwriter Noel is struggling to write a hit song, and so he takes his frustrations out on his family. His daughter Dakota is granted one wih for doing a good deed and she wishes that her daddy will write a hit song. There is a sub-plot about kindness to animals that has almost nothing to do with the main story.

Antonio is a handsome men who loves women but flees of marriage as the devil. The pastor of his people is determined to straighten but despite amendment purposes always succumbs to a pretty girl, the problem is that he never see if girls are engaged or married before seducing them.

Smart, sexy Allison can't help but fall in love with Philip, a dashing software billionaire, and they quickly marry. But soon this new bride begins to think her hubby was involved in the mysterious death of his first wife. This suspicious newlywed needs to get to the truth - but as things turn dangerous, she may not make it to their first anniversary!

The movers and shakers in Singapore get involved in behind-the-scenes political and business activities, romantic entanglements, and murder. Nicol Williamson plays the wealthiest man in Southeast Asia. Barbara Hershey is his married antagonistic daughter who starts an affair with an ambitious American banker (Bruce Boxleitner) and who also seems to have the attention of her father.

A former Las Vegas Detective turned Private Investigator is tasked by an old friend to investigate money that went missing from the casinos. At the same time, he is attempting to get over pain from his past and build a relationship with a past client. He soon discovers that the case he is working on is blending into personal life. As bodies start turning up his past is slowly revealed.

Crystal, a rich party girl, finds a little girl's letter to Santa asking for a new mother, and she vows to win over the father and daughter before the holidays.

Post-revolucionary Mexico. War secretary Hilario Jiménez is chosen as the candidate for presidency, but he isn't so sure about it, because he knows that his boss and current president, El Caudillo, has chosen a second one.

Brooke's marital life with Eric takes a downturn when she starts suspecting that her husband is starving his son from a prior marriage to death in order to claim his inheritance.

Nisantasi is a classy Istanbul residential district. Its inhabitants may be rich and beautiful but they are not necessarily happy. This is the case for 52-year-old architect Can and his wife Ela, an artist who is already past her creative prime. Their daughter Nil has left home to study in Ankara. Left to their own devices, the couple realise that their passion for each other is not what it once was. Nonetheless they both feel secure in the safe harbour of a marriage which places no demands for critical questions or complex explanations. One day, Ela happens to overhear her husband talking on the phone. (Berlinale.de)

A champion rodeo rider falls in love with a Russian ballerina who is trying to defect.

A view of the end-of-the-century Mexican family. A father who comes back home after a long absence, but who would rather be somewhere else. A daughter suffering from a trapped pain. A son full of guilt and recriminations. A little kid who soaks up all the tension in the house, like a sponge, and a self-effacing mother who would like to go away and leave everything behind.

The story of the doomed love between Soledad and Román. She is the daughter of a rich man that wants to marry her with Ernesto, nephew of his friend, the judge. Román owns a little ranch. A brawl in the town will unleash several deaths that will affect the already difficult relationship.

Summoned to Shadow Ranch by his friend Ranny Williams, Sim Baldwin arrives to find Ranny has been ambushed and murdered. Sim learns ranch owner Ruth Cameron is under pressure to sell out to Dan Blake, as the dam on the ranch controls the town's water supply. Vowing to avenge his old friend's death, Sim takes up Ruth's fight and incurs Blake's hostility.

Pete Pepper is a shy, timid circus performer who is scared to death of horses, but rides like a whirlwind when he has been hypnotized by "Ollie" Finch. Pete is entered as a competitor in a wild-west cross-country obstacle race...and has to ride without being hypnotized.

The suspicious death of Henry King during a hunting trip with his brother John leaves the inheritance of the rich Santa Rita Ranch to be shared with John, Henry's daughter Doris and a young girl from New York, Twinkle Watts. King says that a son, Henry King Jr., who left home as a young boy was killed in a Texas gunfight. - Written by Les Adams

The Bearcat, alias The Singin' Kid, crosses the Rio Grande into Three Pines, singing bloodthirsty verses, but in spite of these, he makes friends with Sheriff Bill Garfield and likewise with Alys May, daughter of cattle rancher John P. May, by saving her from a runaway. As a reward, he gets a job on the ranch and falls in love with Alys, though warned she is engaged to Aitken, her brother's college chum.

Bill's father is murdered by Hawley, one of Dykeman's henchmen, who steals a map proving Farley's claim to rich gold claims. Bill, who is engaged to Helen, Dykeman's daughter, routs the gang when they try to dispossess settlers and subsequently eludes a large posse. Later, when Hawley steals a gold shipment, Bill captures him and returns the gold to the Blue Ridge settlers; he is then accused of the robbery, but again he escapes. Disguised as a Spaniard, Bill meets Hawley and discovers him to be his father's murderer; a fight ensues, and Hawley recovers the map and kidnaps Helen in a stagecoach. Bill gives chase, overpowers the villain, and rescues Helen from the burning stagecoach.

An outlaw decides to hang up his guns and lead the "straight" life. His foster son falls for the daughter of a wealthy estate owner. The crooked manager of the estate wants the girl for himself--so he can control the estate when the father dies--and tells the father that the boy is an outlaw's son.

Stranger with a dark past infects a small-town girl with HIV, and the contagion spreads out from there. Public health officials get involved...

Santa is a beautiful and very humble young girl living in Chimalistac, a small and quiet spot south of the 1930's Mexico City. After Santa is cheated by arrogant soldier Marcelino, she's rejected by her family and friends and expelled of Chimalistac. Santa finds shelter in a whorehouse and becomes a cinic and bitter woman, mistreated by bullfighter "Jarameno" and silently loved by blind pianist Hipolito

Big-city songwriter and small-town music student conduct a romance by mail, then finally meet.

She's got a sugar-daddy paying her bills, and while she's stringing him along, she meets somebody her own age that she reallytruly falls in love. And it turns out he's the son of her rich dude.