Best movies like Lanterns on Blue Waters
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The story of a Japanese man who as a 16-year-old went to Maui to work in the sugar cane fields in order to support his family back in Japan. Now 89 and still living in Hawaii he is visited by his granddaughter who brings him a letter from his disinherited and recently dead son. This brings back memories of his life with his wife and family following the attack on Pearl Harbor, in particular of his son who had gone off to join the war for the Americans.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 8
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: bilingual
Best tv shows and movies like Lanterns on Blue Waters (1983):
Similar in 81%
The Chadwick Family (1974)
Plot Summary:
A father finds himself taking care of a family that in addition to his son and three daughters, also consists of two sons-in-law and his youngest daughter's Chinese boyfriend.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 46
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
Station (1981)
Plot Summary:
A detective goes out of his way to crack the case of a serial killer who specialises in murdering police officers.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 277
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
The Tree We Hurt (1986)
Plot Summary:
Shot over a capricious summer, this film reveals a world of innocence shattered for some children in their school by corporal punishment. It moves at its own pace to reveal a world of children and adults with animals, birds, nature and sea. The film bears a strong imprint of Greek identity with old chairs, priests with black robes and old dilapidated houses. Dimos Avdeliodis shows that children are not just made for mischief as they are shown to earn money in the form of coins which they earn by carrying the cross during funerals. As the children's gang grows bigger, there is a marked increase in the intensity of their mischievous behavior.For example : a hilarious scene is about how small children run for cover after having hurled mud cakes smeared with urine on wasps. The entire film is replete with scenes of this kind but in the end getting beaten by elders for waywardness and experiences of first love might be counted by viewers as their favorite moments of this film.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 332
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
The Shadow Within (1970)
Plot Summary:
When a married man begins an affair with a woman from his past, he comes to suspect her young son intends to murder him.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 216
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
The Flower of the Lake (1999)
Plot Summary:
Kastoria, a region in Western Macedonia at the turn of the century. Greeks, Turks, Jews and other nationalities live together under the rule of the Ottoman empire, amid the despair, the uncertainty and the confusion brought about by the 1897 war between Greece and Tyrkey. It is under these conditions that a family of fisherman in the Kastoria lakeside district tries to make a living. A fisherman, his wife, the grandfather, and their five children. The daughter works for a furrier, the youngest goes to Greek school, while the older son Christos, helps his father with the fishing. The flower that rises from the lake is personified by the film's main hero, Christos. Every morning when the sky and the waters of the lake become one in the mist, Christos casts his nets. These are the hours when birds, fish and men struggle to earn a living. Christos seemingly calm life is shattered when he meets a wounded guerilla who has been abandoned by his comrades. Despite the fact that the.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 43
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Blood & Orchids (1986)
Plot Summary:
Hester Murdoch is found naked and nearly beaten to death by four young Hawaiian men on the beach and taken to the hospital. Some of the men didn't want to get involved, fearing they might be blamed, because she was white, but do so anyway. Almost immediately everyone suspects they are to blame. When Hester's politically influential mother Doris finds out what really happened, she fearing a scandal, forces her daughter to blame the men who rescued her, of raping and beating her. It's up to detective Curt Maddox, to find out what really happened, and their Hawaiian lawyer to do the impossible. Convince a white court of law, that they are innocent.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 267
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 240 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
How to Be Loved (1963)
Plot Summary:
An actress travels from Warsaw to Paris and during the trip reflects on the last few years of her life. It goes back to the German occupation and her hiding of a fellow actor who has supposedly killed a collaborator. He is weak and a bit cowardly, but suffers most from not having any audience for his vanity, ego and supposed bravery. After the war he leaves her but finds out that he has been accused of cowardice. He finally commits suicide and she clears herself of a collaboration charge and eventually becomes a popular actress.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 720
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: road movie
Similar in 90%
Almost a Man (1966)
Plot Summary:
Jacques Perrin was awarded Best Actor at the 1966 Venice Film Festival for his gripping portrayal of a young writer's descent into madness. Alienated, neurotic, and plagued by guilt, Perrin retreats from reality, loses interest in work, and comes to the brink of suicide before being sent to an asylum for shock therapy. Escaping from the asylum, Perrin returns to his boyhood home, where he learns the reasons for his present mental state. The strong supporting cast, including Lea Padovani and Pier Paolo Capponi, bring credence to their roles, but it is De Seta's direction, Perrin's controlled performance, and a relatively subtle score by Ennio Morricone which keep this film from becoming as overwrought as it might have become in other hands.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 223
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: existential
Similar in 81%
Vidheyan (1994)
Plot Summary:
Thommy, a Christian migrant labourer from Kerala is an obedient slave of his aggressive, tyrannical landlord Bhaskara Pattelar. Thommy obeys all the orders of his master, whether it is to make his own wife sexually available to his master or in killing Pattelar's kindly wife, Saroja. When Pattelar escapes to a jungle, due to his own deeds, Thommy escorts him like a pet. But when Pattelar is killed Thommy exults in freedom.
IMDB Rating: 8.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: India
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: slang, sexual, cult classic, sexy, cult film
Similar in 78%
The Face of Jizo (2004)
Plot Summary:
Based on a play by Hisashi Inoue, it focuses on the sufferings of the survivors of Hiroshima. The film takes place during 4 days in the summer of 1948, as the ghost of her father visits Mitsué (Rié Miyama). He had somehow learned that she has fallen in love, and tries to convince her to start her new life. But Mitsué obstinately refuses his warm and humorous encouragements : « People were killed in my place. I do not have the right to find happiness », she says.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 247
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: minimal cast, retro
Similar in 81%
Sons and Daughters (2001)
Plot Summary:
We are in Argentina in 1977, a woman gives birth to twins. With the complicity of the midwife he manages to hide the child, second child. The first, a boy, is taken into custody by the regime's guards. The scene moves to the Milan of today. The young Rosa contacts Javier and tries to convince him that they are twin brothers, separated at birth. Thus, the two begin a journey to rediscover their origins and their past. A bitter reality is ready to overwhelm them.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 268
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, Argentina
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Believers (2022)
Plot Summary:
On a small island somewhere near Japan, three cult members have devoted themselves to the "Deserted Island Program". Calling each other by rank, these people-two men and one women-have been chosen by their superiors to throw off the corrupt influence of modern society and "purify" themselves. But as time passes two of the members begin to give into human desire.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 75
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
Letter from the Mountain (2002)
Plot Summary:
As the film begins, Takao (Akira Terao) and Michiko (Kanako Higuchi) have already pulled up their Tokyo roots and moved to a village that is Takao's ancestral home. They visit a thatched cottage that serves as a memorial shrine (amidado) for the village dead and chat with the attendant, the spry 96-year-old Oume (Tanie Kitabayashi). Together they admire the view -- from an inspiring distance. Oume, it turns out, is a kind of sage, whose thoughts and observations are a popular feature in a column in a local newsletter. Her amanuensis is a mute, sweetly smiling young woman named Sayuri (Manami Konishi), who is as devoted to Oume as Oume is to the souls of her beloved dead.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 290
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
The Last Letter (2002)
Plot Summary:
Locked away in the Jewish ghetto of an occupied Ukrainian town in 1941, a mother revisits her life in a last letter to her son.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 179
Genere: Drama
Country: France, USA
Duration: 61 min
Plot tags: minimal cast
Similar in 86%
Cold Days (1966)
Plot Summary:
Andras Kovacs' film, considered one of the most important Hungarian films of the 1960's, centers around four men who await trial for their involvement in the massacre of several thousand Jewish and Serbian people of Novi Sad in 1942. Each denies any responsibility, claiming that they were only following orders. The film is sigificant for its willingness to address the subject of Hungary's role in WWII, which was taboo at the time of the its release.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 502
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: epic, cult film, cult movie cast
Similar in 83%
Hungarians (1978)
Plot Summary:
A group of landless Hungarian peasants accept work as migrant-laborers on a farm in northern Germany where the wages are good, and the wives and family are allowed to accompany them. Though it is in the midst of World War II, they are relatively well-off. However, they glimpse the treatment accorded to POWs and others who are not so gently treated, and at the conclusion of the year's harvest, they choose to return to Hungary and are quickly swept up in the tides of war. This film is part of a series of films by award-winning, well-respected director Zoltan Fabri who devoted much time and effort chronicling the struggle against fascism.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 353
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
From Here to Eternity (1979)
Plot Summary:
Soapy look at events of Pearl Harbor just previous to the Japanese attack.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 525
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 360 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
True Mothers (2020)
Plot Summary:
After a long and unsuccessful struggle to get pregnant, convinced by the discourse of an adoption association, Satoko and her husband decide to adopt a baby boy. A few years later, their parenthood is shaken by a threatening unknown girl, Hikari, who pretends to be the child's biological mother. Satoko decides to confront Hikari directly.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan, France
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: captivating, entertaining
Similar in 80%
The Sea and Poison (1986)
Plot Summary:
Downed American fliers in WW II are vivisected by Japanese surgeons in medical experiments.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 309
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: retro
Similar in 77%
Sour Grape (1974)
Plot Summary:
Two years after receiving news of his father’s death in WWII a young boy continues to wait for trains from the front. The boy lives with his crippled uncle rather than with his mother, who has remarried and has another child. Then one day the father returns.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 89
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 76 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
Gruber's Journey (2008)
Plot Summary:
On 22 June 1941, Germany and Romania attack Soviet Russia. Several days later, Curzio Malaparte, the Italian writer who would one day pen the novel « Kaputt », a war correspondent for « Corriere de la Sera », arrives in Iasi, in the north of Moldova, on his way to the front, which is nearby. He is incapacitated by a severe allergy and his only chance of recovery is to find a Jewish doctor, an allergologist who had studied in Florence, called Josef Gruber. All his attempts to find him are unsuccessful. While looking for him, Curzio discovers that in Iasi, several days prior to his arrival, a violent anti-Semitic pogrom took place and that a large number of the Jewish citizens of Iasi were deported by train and that Dr Gruber may be among them. In order to find him, Curzio, aided by Guido Sartori, the Italian consul in Iasi, tries to obtain an official warrant to bring Josef Gruber back. He confronts indifference, rudeness and the desire by the Romanian authorities to hide something.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 200
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary, Romania
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Cefalonia (2005)
Plot Summary:
Cefalonia tells the real story about what happened in September 1943 on the Greek island of Kefalonia (Cefalonia in Italian), when the 12,000 men in the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division, following Italy's surrender to the Allied, refused to put themselves under German command and also refused to surrender their weapons. The local German force, supported by Stuka dive-bombers and additional troops, attacked the Italians and after several days of combat the Italians surrendered, having lost 1,300 men. As punishment, the German High Command ordered that all surviving Italians should be executed. Some 5,000 were executed during a week of killings. A handful were rescued by locals and the Greek guerrilla, while the rest were shipped off as prisoners, whereof 3,000 drowned when their ships hit mines. The film "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" is based on a novel about the Italian occupation of Cefalonia, but the massacre was much toned down in the Hollywood version.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 134
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 210 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
Signs of Life (1968)
Plot Summary:
During World War II, three German soldiers are withdrawn from combat when one of them, Stroszek, is wounded. They are assigned to a small coastal community on the Greek island of Kos while Stroszek recuperates. The men become increasingly stir crazy in their uneventful new assignment. Stroszek eventually goes mad.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, atmospheric, serious, realistic, black and white, avant garde
Similar in 89%
Farewell, Kuro (2003)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true story set in Matsumoto city, Nagano, during 1960s. A stray dog wanders into a high school's grounds. The dog, named Kuro, stays at the school and becomes a special friend to everyone.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 100
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: tear jerker, tearjerker
Similar in 81%
Islands in the Stream (1977)
Plot Summary:
An isolated sculptor is visited by his three sons just before the start of WWII.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic
Similar in 84%
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005)
Plot Summary:
Takada, a Japanese fisherman has been estranged from his son for many years, but when the son is diagnosed with terminal cancer his daughter-in-law, Rie, summons him to the hospital. Through a series of obstacles and relationships, he is brought unexpectedly closer to both an understanding of himself and of his son.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: China, Japan, Hong Kong
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: touching, emotional, serious, realistic, stylized, road movie, crying, independent film, art film
Similar in 90%
Life and Death on the Shore (2017)
Plot Summary:
Set in 1945 at the end of World War II. Saku arrives on Kakeromajima as the head of navy special forces. He is admired by the children on the island and he is interested in learning the island song as well as drinking with his men. Toe is an elementary school teacher on Kakeromajima and she has feelings for Saku.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 56
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 155 min
Plot tags: captivating
Similar in 85%
Rhapsody in August (1991)
Plot Summary:
The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, who lost her husband in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. She learns of a long-lost brother, Suzujiro, living in Hawaii who wants her to visit him before he dies.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: emotional, melancholic, lyrical, psychological, sincere, atmospheric, serious, talky, philosophical, meditative
Similar in 85%
The Burmese Harp (1985)
Plot Summary:
In the War's closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 190
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Japan
Duration: 133 min
Plot tags: odd
Similar in 82%
Pride: The Fateful Moment (1998)
Plot Summary:
Based on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East of 1946–48, depicts Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo (played by Masahiko Tsugawa) as a family man who fought to defend Japan and Asia from western colonialism but was ultimately hanged by a vengeful United States.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 101
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Japan
Duration: 161 min
Plot tags: