Best movies like Poor Cow
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The first of several social realism films by Ken Loach, this had less impact than those made as TV plays. Poor Cow follows the tangled life of Joy, who turns to Dave after her lover is jailed for theft. When Dave in turn is jailed, she is left with a son to keep. When he goes missing, she sees what's important.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: independent film, sincere, serious, realistic, gloomy
Best tv shows and movies like Poor Cow (1967):
Similar in 87%
Up the Junction (1968)
Plot Summary:
A girl from a rich family in Chelsea is bored and decides to go "slumming" in depressed Battersea.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 992
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: independent film, cult film
Similar in 78%
The Whisperers (1967)
Plot Summary:
The Whisperers tells the story of an impoverished old woman living alone in a seedy apartment who enjoys a rich fantasy life as an heiress. When she discovers stolen money hidden by her son, she believes her fantasy has come true.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: depressing, psychological, bleak, serious, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, independent film
Similar in 77%
A Kind of Loving (1962)
Plot Summary:
After his girlfriend's pregnancy forces him to marry her, a young man must adjust to his new life and contend with his domineering mother-in-law.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: UK
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: social, experimental, sincere, serious, emotional, realistic, independent film, vintage
Similar in 80%
Second Coming (2014)
Plot Summary:
A married, middle-class London couple are shocked when they seem to have been blessed — or cursed — with an immaculate conception.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 661
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, sentimental, captivating, sincere, serious, gloomy
Similar in 79%
Plenty (1985)
Plot Summary:
David Hare's account of a one-time French freedom fighter who gradually realizes that her post-war life is not meeting her expectations.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: independent film, psychological, tense, thought provoking, clever, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, sexy
Similar in 80%
Freefall (2009)
Plot Summary:
Freefall is the first drama to tackle the extraordinary financial crisis Britons are living through. Helmed by multiple BAFTA-winning director Dominic Savage, the film takes a startling and provocative look at the events that caused people's lives to spiral out of control. With pace, edge and real emotional punch, it gives a unique insight into how the country came so perilously close to the edge.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 434
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, psychological, captivating, sincere, thought provoking, touching, gloomy
Similar in 76%
Mamma Roma (1962)
Plot Summary:
After many years working in the streets of Roma, the middle-age whore Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani) saves money to buy an upper class apartment, a fruit stand and retires from the prostitution. She brings her teenage son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo), who was raised alone in the country, to live with her, and Ettore becomes her pride and joy. However, the boy that does not want to study or work, joins to idle friends, has a crush on a bitch, and Mamma Roma uses her best but limited efforts to straight Ettore and make him an honest man. However, her past haunts her with tragic consequences.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: neorealism, serious, realistic, art house, sad, emotional, social, gloomy, independent film, road movie
Similar in 85%
Cairo Exit (2010)
Plot Summary:
A powerful account of life in contemporary Cairo, this raw drama about a pair of star-crossed lovers shines a powerful spotlight upon the social and cultural taboos that riddle the city's diverse population. Heralding a bold new shift for contemporary Egyptian cinema, 'Cairo Exit' is a gritty and uncompromising work from a major new cinematic talent, Hesham Issawi.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 161
Genere: Drama
Country: Egypt, United Arab Emirates
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, stylized, bleak
Similar in 77%
Hussy (1980)
Plot Summary:
Beaty, a prostitute, and Emory, a lighting/sound technician, fall in love while working at the same London cabaret, but their relationship isn't easy.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 617
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: anime, independent film, rough, serious, neo noir, realistic, sexual, sexy
Similar in 76%
Ladybird Ladybird (1994)
Plot Summary:
Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by social services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her history still haunts her.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: sad, disturbing, realistic, biting, independent film, social, detective, sincere, thought provoking, serious
Similar in 82%
X, Y and Zee (1972)
Plot Summary:
The venomous and amoral wife of a wealthy architect tries, any way she can, to break up the blossoming romance between her husband and his new mistress; a good-natured young widow who holds a dark past.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, interesting, vintage
Similar in 90%
The Pumpkin Eater (1964)
Plot Summary:
The study of a marriage. Jo has five children and husband number two when she meets writer Jake Armitage. She leaves this husband to marry Jake, and his career takes off. A few years and at least one child later, Jo is deeply depressed, breaking down in the middle of Harrods. After psychiatric care and the prospect of a new house in the country, she gets better; then, she is pregnant again, and this time Jake objects. Jo consents to an abortion and sterilization in the belief it will make her marriage happy again, but afterwards she learns ugly truths about Jake.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: psychological, clever, touching, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy, independent film
Similar in 79%
A Doll's House (1973)
Plot Summary:
Nora Helmer has years earlier committed a forgery in order to save the life of her authoritarian husband Torvald. Now she is being blackmailed lives in fear of her husband's finding out and of the shame such a revelation would bring to his career. But when the truth comes out, Nora is shocked to learn where she really stands in her husband's esteem.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic, talky, sincere, clever, independent film, period drama
Similar in 84%
Look Back in Anger (1989)
Plot Summary:
Look Back in Anger is a love triangle involving the brilliant-but-disaffected young Jimmy Porter (Branagh), his upper-middle-class, impassive wife Alison Porter (Thompson), and her aristocratic best friend Helena Charles (Redmond). Cliff (Horan), an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 370
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, sincere, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, disturbing, gloomy
Similar in 82%
About Sunny (2011)
Plot Summary:
As things unravel for a struggling single mother in Las Vegas, she must decide what she's willing to give up to get by.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 380
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, captivating, emotional, psychological, independent film, sincere, touching, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 75%
7 Years (2006)
Plot Summary:
A devoted young woman becomes ensnared in a web of sexuality and betrayal in Jean-Pascal Hattu’s consistently unpredictable and finely wrought character study. A vividly realistic psychosexual drama, the film’s sharp emotional honesty heralds a distinct new voice from a promising young director. Hattu soon reveals that Maite’s husband Vincent is in prison for an unspecified crime, and that she has promised to wait for him and attend to his laundry (if not his conjugal needs) during his incarceration. On one of her weekly visits, Maite meets Jean, an oddly inquisitive and boldly flirtatious prison warden, and soon the two commence a joyless affair. Seemingly smitten with Maite, Jean, in a gesture of kindness to his lover, eases up on her husband behind bars; the two become pals and even engage in some homoerotic shower talk. —Robert O’Shaughnessy.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 297
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: tense, sincere, realistic, serious, emotional, gloomy
Similar in 82%
Les corps impatients (2003)
Plot Summary:
Paul and Charlotte are in love. Charlotte discovers she has a grave malady and Paul supports her. But Paul is also attracted to Ninon, another girl. Charlotte accepts Paul to have an affair with her, and the three start a difficult and ambiguous relationship.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 613
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: serious, psychological, sincere, emotional, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, sexual, sexy
Similar in 81%
Wonderland (1999)
Plot Summary:
There's little wonder in the working-class lives of Bill, Eileen, and their three grown daughters. They're lonely Londoners. Nadia, a cafe waitress, places personal ads, looking for love; Debbie, a single mom, entertains men at the hair salon after hours; her son spends part of the weekend with her ex, a man with a hair-trigger temper. Molly is expecting her first baby and its father acts as if the responsibility is too much for him.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: realistic, sincere, touching, talky, erotic, emotional, cult classic, psychological, clever, serious
Similar in 88%
A Map of the World (1999)
Plot Summary:
School nurse Alice Goodwin lives with her husband and two daughters on a dairy farm in a small Wisconsin community. After an accident on her property involving a friend's child, the town turns against her and Alice finds herself fighting charges of child abuse.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Germany
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: black comedy, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, disturbing, contemplative, gloomy, crying
Similar in 79%
Blame It on Mum (2009)
Plot Summary:
Mady Celliers, an attractive housewife of 60, he spends his life speaking ill of her two daughters and her husband, a man who shows a strange behavior since has retired. Antoine, the eldest son, company director, is unable to make a success of a business: out of a bankruptcy to get into another, her sister Alice madonnas obsessively paints sad. Annabelle, a nurse in an intensive care unit, tries desperately to save his family pronosticándole the future. When Alice meets by chance Jacques, a lonely police pessimistic explode all family neurosis.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 417
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, sincere, touching
Similar in 82%
Dancing in the Dark (1986)
Plot Summary:
Via the New York Times: "To all outward appearances, Edna Cormick (Martha Henry) is the perfect housewife.... She's married to a man who'll stand up in public and say, "This is my wife," so that there'll be no confusion as to who she is. Edna has no identity without Harry, an ambitious, successful salesman who seems to love and care for Edna long after other men might become worried about her housewifely obsessions... Edna is reviewing her life - in neatly chronological flashbacks - from the room in the psychiatric hospital where she's been confined ever since Harry's sudden death.".
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 100
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: independent film, psychological, serious, realistic, suspenseful, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 89%
Gilles' Wife (2004)
Plot Summary:
Gilles' wife, Elise, who smiles when she thinks of him, cooks and scrubs and cheerfully makes love to him, suspects during her third pregnancy that he is having an affair with her coquettish younger sister, Victorine. Elise suffers, usually in silence. She listens to her husband rave; she asks her priest; she breaks picture frames; she weeps. She decides on a strategy to keep him. Will she succeed?.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 887
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Italy, Switzerland
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, sexual, crying, sexy
Similar in 86%
All or Nothing (2002)
Plot Summary:
Penny's love for her partner, taxi-driver Phil, has run dry. He is a gentle, philosophical guy, and she works on the checkout at a supermarket.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, France
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: depressing, emotional, bleak, serious, realistic, meditative, sentimental, sincere, talky, offbeat
Similar in 83%
You (2007)
Plot Summary:
Michèle shares her life with Paul, her husband and work colleague. She has a lover, Thomas, a musician with whom she has been having a passionate affair for some time. Attracted by Thomass non-conformity and lust for life, Michèle abandons her husband, her son and her profession to live this frenzy through to its conclusion. A quest for freedom and change that sends Michèle on a turbulent drift, but remains, nevertheless, intimate and personal.
IMDB Rating: 4.7
IMDB Votes: 182
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, psychological, captivating, gloomy
Similar in 80%
Something Like Happiness (2005)
Plot Summary:
Over the course of a year, in a small town scarred and beaten down by industrialization, Tonda and Monika, friends since childhood, come to experience what life might be like if they could be with one another – which they seemingly can't. Or can they?.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Czech Republic, Germany
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, humorous, ambiguous ending
Similar in 75%
A Taste of Honey (1961)
Plot Summary:
Focuses on a working class girl who is struggling to create a life for herself with her gay co-worker after becoming pregnant from a one-night stand with a black sailor.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: independent film, black and white, touching, serious, realistic, talky, gloomy, sexual, crying, sexy
Similar in 90%
Belonging (2004)
Plot Summary:
Jess (Brenda Blethyn) and town handyman Jacob (Kevin Whately) have been happily married 20 years, recently taking in a trio of Jacob's elderly relatives, including his mother (Rosemary Harris). Though the relations are demanding, kindhearted Jess -- who selflessly quit her job -- enjoys looking after them. But when Jacob disappears one day, Jess' life falls apart, and she must learn to cope with things on her own in this touching drama.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 299
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic, touching
Similar in 86%
For Colored Girls (2010)
Plot Summary:
About existence from the perspective of 20 nameless black females. Each of the women portray one of the characters represented in the collection of twenty poems, revealing different issues that impact women in general and women of color in particular.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, serious, emotional, contemplative, hood, uplifting, social, sad, tear jerker
Similar in 88%
Brick Lane (2007)
Plot Summary:
The grind of daily life as a Brick Lane Bangladessi as seen through the eyes of Nazneen (Chatterjee), who at 17 enters an arranged marriage with Chanu (Kaushik). Years later, living in east London with her family, she meets a young man Karim (Simpson).
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, contemplative, sentimental, captivating, intercultural, sincere, touching, serious, independent film
Similar in 75%
Pleasure Party (1975)
Plot Summary:
Phillipe and Esther live an apparently idyllic life with their daughter, Elise. In an attempt to preserve this bliss, Phillipe decides that he and Esther should each have affairs, being sure to tell each other openly about them. The plan backfires with tragic results as Phillipe becomes engulfed in jealously.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 714
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: sensual, psychological, tense, sincere, bleak, serious, realistic, gloomy