Best movies like The Petrified Forest
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Follows a young med student's relationships with two women: a dangerous affair with a childhood friend and his mother's struggle to rebuild their estranged relationship.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 251
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like The Petrified Forest (1973):
Similar in 81%
Toni Costa - Kommissar auf Ibiza - Küchenkunst (2012)
Plot Summary:
Ibiza police commissioner Toni Costa cancels his holiday, a rare chance to be with his daughter, to investigate the stabbing murder of the sous-chef in José Arrabal's reputed restaurant. Costa finds, just in time to save stealing uniformed cop Manolo's kids, that this was a collateral killing, because he was in the way for another murder by poisoned dessert at Arrabal's wedding to gold-digger Carmen. Arrabal leans on his fiend the police chief to close the case, but Costa rightly suspects more crimes and digs on for possible motives concerning restaurant rating blackmail, infidelity and old grudges. Written by KGF Vissers.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 33
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Play It Cool (1970)
Plot Summary:
This Japanese melodrama chronicles the exploits of a geisha's beautiful daughter. The daughter is the geisha's pride and she spares nothing to insure that she has a bright future. But the hard-working young woman's dreams of becoming a dressmaker are shattered.... She then becomes a nightclub hostess who plays cards with male patrons using her body as the prize.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 98
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
The Sign of the Cancer (1967)
Plot Summary:
A murder in a hospital run by incompetents.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 72
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: neo noir, psychotronic, poliziottesco
Similar in 90%
The Devil's Ballad (1977)
Plot Summary:
A serial killer responsible for 7 minors' deaths thus far seems to kill to a particular rhythm, which the authorities must identify to catch him.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 367
Genere: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: Japan
Duration: 144 min
Plot tags: twisted
Similar in 78%
Bad City Blues (1999)
Plot Summary:
In the aftermath of a violent robbery, a New Orleans doctor, Eugene Grimes, wakes to find a wounded woman and $2 million in cash on his doorstep. In pursuit of the thieves, police captain Clarence Jefferson discovers that Grimes is the key not only to the money but to a dark web of intrigue and vengeance stretching back to a bloody civil war in El Salvador a decade before.
IMDB Rating: 4.4
IMDB Votes: 190
Genere: Drama, Crime
Country: USA
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 86%
The Youth Killer (1976)
Plot Summary:
Though his parents help him run the family business, Jun still feels persecuted by their love; when they bar him from meeting with his girlfriend, tensions increase.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 361
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Stateline Motel (1973)
Plot Summary:
After robbing a jewellery shop in Canada, two Americans arrange a meeting near the US borders in order to split the loot. One of them has an accident with his car on his way there and gets stuck in an isolated motel until his car is fixed. The owner of the motel, a sexy woman in her thirties, falls in love with him, but her suspicions about him begin to multiply, as the police arrive at the motel.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 353
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Italy, Canada
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: poliziottesco
Similar in 87%
No Pockets in a Shroud (1974)
Plot Summary:
Michel Dolannes resigns from a major newspaper as a journalist to launch a new journal 'Le Cosmopolite' which reveals all kinds of shady deals.One day, he is killed but who is the killer?.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 222
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
The Scarlet Camellia (1964)
Plot Summary:
In this Japanese drama, a young woman begins murdering all those responsible for her ailing father's condition. First she torches her parents' villa, and then slaughters all her lascivious mother's lovers. Because the girl is so outwardly sweet and innocent, the detective looking into the deaths does not suspect her. Unbeknownst to him, the girl plans on turning herself in, but not before she kills one more person--her real father. Later she changes her mind, but when his good wife learns of his philandering, she commits suicide.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 51
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 163 min
Plot tags: jidai geki, detective
Similar in 75%
Inn of Evil (1971)
Plot Summary:
The story takes place in feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world was strictly prohibited. An idealist suddenly appears in an isolated inn (the one that the title refers to), the head-quarters of a group of smugglers, with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one who is forced to work in a brothel.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: jidai geki
Similar in 82%
Woman of the Lake (1966)
Plot Summary:
A married woman lets her lover take naked pictures of her. The photos end up in possession of a man who starts blackmailing the couple.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 716
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
A Crime (1993)
Plot Summary:
"Un Crime" takes place over a single night, between 10pm and 6am. It takes place in a single setting - a millionaire's apartment in Lyon. The film is about the conflict between two men, alone, face to face in the closed world of the apartment. The first man is a famous lawyer named Dunand. The second is Frédéric Chapelin-Tourvel, Dunand's rich client, twenty years his junior. Throughout the night, Dunand tries to track down the truth. Did Frédéric kill his father and mother, in particularly barbarous circumstances ?.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 442
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
The Stranger Within a Woman (1966)
Plot Summary:
Tashiro (Keiju Kobayashi) coincidentally meets his best friend Sugimoto (Tatsuya Mihashi) in a bar very close to the apartment in which Sugimoto’s wayward wife is found dead. Although Tashiro is not a suspect in the police investigation, he is racked with guilt and confesses to his wife, Masako (Michiyo Aratama). In an effort to further relieve his tortured sense of guilt, he then confesses to Sugimoto. Neither his wife nor his friend can believe that he could have been involved.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 447
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
The Voice of Sin (2020)
Plot Summary:
Eiji Akutsu is a newspaper reporter. He is working on unsolved case that took place 30 years ago.The case involved a group of people extorting several companies for money. The group sent cassette tapes to the companies. Eiji Akutsu comes across a mysterious cassette tape. Meanwhile, Toshiya Sone lives in Kyoto and runs a tailor shop. He discovers a cassette tape among his late father's possessions. He plays the cassette tape and hears his voice from his childhood days.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 626
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Japan
Duration: 142 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Irezumi (1966)
Plot Summary:
In this elegant proto-feminist shocker from Yasuzo Masumuro, a woman forced into prostitution wreaks her spidery revenge. A mysterious tattoo artist puts his masterpiece, a human-faced spider, on a kidnapped woman's back. She and her lover are then forced into a conspiracy-born nightmare, where they face the danger of becoming the very evil they seek to escape. With each new bloody incident, the spider's face seems to redden with ever-growing hunger….
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, masterpiece
Similar in 82%
Assassination (1964)
Plot Summary:
Assassination begins with the events of 1853 when "four black ships" anchored at Edo Bay, sparking civil unrest and the major political manoeuvring that saw the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. At a time when assassination had become a disturbing political tool, Shinoda's film follows Hachiro Kiyokawa (Tetsuro Tamba), an ambitious, masterless samurai whose allegiances drift dangerously between the Shogunate and the Emperor.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 956
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Heat Wave (1991)
Plot Summary:
Rin Jyoshima lost her father to death-by-gambling; years later, she's grown up in the Kosugi household and has fallen victim to gambling herself.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 290
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
With Beauty and Sorrow (1965)
Plot Summary:
When the man who seduced the famous painter Otoko as a teenager--and then wrote a bestselling novel about it--reappears in her life, her pupil--and lesbian lover--hatches a plot to destroy the man and his family.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 318
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
Madame Bovary (1969)
Plot Summary:
Emma Bovary is bored by her country doctor husband and gives in to the affections of several rich suitors as well as the temptation of living beyond her husband's means.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 257
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany, Italy
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: sexy
Similar in 77%
Der Skorpion (1997)
Plot Summary:
Josef Bertholt is head of operations of the Munich Police's drug squad. When his wife Lily is the victim of a hit by drug dealers, he becomes even more obsessed with his work.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 118
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: neo noir
Similar in 82%
Mandara (1971)
Plot Summary:
About two student couples who become members of an obscure sect. The cult seeks a prehistoric utopia with free sex and without society's norms and values. The students are torn between ambient pressure and the sect leader's authority to organ music in the creative camera angles.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 498
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags: independent film, weird
Similar in 80%
Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967)
Plot Summary:
A sex-obsessed young woman, a suicidal young man she meets on the street, a gun-crazy wannabe gangster—these are just three of the irrational, oddball anarchists trapped in an underground hideaway in Oshima’s devilish, absurdist portrait of what he deemed the “death drive” in Japanese youth culture.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 855
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: political, psychological, tense, atmospheric, offbeat, serious, realistic, surreal, stylized, allegory
Similar in 78%
Violence at Noon (1966)
Plot Summary:
Hakuchu no Torima" is the portrayal of a violent rapist as seen through the recollections of his wife and one of his victims. As the film starts, Eisuke (Kei Sato) encounters Shino (Saeda Kawaguchi), who works as a maid in a house. She is a former coworker from a failed collective farm, whose life he once saved -- only to rape her. Soon, Eisuke's criminal pattern of rapes and murders emerges as he goes on assaulting women (Shino being the witness of one of them, as Eisuke tries to violate her employer). When cooperating with the police on making a description of the rapist, Shino withholds her crucial knowledge of his identity. She prefers writing letters to Eisuke's dutiful wife, Matsuko, a schoolteacher (Akiko Koyama -- Mrs Oshima), in order to expose his true nature and perhaps induce her into turning Eisuke over to the police.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: psychological, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing, detective, weird
Similar in 75%
Without Compassion (1994)
Plot Summary:
Lima, 1980s. Based upon Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 142
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Peru, Mexico, France
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
MacArthur's Children (1984)
Plot Summary:
In this drama at the end of World War II, the inhabitants of a small Japanese fishing village must come to terms with their nation's defeat and the sudden occupation of General MacArthur and his troops.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 202
Genere: Comedy, Drama, War
Country: Japan
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
United Red Army (2007)
Plot Summary:
The film is told in three acts, beginning with a historical background of Japan's student movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, mostly using archive footage and a narrator. The second act follows the formation of the group to their mountain training camps in the southern Japanese Alps. It emphasizes the dogmatic (and eventually hypocritical) bullying of the group by Mori and Nagata, with 12 members being killed for infractions as small as improperly cleaning a gun, wearing make-up, and kissing. The third act shows the splitting up of the group after two members run off. It follows one group of five members to Karuizawa and a hostage-taking and police standoff known as the Asama-Sansō incident.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 868
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 190 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, rough, serious, bleak, political, anime, realistic, avant garde
Similar in 80%
Negotiator (2003)
Plot Summary:
Three unidentified men hold a group of people hostage in a hospital after doing a smaller crime. Inspector Ishida and Captain Tohno handle the negotiations while one of their colleagues Lt. Ado tries to find the reason why the men decided to take the hospital hostage. At first, Lt. Ado tries to think of the possibilities for this crime using the clever aid of Ishida, but he only reaches the solution to the puzzle later on and by himself. Relevant information is revealed to the audience through flashbacks and through discoveries made by the police. And, several connections are made as the story develops. When the negotiations are finished, most things seem to be fine until they lose track of the criminals. Then, the story unveils with a different perspective, its roots in feelings of love and vengeance. Written by Rebeca C.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 469
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Japan
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: thrilling
Similar in 75%
Vengeance is Mine (1979)
Plot Summary:
A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is on the run from the police. Director Shohei Imamura turns this fact-based story—about the seventy-eight-day killing spree of a remorseless man from a devoutly Catholic family—into a cold, perverse, and at times diabolically funny examination of the primitive coexisting with the modern. More than just a true-crime tale, Vengeance Is Mine bares humanity’s snarling id.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: disturbing, tense, realistic, serious, suspenseful, neo noir, psychological thriller, philosophical, slasher, controversial
Similar in 84%
Double Suicide (1969)
Plot Summary:
Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 142 min
Plot tags: surreal, romantic, mind bending, psychedelic, spiritual, serious, emotional, realistic, stylized, jidai geki
Similar in 82%
Last of the Wolves (2021)
Plot Summary:
After Shogo Ogami’s death in Hiroshima, Detective Shuichi Hioka successfully implemented Shogo Ogami’s plan, which was to control the yakuza to prevent further gang wars and save innocent people from getting harmed. Shuichi Hioka manages the criminal organizations, but, due to one evil person who gets released from prison, the situation drastically changes.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 790
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 139 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, suspense, disturbing