Highest-Rated Movies about 'Family History', Sort by Popularity

Back to the Future (1985), The Life of Reilly (2006), Secrets & Lies (1996), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper (2016), Return to Hardwick (2019), The Joy Luck Club (1993), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Family History movies.

#1. Back to the Future (1985)

Storyline: Marty McFly, a typical American teenager of the Eighties, is accidentally sent back to 1955 in a plutonium-powered DeLorean "time machine" invented by a slightly mad scientist. During his often hysterical, always amazing trip back in time, Marty must make certain his teenage parents-to-be meet and fall in love - so he can get back to the future.

Plot Keywords: son, mother, father, scientist, teenager, bully, endearing ...

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#2. The Life of Reilly (2006)

Storyline: If, in 1940, you had a lobotomized aunt, an institutionalized father, a racist mother, and were the only gay kid on the block, what do you think the odds would be that you'd end up a Tony winner, a staple of television, and a generational icon? Enter "The Life Of Reilly". The cliché goes that truth is stranger than fiction. In this case, it is also funnier and more heartbreaking. Charles Nelson Reilly, famous for his game show innuendos and "X Files" guest appearances, takes us through his bizarre, star-studded, tragic, hilarious, and ultimately amazing life with a potent blend of tenderness and quick one-liners. "The Life Of Reilly" is an adaptation of Mr. Reilly's acclaimed one-man show and was photographed for the screen during Mr. Reilly's final two performances of his play in North Hollywood, California.—jlm

Plot Keywords: actor, audience, gay man, uplifting, emotional, engaging, stage ...

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#3. Secrets & Lies (1996)

Storyline: Cynthia lives in London with her sullen street-sweeper daughter. Her brother has been successful with his photographer's business and now lives nearby in a more upmarket house. But Cynthia hasn't even been invited round there after a year. So, all round, she feels rather lonely and isolated. Meanwhile, in another part of town, Hortense, adopted at birth but now grown up, starts to try and trace her mother.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}

Plot Keywords: doctor, mother, blue-collar worker, daughter, brother, powerful, tense ...

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#4. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

Storyline: In 1979 young Donna, Tanya and Rosie graduate from Oxford University -- leaving Donna free to embark on a series of adventures throughout Europe. On her journeys, she makes the acquaintances of Harry, Bill and Sam -- the latter whom she falls in love with, but he's also the man who breaks her heart. In the present day, Donna's pregnant daughter, Sophie, dreams of renovating a taverna while reuniting with her mother's old friends and boyfriends on the Greek island of Kalokairi.

Plot Keywords: young woman, college graduate, friend, boyfriend, pregnant woman, husband, amusing ...

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#6. Return to Hardwick (2019)

Storyline: The 93rd Bomb Group was arguably the most decorated, most traveled and most effective bomb group of WWII. Helping to cripple Hitler's Europe from the air, they executed some of the most daring bombing raids of the war. Along with the group's rich history, sons, daughters and grandchildren travel to England and explore the 93rd's long forgotten air base - Hardwick.—Michael Sellers

Plot Keywords: son, historian, pilot, emotional, fascinating, heartwarming, air field ...

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#8. Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Storyline: A wealthy harridan, Violet Venable, attempts to bribe Dr. Cukrowicz, a young psycho-surgeon from a New Orleans mental hospital that is desperately in need of funds, into lobotomizing her niece, Catherine Holly. Violet wants the operation performed in order to prevent Catherine from defiling the memory of her son, the poet Sebastian. Catherine has been babbling obscenely about Sebastian's mysterious death that she witnessed while on holiday together in Spain the previous summer.

Plot Keywords: debutante, aunt, surgeon, patient, brooding, dark, melodramatic ...

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#9. The Story of Qiu Ju (1992)

Storyline: A pregnant peasant woman seeks redress from the Chinese bureaucracy after the village chief kicks her husband in the groin in this comedy of justice. As she is frustrated by each level of the hierarchy and travels farther and farther away from the countryside the viewer is also provided with a look at the changing Chinese society through the verite camera used in most scenes.—Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca>

Plot Keywords: peasant, pregnant woman, villager, husband, bureaucrat, gutsy, spirited ...

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#10. When I Grow Up (1951)

Storyline: "When I Grow Up" is an uncharacteristically modest film from producer Sam Spiegel (during his "S. P. Eagle" years). Bobby Driscoll plays a young boy who feels neglected and misunderstood at home. Preparing to run away, Bobby chances across an old diary once kept by his grandfather (Charley Grapewin). Leafing through the yellowed pages, Bobby discovers that grandpa went through many of the same childhood travails that Bobby is enduring at that moment--and look how well gramps turned out! Armed with a renewed understanding of (and appreciation for) his elders, Bobby decides to stick around for a while and see how things develop.—filmfactsman

Plot Keywords: teen boy, grandfather, father, mother, troubled youth, emotional, moving ...

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#11. Stories We Tell (2012)

Storyline: In this inspired, genre-twisting new film, Oscar®-nominated writer/director Sarah Polley discovers that the truth depends on who's telling it. Polley is both filmmaker and detective as she investigates the secrets kept by a family of storytellers. She playfully interviews and interrogates a cast of characters of varying reliability, eliciting refreshingly candid, yet mostly contradictory, answers to the same questions. As each relates their version of the family mythology, present-day recollections shift into nostalgia-tinged glimpses of their mother, who departed too soon, leaving a trail of unanswered questions. Polley unravels the paradoxes to reveal the essence of family: always complicated, warmly messy and fiercely loving. Stories We Tell explores the elusive nature of truth and memory, but at its core is a deeply personal film about how our narratives shape and define us as individuals and families, all interconnecting to paint a profound, funny and poignant picture of the larger human story.—The National Film Board of Canada

Plot Keywords: filmmaker, narrator, screenwriter, emotional, track, family history, life ...

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#12. Secondhand Lions (2003)

Storyline: A boy named Walter is dropped by his mother Mae at his great-uncles' house. Later, Walter will find out his great-uncles' big secret, and rumors say that Hub and Garth, Walter's great-uncles, have stolen a lot of gold and money. (some say they stole it from Al Capone) Did they really steal that money or not?

Plot Keywords: teenager, mother, bachelor, cousin, princess, lighthearted, quirky ...

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#13. Sunshine (1999)

Storyline: The film follows a Jewish family living in Hungary through three generations, rising from humble beginnings to positions of wealth and power in the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire. The patriarch becomes a prominent judge but is torn when his government sanctions anti-Jewish persecutions. His son converts to Christianity to advance his career as a champion fencer and Olympic hero, but is caught up in the Holocaust. Finally, the grandson, after surviving war, revolution, loss and betrayal, realizes that his ultimate allegiance must be to himself and his heritage.

Plot Keywords: man, cousin, brother, mother, father, judge, brooding ...

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#14. Everything Is Illuminated (2005)

Storyline: Jewish-American writer Jonathan Safran Foer is a collector of his family's memorabilia, although most of the items, some which he takes without asking, would not be considered keepsakes by the average person. He places most of those items in individual Ziploc bags, and hangs them on his keepsake wall under the photograph of the person to who it is most associated. He has this compulsion in an effort to remember. He is able to tie a photograph that he receives from his grandmother, Sabine Foer, on her deathbed - it of his grandfather, Safran Foer, during the war in the Ukraine, and a young woman he will learn is named Augustine - back to a pendant he stole from his grandfather on his deathbed in 1989, the pendant of a glass encased grasshopper. Learning that Augustine somehow saved his grandfather's life leads to Jonathan going on a quest to find out the story at its source where the photograph was taken, in a now non-existent and probably largely forgotten town called Trachimbrod that...

Plot Keywords: writer, guide, grandfather, dog, grandmother, quirky, emotional ...

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#15. American Pop (1981)

Storyline: "American Pop" is the animated story of a very talented and troubled family starting with 19th century Russia and moving through several generations of musicians. The film covers American popular music from the pre-jazz age through rhythm and blues, 1950s rock 'n' roll, drug-laden psychedelia, and punk rock, finally ending with the onset of New Wave in the early 1980s.—Anonymous

Plot Keywords: immigrant, vaudevillian, jazz musician, songwriter, rock star, stripper, spectacular ...

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