#1. Child's Pose (2013)

Storyline: Seeing a way to reassert control over her adult son's life when he faces manslaughter charges, an affluent Romanian woman sets out on a campaign of emotional and social manipulation to keep him out of prison, navigating the waters of power, corruption and influence. Child's Pose is based on the sense of loss of parents who have to send their children away-physically and psychologically. The parent-child relationship is re-assessed through a son in his 30s that wants to escape from his mother, who in turn wants to keep her adult son by her side. The mother's character is quite familiar, but this film is unique in that the director delicately portrays how the controlling mother wants to deny that her son is destined to leave her by following the characters' emotional flows and gazing at their twisted desires. Luminita Gheorghiu turns in an extraordinary performance in playing a mother struggling to "save" her son. Heading to the conclusion, the film shows that the unhealthy mother-son relationship is not that simple when it comes to matters of humane duty.—Ryan Silverman

Plot Keywords: overbearing parent, troubled youth, gripping, romania, obsession, mother/son relationship, wretched excess ...

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#2. No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)

Storyline: Christopher Gill is a psychotic killer who uses various disguises to trick and strangle his victims. Moe Brummel is a single and harassed New York City police detective who starts to get phone calls from the strangler and builds a strange alliance as a result. Kate Palmer is a swinging, hip tour guide who witnesses the strangler leaving her dead neighbor's apartment and sets her sights on the detective. Moe's live-in mother wishes her son would be a successful Jewish doctor like his big brother.—alfiehitchie

Plot Keywords: serial killer, psychopath, overbearing parent, police detective, mother, victim, suspenseful ...

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#3. Peel (2019)

Storyline: Abandoned by his father at the age of five and raised in near isolation by a loving, yet emotionally unstable and over-protective mother, the only life Peel Munter has ever known is within the confines of his childhood home. Upon his mother's unexpected death, 30-year-old Peel is left lost and utterly alone. With no job, family, or friends, he must make a choice; live as his mother did, lonely and unsettled, or change the course of his impending fate by breaking out into the unknown, facing the trials and tribulations of an outside world he doesn't understand. Unable to make the house payments, Peel decides to take in a couple of drifters as roommates. After forging what seems to be a burgeoning new family and brotherhood, one of the roommates betrays Peel's trust, compelling Peel to venture out in search of his long-lost, real brothers who had been taken away from him decades ago. Along the way, Peel's lack of cynicism and innocence has an inadvertent, yet powerful effect on those he meets, as he brings a group of marginalized misfits closer to their true home.

Plot Keywords: young man, overbearing parent, unstable woman, drifter, brother, roommate, amusing ...

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