Highest-Rated Movies about 'Marital Strife'

The Lion in Winter (1968), Unfaithfully Yours (1948), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), The Letter (1940), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Sayonara (1957), Sons and Lovers (1960), Move Over, Darling (1963) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Marital Strife movies.

#1. The Lion in Winter (1968)

Storyline: It's Christmas 1183, and King Henry II (Peter O'Toole) is planning to announce his successor to the throne. The jockeying for the crown, though, is complex. Henry has three sons and wants his boy Prince John (Nigel Terry) to take over. Henry's wife, Queen Eleanor (Katharine Hepburn), has other ideas. She believes their son Prince Richard (Sir Anthony Hopkins) should be King. As the family and various schemers gather for the holiday, each tries to make the indecisive King choose his or her option.

Plot Keywords: historical, drama, court, power struggle, family conflict, medieval, british history ...

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#2. Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Storyline: While conducting a symphony orchestra, Sir Alfred De Carter imagines three different ways of dealing with his wife's suspected infidelity, then tries acting out his fantasies, but things do not go as well in reality as they did in his imagination.—John Oswalt <jao@jao.com>

Plot Keywords: black comedy, murder, jealousy, classical music, revenge, suspense, misunderstanding ...

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#3. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

Storyline: The wife of a barbaric crime boss engages in a secretive romance with a gentle bookseller between meals at her husband's restaurant. Food, colour coding, sex, murder, torture and cannibalism are the exotic fare in this beautifully filmed but brutally uncompromising modern fable which has been interpreted as an allegory for Thatcherism.

Plot Keywords: crime, drama, thriller, black comedy, erotic, revenge, violence ...

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#4. The Letter (1940)

Storyline: The wife of a rubber plantation administrator shoots a man to death and claims it was self-defense. Her poise, graciousness and stoicism impress nearly everyone who meets her. Her husband is certainly without doubt; so is the district officer; while her lawyer's doubts may be a natural skepticism. But this is Singapore and the resentful natives will have no compunction about undermining this accused murderess. A letter in her hand turns up and may prove her undoing.

Plot Keywords: drama, film noir, crime, mystery, romance, psychological thriller, murder ...

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#5. Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

Storyline: Larry and Carol are fairly normal New Yorkers who have sent their son off to college. They meet an elderly couple down the hall and later in the week find that the wife has suddenly died. Carol becomes suspicious of Paul who seems to be too cheerful and too ready to move on. She begins her investigation. Larry insists she is becoming too fixated on their neighbor as all of the irregularities seem to have simple non-homicidal explanations. Ted, a recently divorced friend helps her investigation and Larry begins to become jealous of their relationship and agrees to help her.

Plot Keywords: comedy, mystery, crime, new york, marriage, murder, detective ...

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#6. Sayonara (1957)

Storyline: Major Lloyd Gruver, a Korean War flying ace reassigned to Japan, staunchly supports the military's opposition to marriages between American troops and Japanese women. But that's before Gruver experiences a love that challenges his own deeply set prejudices... and plunges him into conflict with the U.S. Air Force and Japan's own cultural taboos.—alfiehitchie

Plot Keywords: romance, war, race relations, japanese culture, tragedy, social prejudice, forbidden love ...

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#7. Sons and Lovers (1960)

Storyline: It's the early twentieth century. The Morel family lives in the coal mining community of Bestwood, England, just outside of Nottingham. There is little connection now between husband and wife, Walter and Gertrude, due to their differences, while each quietly or not so quietly is able to manipulate emotionally their now adult sons. While eldest son William has escaped the clutches of his parents by moving to London, each of the two remaining sons have ended up having a natural alliance or connection to one parent. Arthur, like brusque Walter, works in the mines, something that Walter believes is their duty and legacy. Artistically inclined Paul, who is self-taught in his art, instead has a lower paying office job, in Gertrude's mind it a longer path but to greater financial gain, Paul who is never to work in the mines. Paul, arguably, would live as a painter if he was able. Paul's relationship with two women is shown in light of the influence Gertrude has had in his life, he who has separated the concepts of love, sex and marriage in his mind. The first is childhood friend, farm girl Miriam Leivers, who Paul has also instilled a romantic notion of the arts and literature. Their relationship is also affected by Mrs. Leivers, who has taught Miriam to have an ugly view of physical sex, it purely a means to procreation. The second is work colleague Clara Dawes, an emancipated woman separated from her laborer husband, Baxter Dawes.—Huggo

Plot Keywords: literary adaptation, family drama, coming of age, psychological conflict, mother-son relationship, love triangle, working class ...

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#8. Move Over, Darling (1963)

Storyline: Three years into their loving marriage with two infant daughters at home in Los Angeles, Nicholas Arden and Ellen Wagstaff Arden are on a plane that goes down in the South Pacific. Although most passengers manage to survive the incident, Ellen presumably perishes when she is swept off the lifeboat she is on. Her body is not recovered. Fast forward five years. Nicky, wanting now to move on with his life, has Ellen declared legally dead. Part of that moving on includes getting remarried, this time to a young woman named Bianca Steele, who, for their honeymoon, he plans to take to the same Monterrey resort where he and Ellen spent their honeymoon. On that very same day, Ellen is dropped off in Los Angeles by the Navy, who rescued her from the South Pacific island where she was stranded for the past five years. She asked the Navy not to publicize her rescue or notify Nicky as she wanted to do so herself. Upon Ellen's arrival back home, a shocked Grace Arden, Nicky's mother, informs Ellen that Nicky just got married that morning and that she, as his true wife as opposed to Bianca being his bride, should go to Monterrey to tell Nicky she's alive. She does so. Although Nicky is equally as shocked as his mother was when he sees Ellen for the first time, it places him in a difficult position. Although he loves Ellen and wants more than anything to be with her, he has Bianca's feelings to take into consideration. As such, he finds it difficult to tell Bianca, who is in a honeymoon amorous mood. Nicky's inability to tell Bianca irks Ellen, who believes it is a manifestation of his love for Bianca over her. Nicky, however, ends up with questions of his own about Ellen's faithfulness and love for him when he learns that Ellen was not all alone on that island but with a handsome man named Stephen Burkett, the two who pet nicknamed each other Adam and Eve. Nicky's questions about her faithfulness increase when she purposefully withholds information about Stephen from him.—Huggo

Plot Keywords: comedy, romance, remake, marriage, misunderstanding, farce, reconciliation ...

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#9. Niagara (1953)

Storyline: George and Rose Loomis are honeymooning at a Niagara Falls motel. She plots with Ted Patrick to do him in, but all does not go smoothly. For one thing, after Loomis is reported missing Polly Cutler spies him at the motel but her husband Bud thinks she's imagining it. Marilyn sings "Kiss."

Plot Keywords: thriller, film noir, crime, mystery, romance, drama, murder ...

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#10. Another Man's Poison (1951)

Storyline: Mystery writer Janet Frobisher lives alone in a dark English country house, when she's not philandering with her secretary's fiancée. At an extremely awkward moment, she has an unwelcome visitor: George Bates, who claims to be the partner in crime of Janet's estranged husband. George insinuates himself into Janet's home and life despite her efforts to get rid of him; the tangled relationships develop into a macabre, murderous cat-and-mouse game.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>

Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, drama, mystery, thriller, romance, betrayal ...

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#11. A Summer Place (1959)

Storyline: The Hunter family has long owned a mansion on Pine Island, a summer resort located off the Maine coast. Bart Hunter's now deceased father was able to open the mansion for free when Bart was younger, but current owner Bart, a drunkard and weak man, must now live there year round for financial survival with his wife Sylvia and their late teen-aged son Johnny, the family which is barely able to eke out a living with the mansion now as a year-round inn which is in an extreme state of disrepair. Bart and Sylvia are in a quietly unhappy marriage due largely to Bart's drinking. The Buffalo-based Jorgensons - husband Ken Jorgenson, his wife Helen Jorgenson and their late teen-aged daughter Molly Jorgenson - have rented rooms at the inn for the summer, while Ken looks for a summer house on the island. Ken lived on the island twenty years ago, he actually a working class lifeguard for Bart's father at that time. Ken is now a self-made millionaire as a research scientist, who had never been back to the island until now. Ken and Helen too are in an unsatisfying marriage, Helen, a shrew and prude, who seems to hate and mistrust anything and everything, including her husband and daughter. Helen only seems concerned with public perception that their lives are perfect. Upon first meeting, Johnny and Molly fall in love. Meanwhile, Ken and Sylvia rekindle a romance from twenty years earlier, they uncertain if Bart knew at the time of their relationship, which did not last because of the differences in their social background. The two romances have a rocky road to potential happiness. Helen does not trust either Johnny or Molly to be morally proper. Ken and Sylvia know that their respective spouses will never consent to divorce, and if they do will do whatever they can so that they will never get to see their children again. And despite knowing that their respective parents are unhappy in their marriages, Johnny and Molly do not approve of a liaison between his mother and her father. Regardless, Ken and Sylvia want to provide their children with as much love and guidance as possible, including encouraging them to follow their hearts while not getting into trouble, a message which may not be heard if only because of Johnny and Molly believing that what they are doing is disgusting, and because of Johnny and Molly's own raging hormones.—Huggo

Plot Keywords: romance, drama, love, family, youth, betrayal, forbidden love ...

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#12. Enemy (2013)

Storyline: Adam Bell is a Toronto area History college professor. He is a rather somber man, largely because he is stuck in a routine, which includes a relationship with his live-in girlfriend, Mary. While watching a rental movie, he spots an actor in a bit part that looks like him. He becomes obsessed with finding out about this double of his. He learns that the actor's stage name is Daniel Saint Claire, whose legal name is Anthony Claire. Claire is a Toronto based actor with only a few on-screen credits, and is married to a woman named Helen who is currently several months pregnant. Adam then becomes obsessed with meeting Claire, who he learns upon first sighting that they look exactly the same, from the facial hair to a scar each has, but Claire who outwardly is more "put together" than Adam. Their lives become intertwined as Claire himself ends up becoming obsessed with Adam, but in a slightly different way.

Plot Keywords: psychological thriller, mystery, drama, surrealism, identity, dreams, reality vs illusion ...

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#13. The Deadly Affair (1966)

Storyline: After Charles Dobbs, a security officer, has a friendly chat with Samuel Fennan from the Foreign Office, the man commits suicide. An anonymous typed letter had been received accusing Fennan of being a Communist during his days at Oxford and their chat while walking in the park was quite amiable. Senior officials want the whole thing swept under the rug and are pleased to leave it as a suicide. Dobbs isn't at all sure as there are a number of anomalies that simply can't be explained away. Dobbs is also having trouble at home with his errant wife, whom he very much loves, having frequent affairs. He's also pleased to see an old friend, Dieter Frey, who he recruited after the war. With the assistance of a colleague and a retired policeman, Dobbs tries to piece together just who is the spy and who in fact assassinated Fennan.—garykmcd

Plot Keywords: spy, cold war, thriller, british film, adaptation, 1960s, film noir ...

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#14. Midnight Lace (1960)

Storyline: In London, American heiress Kit Preston (Doris Day) has been married for three months to a British executive, Anthony 'Tony' Preston (Sir Rex Harrison). During a foggy evening while walking across Hyde Park, Kit is threatened by a voice that tells she will be murdered soon. The next day, Kit receives a phone call from the stalker threatening to kill her in the next month. She and her husband go to Scotland Yard, but Inspector Byrnes (John Williams) believes that Kit may be making up the story to get more attention from her husband. Kit's Aunt Bea (Myrna Loy) arrives, but only Kit receives the phone call raising the question: is she losing her mind?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Plot Keywords: thriller, mystery, crime, drama, film noir, psychological thriller, murder ...

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#15. Smashed (2012)

Storyline: Kate and Charlie Hannah have a relationship well lubricated with alcohol, but Kate finally finds her chemical appetites have gotten completely out of control. With the help of an ex-addict friend at work, Kate finds a support group that helps her begin to conquer her addictions. However, that recovery proves just part of a larger personal challenge to rebuild her life even as her marriage with her drunken husband deteriorates.

Plot Keywords: alcoholism, recovery, self-destruction, deception, teacher, addiction, secrets ...

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