Highest-Rated Movies about 'Abusive Relationship'

Sunset Blvd. (1950), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Boyhood (2014), Phantom Thread (2017), I, Tonya (2017), Trumbo (2015), The Great Gatsby (2013), Rocketman (2019) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Abusive Relationship movies.

#1. Sunset Blvd. (1950)

Storyline: In Hollywood of the 50's, the obscure screenplay writer Joe Gillis is not able to sell his work to the studios, is full of debts and is thinking in returning to his hometown to work in an office. While trying to escape from his creditors, he has a flat tire and parks his car in a decadent mansion in Sunset Boulevard. He meets the owner and former silent-movie star Norma Desmond, who lives alone with her butler and driver Max Von Mayerling. Norma is demented and believes she will return to the cinema industry, and is protected and isolated from the world by Max, who was her director and husband in the past and still loves her. Norma proposes Joe to move to the mansion and help her in writing a screenplay for her comeback to the cinema, and the small-time writer becomes her lover and gigolo. When Joe falls in love for the young aspirant writer Betty Schaefer, Norma becomes jealous and completely insane and her madness leads to a tragic end.

Plot Keywords: butler, madness, recluse, hollywood california, actress, delusion, comeback ...

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#2. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Storyline: In a tale that almost redefines sibling rivalry, faded actresses Blanche and 'Baby' Jane Hudson live together. Jane was by far the most famous when she performed with their father in vaudeville but as they got older, it was Blanche who became the finer actress, which Jane still resents. Blanche is now confined to a wheelchair and Jane is firmly in control. As time goes by, Jane exercises greater and greater control over her sister, intercepting her letters and ensuring that few if anyone from the outside has any contact with her. As Jane slowly loses her mind, she torments her sister going to ever greater extremes.

Plot Keywords: sibling rivalry, psychological horror, wheelchair, abusive relationship, sister sister relationship, dysfunctional family, jealousy ...

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#3. Boyhood (2014)

Storyline: Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, Richard Linklater's BOYHOOD is a groundbreaking story of growing up as seen through the eyes of a child named Mason (a breakthrough performance by Ellar Coltrane), who literally grows up on screen before our eyes. Starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as Mason's parents and newcomer Lorelei Linklater as his sister Samantha, BOYHOOD charts the rocky terrain of childhood like no other film has before. Snapshots of adolescence from road trips and family dinners to birthdays and graduations and all the moments in between become transcendent, set to a soundtrack spanning the years from Coldplay's Yellow to Arcade Fire's Deep Blue. BOYHOOD is both a nostalgic time capsule of the recent past and an ode to growing up and parenting.

Plot Keywords: coming of age, domestic abuse, abusive husband, divorced parents, parenting, growing up, abusive father ...

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#4. Phantom Thread (2017)

Storyline: Set in the glamour of 1950s post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the center of British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants, and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock. Women come and go through Woodcock's life, providing the confirmed bachelor with inspiration and companionship, until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by love.

Plot Keywords: dressmaker, fashion designer, waitress, dysfunctional relationship, 1950s, brother sister relationship, wedding dress ...

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#5. I, Tonya (2017)

Storyline: From the proverbial wrong side of the tracks in Portland, Oregon, former competitive figure skater Tonya Harding was never fully accepted in the figure skating community for not inherently being the image of grace, breeding and privilege that the community wanted to portray, despite she being naturally gifted in the sport athletically. Despite ultimately garnering some success in figure skating being national champion, a world championship medalist, an Olympian, and being the first American woman to complete a Triple Axel in competition, she is arguably best known for her association to "the incident": the leg bashing on January 6, 1994 of her competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, who, unlike Tonya, was everything that the figure skating community wanted in their representatives. Her association to that incident led to Tonya being banned from competitive figure skating for life. Tonya's story from the beginning of her figure skating life at age four to the aftermath of the incident is presented...

Plot Keywords: ice skating, abuse, violence, domestic violence, based on true story, violence against a woman, abusive mother ...

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#6. Trumbo (2015)

Storyline: In 1947, Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) was Hollywood's top screenwriter until he and other artists were jailed and blacklisted for their political beliefs. TRUMBO (directed by Jay Roach) recounts how Dalton used words and wit to win two Academy Awards and expose the absurdity and injustice under the blacklist, which entangled everyone from gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) to John Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger.

Plot Keywords: communist, gossip columnist, gossip, film industry, screenwriter, communism, hollywood california ...

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#7. The Great Gatsby (2013)

Storyline: An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island-set novel, where Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon enough, however, Carraway will see through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession, madness, and tragedy await.

Plot Keywords: extramarital affair, obsessive love, 1920s, fatal accident, party, based on novel, adultery ...

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#9. Prick Up Your Ears (1987)

Storyline: This movie is the story of the spectacular life and violent death of British playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman). In his teens, Orton is befriended by the older, more reserved Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina), and while the two begin a relationship, it's fairly obvious that it's not all about sex. Orton loves the dangers of bath-houses and liaisons in public restrooms; Halliwell, not as charming or attractive as Orton, doesn't fare so well in those environments. While both long to become writers, it is Orton who achieves fame. His plays "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" and "Loot" become huge hits in London of the sixties, and he's even commissioned to write a screenplay for the Beatles. But Orton's success takes him farther from Halliwell, whose response ended both his life and the life of the up-and-coming playwright.—Gary Dickerson <slug@mail.utexas.edu>

Plot Keywords: homosexual, murder, london england, gay sex, holiday, pills, bludgeoning ...

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#10. The Invisible Man (2020)

Storyline: The film follows Cecilia, who receives the news of her abusive ex-boyfriend's suicide. She begins to re-build her life for the better. However, her sense of reality is put into question when she begins to suspect her deceased lover is not actually dead.—Max

Plot Keywords: domestic abuse, psychological abuse, psychotronic film, murder, reboot, mad scientist, invisibility ...

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#11. The Killing of Sister George (1968)

Storyline: George lives with her lover, Childie and plays a cheerful district nurse in a BBC soap opera. However, her character is to be killed off, and George realises that the only other job she can get is the voice of a cow in a children's tv programme. Her life begins to fall apart as Childie has an affair with a predatory tv producer.—Paul Baker <bakerjp@unix.lancs.ac.uk>

Plot Keywords: nun, soap opera, lesbian, actress, jealousy, domination, alcohol ...

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#12. Kills on Wheels (2016)

Storyline: This is a meaningful action-comedy of a wheelchair-bound assassin gang. Driven by despair and fear of becoming useless, a 20 year-old boy, his friend, and an ex-fireman offer their services to the mafia. But things are not what they seem. The boundaries between reality and fiction blur and the story becomes a whirling kaleidoscope showing us gangsters and gunfights, but also the challenge of life in a wheelchair and the pain caused by a father's rejection.

Plot Keywords: delivery, gay slur, mistaken belief that someone is dead, mafia, binoculars, secretly observing, groom ...

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#13. Play Misty for Me (1971)

Storyline: Disc jockey Dave Garver (Clint Eastwood) attracts the amorous attentions of a demented fan named Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter). Evelyn lets Dave pick her up at a bar. Later at her apartment, Evelyn admits that she is the cooing caller who repeatedly asks Dave to play the Erroll Garner classic "Misty". From then on, this movie is a lesson in how one casual date can turn your whole life around. Evelyn stalks Dave everywhere, ruins his business lunch, assaults his maid, mutilates his house and all of his belongings, and finally threatens to butcher his girlfriend Tobie Williams (Donna Mills). You'll never be able to hear that song again without looking over your shoulder.

Plot Keywords: female rear nudity, skinny dipping, white briefs, underwear, fatal attraction, obsessed fan, disc jockey ...

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#14. Trance (2013)

Storyline: A fine art auctioneer mixed up with a gang joins forces with a hypnotherapist to recover a lost painting. As boundaries between desire, reality and hypnotic suggestion begin to blur the stakes rise faster than anyone could have anticipated.

Plot Keywords: female frontal nudity, shaved vagina, female star appears nude, female nudity, breasts, female rear nudity, female full frontal nudity ...

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#15. Widows (2018)

Storyline: "Widows" is the story of four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands' criminal activities. Set in contemporary Chicago, amid a time of turmoil, tensions build when Veronica (Viola Davis), Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Belle (Cynthia Erivo) take their fate into their own hands and conspire to forge a future on their own terms.

Plot Keywords: heist, car chase, harlot, profanity, restaurant, penthouse, n word ...

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