Children of Paradise (1945), Persona (1966), La La Land (2016), Auntie Mame (1958), All About My Mother (1999), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Atonement (2007), Barton Fink (1991) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Play movies.
Storyline: Strolling indolently around the 1830s vibrant Parisian avenue called the Boulevard du Crime, the graceful and elusive courtesan, Garance, finds herself wrongfully accused of pickpocketing. But, amid a sea of jugglers, sideshow performers, streetwalkers, and crooks, the silently eloquent mime, Baptiste, comes to her rescue, only to hopelessly fall for her. And just like that, love's sweet torture befalls the delicate pantomimist, as the insufferable burden of knowing that the object of his desire can never belong to anyone, will heartlessly haunt him for years to come. Many have tried to seize her heart--the flamboyant thespian, Frédérick Lemaître; the criminal dandy, Pierre-François Lacenaire, and the imperious but loveless Count, Édouard de Montray--however, Garance, after so many barren years, now seems to need only one man. In the end, trusting a frail and modest rose is beautiful but cruel. Is there anyone who can accept the naked truth of an unrequited love?
Plot Keywords: thief, murder, theater, turkish bath, suitor, unrequited love, vaudeville ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer. Alma eventually confesses her secrets to a seemingly sympathetic Elisabeth and finds that her own personality is being submerged into Elisabeth's persona.
Plot Keywords: silence, patient, mute character, psychiatry, meta film, lesbian, nihilism ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Aspiring actress serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and jazz musician Sebastian scrapes by playing cocktail-party gigs in dingy bars. But as success mounts, they are faced with decisions that fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.
Plot Keywords: los angeles california, jazz musician, movie set, bigger dreams, musician, aspiring actress, pianist ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Mame is an unconventional individualist socialite from the roaring 20's. When her brother dies, she is forced to raise her nephew Patrick. However, Patrick's father has designated an executor to his will to protect the boy from absorbing too much of Mame's rather unconventional perspective. Patrick and Mame become devoted to each other in spite of this restriction, and together journey through Patrick's childhood and the great depression, amidst some rather zaney adventures.—Ross Thompson <thompson@adobe.com>
Plot Keywords: aunt nephew relationship, based on play, masturbation reference, mountain climbing, guardian, pregnancy, dysfunctional family ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Manuela is a hard-working single mom who has raised her son Esteban by herself since the time he was born. On his 17th birthday they go to the theater and after the show, he tries to get the main actress' autograph but is run down on the street and dies. She quits her job and journeys to Barcelona, where she hopes to find her son's father, Lola, a transvestite she kept secret from her son, just as she never told Lola they had a son. In Barcelona, Manuela reunites with her old friend Agrado, a warm and witty transvestite prostitute. She also meets and becomes deeply involved with several characters: Rosa, a young nun who works in a shelter for battered prostitutes, but is pregnant by Lola and is HIV positive; Huma Rojo, the actress her son had admired; and the drug-addicted Nina Cruz, Huma's co-star and lover. Her life becomes entwined with theirs as she cares for Rosa during her pregnancy and works for Huma as her personal assistant and even acts in the play as an understudy for Nina ...
Plot Keywords: sex talk, husband wife relationship, mourning, redemption, teenage boy, theatre, drug addiction ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In a huge, old-fashioned luxury hotel a stranger tries to persuade a married woman to run away with him, but it seems she hardly remembers the affair they may have had (or not?) last year at Marienbad.
Plot Keywords: surrealism, experimental film, nonlinear timeline, french new wave, hotel, memory, cult film ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: SPOILER: When Briony Tallis, 13 years old and an aspiring writer, sees her older sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner at the fountain in front of the family estate she misinterprets what is happening thus setting into motion a series of misunderstandings and a childish pique that will have lasting repercussions for all of them. Robbie is the son of a family servant toward whom the family has always been kind. They paid for his time at Cambridge and now he plans on going to medical school. After the fountain incident, Briony reads a letter intended for Cecilia and concludes that Robbie is a deviant. When her cousin Lola is raped, she tells the police that it was Robbie she saw committing the deed.
Plot Keywords: rape, child molestation, miscarriage of justice, loss of virginity, sex, false accusation, rear entry sex ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 1941, New York intellectual playwright Barton Fink comes to Hollywood to write a Wallace Beery wrestling picture. Staying in the eerie Hotel Earle, Barton develops severe writer's block. His neighbor, jovial insurance salesman Charlie Meadows, tries to help, but Barton continues to struggle as a bizarre sequence of events distracts him even further from his task.
Plot Keywords: writer's block, magical realism, black humor, film industry, surrealism, 1940s, surprise ending ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A musical portrait of composer/singer/dancer George M. Cohan. From his early days as a child-star in his family's vaudeville show up to the time of his comeback at which he received a medal from the president for his special contributions to the US, this is the life- story of George M. Cohan, who produced, directed, wrote and starred in his own musical shows for which he composed his famous songs.
Plot Keywords: singing, dancing, father son relationship, spanking, fake beard, parade, fourth of july ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Three grown prodigies, all with a unique genius of some kind, and their mother are staying at the family household. Their father, Royal had left them long ago, and comes back to make things right with his family.
Plot Keywords: family relationships, forbidden love, incest, brother sister incest, dysfunctional family, extramarital affair, father daughter relationship ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Theater director Caden Cotard is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful production of Death of a Salesman, he has traded in the suburban blue-hairs and regional theater of Schenectady for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Armed with a MacArthur grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan's theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mock-up of the city outside. As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden's own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele, a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany's art scene, sneers at him from every corner. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend, Maria. He's helplessly driving his marriage to actress ...
Plot Keywords: adultery, panties, female sitting on a toilet, breasts, infidelity, bra, mother daughter relationship ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Bachir Lazhar, an Algerian immigrant, is hired to replace an elementary school teacher who died tragically. While the class goes through a long healing process, nobody in the school is aware of Bachir's painful former life; nor that he is at risk of being deported at any moment. Adapted from Evelyne de la Cheneliere's play, Bachir Lazhar depicts the encounter between two distant worlds and the power of self-expression. Using great sensitivity and humor, Philippe Falardeau follows a humble man who is ready to transcend his own loss in order to accompany children beyond the silence and taboo of death.
Plot Keywords: photograph, locker, milk, snowing, fable, backpack, school uniform ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In the god-forsaken district of early-1860's Lower Manhattan known as the Five Points, the vicious Nativist, Bill "The Butcher" Cutting, is the supreme overlord of an area riddled with crime, prostitution, theft and murder, as the American Civil War still rages on. Sixteen whole years after the brutal murder of his father from Bill's blood-stained hands, an orphaned Irish-American, Amsterdam Vallon, returns to this melting pot of corruption to avenge his untimely death; however, a lot has changed since then. Who can remember the once innocent boy and now a young man bent on revenge, who works his way up to the hierarchy of Five Points? Will Amsterdam ever taste the dangerous but sweet fruit of retribution?
Plot Keywords: gangster, prostitution, catholic church, bludgeoning, american civil war, pickpocket, 1840s ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A group of actors putting on an interpretive Passion Play in Montreal begin to experience a meshing of their characters and their private lives as the production takes form against the growing opposition of the Catholic church.—Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca>
Plot Keywords: priest, religion, crucifixion, acting, christianity, christ allegory, hospital ...
Movie Details Click Here!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: death of mother, break up, dead mother, toronto ontario canada, montreal quebec canada, cancer, paternity ...
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