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Movies Like The Whole Family Works
Find movies like The Whole Family Works (1939) using TMDB similarity plus Movie Rankings community context. Our top current pick is Ikiru. Browse 18 related titles with direct links to rankings, cast pages, and matchup data.
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Ikiru
1952
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Modern Times
1936
A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..
Tokyo Story
1953
The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Red Beard
1965
Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.
The Naked Island
1960
A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.
Onihei Crime Files: Conscience of a Worm
2011
Detective Onihei better known as "Heizo the Demon" heads a group of skilled officers, however, one of those special officers got himself into a web of betrayal and deceit, and become the very thing Heizo the Demon investigates daily.
Throne of Blood
1957
Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.
Shoplifters
2018
In the outskirts of Tokyo, a poor but close-knit group living on the fringes of society survives through shoplifting and odd jobs. When Osamu and his son take in a neglected young girl, their already fragile existence begins to unravel. As the family grows attached to her, buried secrets surface, forcing them to confront the true meaning of love, belonging, and what makes a family.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
1958
An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
Harold and Maude
1971
A deadpan young man obsessed with death meets an eccentric septuagenarian who teaches him to live life to the fullest.
Kikujiro
1999
Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.
Pastoral: To Die in the Country
1974
A director faces creative block while working on his latest film – a reimagination of his adolescence growing up in a mountain village in rural Japan.
The Only Son
1936
A rural widow sends her only son to Tokyo to receive a better education. Years later, she visits him and finds he has become a night school teacher struggling to support his wife and son.
Happy Hour
2015
Four women in their thirties reevaluate their relationships, both shared and private, after a startling revelation concerning one's marriage forces each of them to ask one of life's biggest questions: "Am I who I want to be?"
Tokyo Sonata
2008
The winds of change blow as a family grapples with unemployment, alienation, mistrust and a lack of communication. When a Japanese salaryman loses his job to outsourcing to China, it's simply the beginning of a series of shattering incidents, leading to the implosion of the family unit.
Hideko the Bus Conductor
1941
Okoma, a witty young woman working as a conductor in an old, rickety bus in Kōfu, Yamanashi (rural Japan), has a creative idea that could avert the dwindling number of passengers when her job and the bus company itself are at stake.
Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets
1971
An experimental, psychedelic odyssey through Japanese subculture experienced via the eyes of a disillusioned young man, who must contend with intense familial dysfunction, psychosexual alienation, and existentialist malaise.
Cherry Blossoms
2008
After finding out that her husband, Rudi, has a fatal illness, Trudi Angermeier arranges a trip to Berlin so they can see their children. Of course, the kids don't know the real reason they're visiting -- and the catch is, neither does Rudi...
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