20 best movies like Raise the Red Lantern (1991)

During the Late Tang Dynasty, a manor is invaded by a demon cat and a sense of unrest befalls the capital of Changan. A poet is charged with investigating the case and meets up with a monk. The two work together and pull apart the thread of clues to reveal a history of truths leading to the events.

In 9th century China, a corrupt government wages war against a rebel army called the Flying Daggers. A romantic warrior breaks a beautiful rebel out of prison to help her rejoin her fellows, but things are not what they seem.

During World War II a secret agent must seduce, then assassinate an official who works for the Japanese puppet government in Shanghai. Her mission becomes clouded when she finds herself falling in love with the man she is assigned to kill.

After the death of her father, a woman is forced to take over as empress and fight to save her kingdom.

Iin 1930s Shanghai, 'The White Countess' is both Sofia—a fallen member of the Russian aristocracy—and a nightclub created by a blind American diplomat, who asks Sofia to be the centerpiece of the world he wants to create.

An aspiring young physician, Robert Merivel found himself in the service of King Charles II and saves the life of someone close to the King. Merivel joins the King's court and lives the high life provided to someone of his position. Merivel is ordered to marry his King's mistress in order to divert the queens suspicions. He is given one order by the king and that is not to fall in love. The situation worsens when Merivel finds himself in love with his new wife. Eventually, the King finds out and relieves Merivel of his position and wealth. His fall from grace leaves Merivel where he first started. And through his travels and reunions with an old friend, he rediscovers his love for true medicine and what it really means to be a physician.

Country girl Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her lover to study in Beijing. At university, she discovers an intense world of sexual freedom and forbidden pleasure. Enraptured, compulsive, she falls madly in love with fellow student Zhou Wei. Driven by obsessive passions they can neither understand nor control, their relationship becomes one of dangerous games - betrayals, recriminations, provocations - as all around them, their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom.

A sumptuous and sensual tale of intrigue, romance and betrayal set against the backdrop of a defining moment in European history: two beautiful sisters, Anne and Mary Boleyn, driven by their family's blind ambition, compete for the love of the handsome and passionate King Henry VIII.

In pre-unified China, the King of Qin sends his concubine to a rival kingdom to produce an assassin for a political plot, but as the king's cruelty mounts she finds her loyalty faltering.

A heroic tale of three blood brothers and their struggle in the midst of war and political upheaval. It is based on "The Assassination of Ma," a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) story about the killing of general Ma Xinyi.

Queen Victoria strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young Indian clerk named Abdul Karim.

During China's Tang dynasty the emperor has taken the princess of a neighboring province as wife. She has borne him two sons and raised his eldest. Now his control over his dominion is complete, including the royal family itself.

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.

In Qing Dynasty, Chen Xiang and Liuli became maids and friends in the imperial palace. Liuli wanted to be famous whereas Chen Xiang just wanted to live a normal life. Liuli attempted to change her life by knowing the prince, even at the cost of betraying Chen Xiang.

A female assassin during the Tang Dynasty who begins to question her loyalties when she falls in love with one of her targets.

A story of three couples and their intertwining love stories set in 1940s Taiwan and Shanghai, centered around the 1949 sinking of Taiping.

The night of August 24, 1572, is known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. In France a religious war is raging. In order to impose peace a forced wedding is arranged between Margot de Valois, sister of the immature Catholic King Charles IX, and the Hugenot King Henri of Navarre. Catherine of Medici maintains her behind-the-scenes power by ordering assaults, poisonings, and instigations to incest.

Bathsheba Everdine, a willful, flirtatious, young woman, unexpectedly inherits a large farm and becomes romantically involved with three widely divergent men.

Ip Man's peaceful life in Foshan changes after Gong Yutian seeks an heir for his family in Southern China. Ip Man then meets Gong Er who challenges him for the sake of regaining her family's honor. After the Second Sino-Japanese War, Ip Man moves to Hong Kong and struggles to provide for his family. In the mean time, Gong Er chooses the path of vengeance after her father was killed by Ma San.

Beijing, 1902: an enterprising young portrait photographer named Liu Jinglun, keen on new technology, befriends a newly-arrived Englishman who's brought projector, camera, and Lumière-brothers' shorts to open the Shadow Magic theater. Liu's work with Wallace brings him conflict with tradition and his father's authority, complicated by his falling in love with Ling, daughter of Lord Tan, star of Beijing's traditional opera. Liu sees movies as his chance to become wealthy and worthy of Ling. When the Shadow Magic pair are invited to show the films to the Empress Dowager, things look good. But, is disaster in the script? And, can movies preserve tradition even as they bring change?

The love affair between poet Percy Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin resulted in the creation of an immortal novel, “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.”

30 year-old working woman Li Ansheng’s life in Shanghai is suddenly disrupted by the publication of a novel, entitled “Qiyue and Ansheng”, a chronicle of her friendship with Qi Yue during her youth. Coupled with an accidental encounter with Su Jia Ming, a past love, her long repressed memories are unleashed with the force of a tsunami. The two girls seemed destined to become friends from the moment they entered high school. Though they were inseparable and believed that their bond would last for the rest of their lives, the cruelty of youth eventually led them to separate paths. Even more shocking is the discovery of a long buried secret shared by the women – a secret that serves as an emblem of their youth and the proof of their friendship.

In 907 AD, the Tang Dynasty is in tatters; infighting snarls the imperial family. Crown Prince Wu Luan loves Little Wan, but his father takes her as his Empress. Wu Luan goes into exile, studying dance and music. His uncle murders his father, taking throne and Empress; uncle sends assassins to kill Wu Luan. The Crown Prince eludes death and comes to court. The Emperor arranges for Little Wan's coronation and dispatches Wu Luan to a distant land; he then calls for a midnight banquet on the 100th day of his rule. Poison, treachery, Wu Luan's return, and the love of the innocent Qing for Wu Luan set up the final entanglements. No Fortinbras or Horatio lay the dead to rest.

An old leper who owned a remote sorghum winery dies. Jiu'er, the wife bought by the leper, and her lover, identified only as "my Grandpa" by the narrator, take over the winery and set up an idealized quasi-matriarchal community headed by Jiu'er. When the Japanese invaders subject the area to their rule and cut down the sorghum to make way for a road, the community rises up and resists as the sorghum grows anew.

Prompted by the death of his father and the grief of his mother, a man recalls the story of how they met in flashback.

A film about the black-and-white era actress Lída Baarová and her doomed love affair.

The complicated life and controversial suicide of George Reeves is investigated by a fictional private detective who finds that there are reasons to suspect that Reeves may not have killed himself after all. The detective also finds that there is a little of George Reeves in himself, and maybe, each of us.

A look at the relationship between Marie Antoinette and one of her readers during the final days of the French Revolution.

Lu and Feng are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. He finally returns home only to find that his beloved wife no longer remembers him.

The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.

Set during the Goryeo dynasty, Won, crown prince, has a sweet appearance hiding a lust for conquest. He is best friends with Rin, an elegant man of royal descent and Won's bodyguard. When beautiful San, the sole daughter of the wealthiest man in the nation, enters the lives of the two young men, the three at first become friends but a tragic romance ensues afterwards. Based on the novel of the same name by Kim Yi-Ryung.

Docudrama about American poet Hart Crane, who committed suicide in April 1932 at the age of 32 by jumping off the steamship SS Orizaba.

Azize finds herself with her 3 children and mother-in-law in a difficult fight. She raises her children while fighting the difficulties of the war period and her husband's absence whom she loves more than anything. It's about war, love, greed, treason and sacrifice.

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The tragic story of a Tang Dynasty imperial consort who was the favorite of the Emperor Xuanzong.

Sira Quiroga is a young Spanish dressmaker engaged to a solid suitor when a suave typewriter salesman upends her life. Spain is being upended by a civil war and the new regime's growing alliances with Nazi Germany. Sira, smart, gutsy and resourceful with a Scarlett O'Hara-like ability to whip up designer duds on a moment's notice, Sira has spunk. Sira gains and loses a small fortune, is dumped by her cad of a lover in Morocco, runs guns to get the cash to start her life anew and becomes couturier to the Nazi wives stationed in Madrid. Urged on by her friend, the real-life British spy Rosalinda Fox, Sira, too, aids the British cause.

In the 19th century, the Prince Regent of the Qing Dynasty orders the mass execution of the entire Meng clan. Before his beheading, the leader vows that his family will avenge this travesty of justice. Awaiting his death, a five-year-old Meng boy named Erkui bravely sings an aria. The power and purity of his voice touches the opera star Master Yu and his seven-year-old pupil Guan Yilong. Master Yu rescues the boy and the two orphans become brothers. Years later, Master Yu wins the coveted golden "The Mightiest Warrior" plaque from the Prince Regent, but subsequently loses it in a duel with his archrival Master Yue. Banished from the stage upon his loss, Master Yu spends his time training the two brothers in the village. When the boys grow into men, they set off for Shanghai to pursue revenge. Once they reach Shanghai, they quickly defeat Master Yue, reclaiming not only the plaque but also taking over the Yue's opera troupe.

For generations the Zhao family has wielded power, until their mortal enemy TU’AN GU slaughters the entire clan, determined to wipe out their influence forever. But one Zhao baby survives hidden by CHENG YING the doctor who delivered him. When Tu’an Gu learns of the baby’s escape he seizes every infant in the city, vowing to kill them all unless the Zhao baby is surrendered. As the tyrant’s soldiers arrive at Cheng Ying’s home the frantic doctor hides his wife with their own baby whilst surrendering the Zhao child as his own. But his family is discovered; his baby is presumed to be the Zhao heir and murdered along with his wife for harboring the infant. Now set on revenge Cheng Ying enrolls the Zhao orphan into the service of the Tu’an Gu household, plotting to use him as an instrument of vengeance when he comes of age.

The battle of Red Cliff continues and the alliance between Xu and East Wu is fracturing. With Cao Cao's massive forces on their doorstep, will the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu survive?

The aging Zhao embarks on his final and greatest campaign, a road to adventure that will crown his name in glory for all time.

Based on the Tangshan Earthquake in 1976 that took the lives of 240,000 people.

On a tour of Britain in 1926, Harry Houdini enters into a passionate affair with a psychic out to con the famous magician.

Alexander, the King of Macedonia, leads his legions against the giant Persian Empire. After defeating the Persians, he leads his army across the then known world, venturing farther than any westerner had ever gone, all the way to India.

In 17th century Spain Diego Alatriste, a brave and heroic soldier, is fighting in his King's army in the Flandes region. His best mate, Balboa, falls in a trap and, near to death, asks Diego to look after his son and teach him to be a soldier.

A gay couple takes a trip to Argentina in search of a new beginning, but instead begins drifting even further apart.

A historical drama set in the Koryo dynasty and focused on the relationship between a king and his bodyguard. Under the dominance of Yuan Dynasty China, the king of Goryeo Dynasty Korea is pressured to produce a successor to the throne. Unable to make love to his queen because he is in love with his bodyguard, Hong Lim, the king asks the two of them to sleep together instead. This sexual contact formulates a forbidden love between Hong Lim and the Queen.

North Carolina mountains at the end of the 1920s – George and Serena Pemberton, love-struck newly-weds, begin to build a timber empire. Serena soon proves herself to be equal to any man: overseeing loggers, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. With power and influence now in their hands, the Pembertons refuse to let anyone stand in the way of their inflated love and ambitions. However, once Serena discovers George’s hidden past and faces an unchangeable fate of her own, the Pemberton’s passionate marriage begins to unravel leading toward a dramatic reckoning.

The life of Camille Claudel, a french sculptor who becomes the apprentice of Auguste Rodin and later his lover. Her passion for her art and Rodin drive her further away from reason and rationality.

The coming-of-age tale of 16-year-old Lina Vilkas who is deported to Siberia amid Stalin's reign of terror in the Baltic region during WWII. An aspiring artist, she secretly documents her harrowing journey with her drawings.

Huo An, the commander of the Protection Squad of the Western Regions, was framed by evil forces and becomes enslaved. On the other hand, a Roman general escapes to China after rescuing the Prince. The heroic duo meet in the Western Desert and a thrilling story unfolds.