20 best movies like Real Life (1979)

Natha a poor farmer from Peepli village in the heart of rural India is about to lose his plot of land due to an unpaid bank loan. A quick fix to the problem is the a government program that aids the families of indebted farmers who have committed suicide. As a means of survival Farmer Natha can choose to die. His brother is happy to push him towards this unique 'honour' but Natha is reluctant. Local elections are around the corner and what might have been another unnoticed event turns into a 'cause celebre' with everyone wanting a piece of the action. Political bigwigs, high-ranking bureaucrats, local henchmen and the ever-zealous media descend upon sleepy Peepli to stake their claim. The question on everyone's lips - "Will he or Won't he?" As the mania escalates, nobody seems to care how Natha really feels.

In LA's Fairfax district, where ethnic groups abound, four households celebrate Thanksgiving amidst family tensions. In the Nguyen family, the children's acculturation and immigrant parents' fears collide. In the Avila family, Isabel's son has invited her estranged husband to their family dinner. Audrey and Ron Williams want to keep their own family's ruptures secret from Ron's visiting mother. In the Seelig household, Herb and Ruth are unwilling to discuss openly their grown daughter's living with her lover, Carla. Around each table, things come to a head. A gun, an affair, a boyfriend, and a pregnancy precipitate crises forcing each family to find its center.

Grace Bichon, who is managing her father's riding-stable, discovers that her husband Eddie is deceiving her with another woman. After confronting him in the middle of the night on the streets of their small home town, she decides to stay at her sister Emma Rae's house for a while to make up her mind. Breaking out of her everyday life, she starts to question the authority of everyone.

Friends, family, and lovers struggle to find love, forgiveness, and meaning in an almost war-torn world riddled with comedy and pathos. Follows Solondz's film Happiness (1998).

A wealthy businessman shows his young adult kids how tough life can be.

A Serious Man is the story of an ordinary man's search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances Sy Ableman.

The film talks about a family that weathers all sorts of disasters and keeps going in spite of it all. It is noted for its wonderful assortment of oddball characters.

Leslie is left with few options when her husband is sent back to war in the Middle East. A modest amount of help arrives in the form of his brother, Salman, who is less than prepared to care for the couple's two preadolescent boys. When Leslie still can't make ends meet on her own, Salman is forced to find employment, but, with minimal qualifications, his only option is to become a mascot for a digital company by donning a bulbous blue costume.

Arlo accepts what seems to him to be a dream promotion to Idaho. He soon discovers, however, that moving has its own share of problems.

An offbeat romantic comedy about a decent guy, Ray Tuckby, with a dead-end life in the dead-end town of Trona, CA. After encouragement from a stranger whom he happens upon, Ray begins to dream again. He sheds the parasites in his life, musters the nerve to pursue his childhood love, and finally takes back his community by toppling the local teenage Meth-baron.

Eliza D'Amico thinks her marriage to Louis is going great, until she finds a mysterious love note to her husband. Concerned, she goes to her mother for advice. Eliza, her parents, her sister Jo and Jo's boyfriend all pile into a station wagon, to go to the city to confront Louis with the letter. On the way, the five explore their relations with each other, and meet many interesting people.

Drew Latham is an executive leading an empty, shallow life with only wealth on his side. Facing another lonely Christmas ahead, he revisit his old childhood home in the hope of reliving some old holiday memories – but he finds that the house in which he was raised is no longer the home in which he grew up.

A boozy Broadway actress comes out of a 12-week cure to face the problems of her best friends as well as her needy daughter. She tries to balance the terrors of returning to work with the demands of all around her with humor and insight, while staying off the booze.

Abe is a man who is in his thirties and who lives with his parents. He works regretfully for his father while pursuing his hobby of collecting toys. Aware that his family doesn't think highly of him, he tries to spark a relationship with Miranda, who recently moved back home after a failed literary/academic career. Miranda agrees to marry Abe out of desperation, but things go awry.

Funnyman Jim Gaffigan offers up his unique take on everything from Disney World to overweight whales in this live show from Washington, D.C.

Newly arrived in Hollywood from England, Dennis Barlow finds he has to arrange his uncle's interment at the highly-organised and very profitable Whispering Glades funeral parlour. His fancy is caught by one of their cosmeticians, Aimee Thanatogenos. But he has three problems - the strict rules of owner Blessed Reverand Glenworthy, the rivalry of embalmer Mr Joyboy, and the shame of now working himself at The Happy Hunting Ground pets' memorial home.

A mother and wife stricken with memory loss allows a dysfunctional family a second chance at harmony and happiness.

Based on the novel by Truman Capote, this often-witty coming-of-age drama looks at a young man growing up with an unusual family in the Deep South in the 1940s.

A picture perfect middle class family is shocked when they find out that one of their neighbors is receiving obscene phone calls. The mom takes slights against her family very personally, and it turns out she is indeed the one harassing the neighbor. As other slights befall her beloved family, the body count begins to increase.

Through the eyes of a British "documentary", this film takes a satirically humorous, and sometimes frightening, look at the history of an America where the South won the Civil War.

Jerry Springer stars as more or less himself, the host of a raunchy, controversial and popular Los Angeles talk show which features everyday people with problems and who frequently vent their problems on the air.

There are dysfunctional families... and then there are the Conways. After a family tragedy, 15-year-old Billy Conway has become the de facto glue between his bitter mom, distant brother, and stoic dad. But when Billy starts to act out, everything changes for him and his family

A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.

Pete and Debbie are both about to turn 40, their kids hate each other, both of their businesses are failing, they're on the verge of losing their house, and their relationship is threatening to fall apart.

After his mistress runs over a young teen, a Wall Street hotshot sees his life unravel in the spotlight, and attracting the interest of a down and out reporter.

A charismatic, crazy hothead transforms a family's life when she becomes the nanny of five girls.

In 1976, a lower-middle-class teenager struggles to cope living with her neurotic family of nomads on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.

After being thrown away from home, pregnant high school dropout Maria meets Matthew, a highly educated and extremely moody electronics repairman. The two begin an unusual romance built on their sense of mutual admiration and trust.

In New York City, a husband and wife butt heads with the granddaughters of the elderly woman who lives in the apartment the couple owns.

History -- make that high school -- may repeat itself when Marni learns that Joanna, the mean girl from her past, is set to be her sister-in-law. Before the wedding bells toll, Marni must show her brother that a tiger doesn't change its stripes. On Marni's side is her mother, while Joanna's backed by her wealthy aunt.

When real estate developer Dan Sanders finalizes plans to level a swath of pristine Oregon forest to make way for a soulless housing subdivision, a band of woodland creatures rises up to throw a monkey wrench into the greedy scheme. Just how much mischief from the furry critters can the businessman take before he calls it quits?

A girl from Yazoo City, Mississippi pins all her hopes on winning the local beauty pageant.

The weeks leading up to a young couple's wedding is comic and stressful, especially as their respective fathers try to lay to rest their feud.

Fed up with the cruelty and stupidity of American culture, an unlikely duo goes on a killing spree, killing reality TV stars, bigots and others they find repugnant in this black comedy.

Suburban soccer moms find themselves constantly competing against each other in their personal lives as their kids settle their differences on the field.

When down-on-his-luck part-time high school wrestling coach Mike agrees to become legal guardian to an elderly man, his ward's troubled grandson turns out to be a star grappler, sparking dreams of a big win -- until the boy's mother retrieves him.

Professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) might be imperiously brilliant, monumentally self-possessed and an intellectual giant -- but when it comes to solving the conundrums of love and family, he's as downright flummoxed as the next guy.

A black comedy that follows three generations of a family, who come together for the funeral of the patriarch - unveiling a litany of family secrets and covert relationships.

Eddie Murphy stars as an over-the-top television evangelist who finds a way to turn television home shopping into a religious experience, and takes America by storm.

A dark comedy centering on the lives of a Neapolitan based family whose father, a fish merchant, is so infatuated with the reality TV show "Grande Fratello" (the Italian version of "Big Brother") he starts living his life as if he were on it.

The luxurious villa of Mark and Jessie Bannister, a yuppie couple, is overrun by loads of uninvited guests who turn the house up side down.

Substance-addicted Hollywood actress, Suzanne Vale is on the skids. After a spell at a detox centre her film company insists as a condition of continuing to employ her that she live with her mother, herself once a star and now a champion drinker. Such a set-up is bad news for Suzanne who has struggled for years to get out of her mother's shadow, and who still treats her like a child. Despite these and other problems, Suzanne begins to see the funny side of her situation, and also realises that not only do daughters have mothers—mothers do too.

Bright young student Raymond Aibelli is forced to sidetrack an important medical internship because his mother, Susan, is recovering from a broken leg. When he isn't tasked with the most mundane aspects of Susan's recuperation, Raymond finds distraction in a neighborhood girl, Toni Peck. But, as Susan begins relying on her son for both physical and emotional needs, Raymond starts developing disturbing and unwanted new yearnings.

This is the story of a dysfunctional New York family, and their attempts to reconcile

Bastien, an ambitious young production assistant, catches the attention of Jean-Louis, a producer of high regard, and is granted a shot at his own television show.

When a disc containing memoirs of a former CIA analyst falls into the hands of Linda Litzke and Chad Feldheimer, the two gym employees see a chance to make enough money for her to have life-changing cosmetic surgery. Predictably, events whirl out of control for the duo doofuses and those in their orbit.

Two New York City children who launch a hilarious scheme to get what they most want this holiday season.

A man who is being driven crazy by the noise in New York City decides to take vigilante action against it.

Margot and her son Claude decide to visit her sister Pauline after she announces that she is getting married to less-than-impressive Malcolm. In short order, the storm the sisters create leaves behind a mess of thrashed relationships and exposed family secrets.

From Spike Lee comes this vibrant semi-autobiographical portrait of a school-teacher, her stubborn jazz-musician husband and their five kids living in '70s Brooklyn.