20 best movies like sex, lies, and videotape (1989)

Unable to cope with a recent personal tragedy, LA's top celebrity shrink turns into a pothead with no concern for his appearance and a creeping sense of his inability to help his patients.

Sex is a background to examine intimacy and vulnerability. Looks at the complexity of modern day relationships told through eight separate couples. Through dialogue and compromising situations, the film takes us from the beginning of a relationship to the aftermath of one, and examines every stage in between seeing humor within the drama, heartache and confusion of it all.

A New Jersey guy dedicated to his family, friends, and church, develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to find happiness and intimacy with his potential true love.

Though a childhood bout with polio left him dependent on an iron lung, Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) maintains a career as a journalist and poet. A writing assignment dealing with sex and the disabled piques Mark's curiosity, and he decides to investigate the possibility of experiencing sex himself. When his overtures toward a caregiver scare her away, he books an appointment with sex surrogate Cheryl Green (Helen Hunt) to lose his virginity.

Estranged twins Maggie and Milo coincidentally cheat death on the same day, prompting them to reunite and confront the reasons their lives went so wrong. As the twins' reunion reinvigorates them, they realize the key to fixing their lives may just lie in repairing their relationship.

A comedian tries to make it as a serious actor when his reality-TV star fiancé talks him into broadcasting their wedding on her TV show.

Elliot is going to the island of Eden to live out his submissive fantasies, but inadvertently photographs diamond smugglers at work. Smugglers, and detectives, follow him to the island, where they try to retrieve the film. Elliot begins falling in love with Lisa, the head mistress of the island, and Lisa must evaluate her feelings about Elliot and her own motivations.

Set in 1890s North Wales over a long, hot August weekend, the Victorian calm of a household is suddenly upset with the arrival of a London couple who impose their city ways and thoughts on the more rurally based family. An adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play, "Uncle Vanya."

Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend.

An ophthalmologist's mistress threatens to reveal their affair to his wife, while a married documentary filmmaker is infatuated by another woman.

By following ten simple rules, 20-somethings Vince and Cameron spice up their relationship by sleeping around. But when their straitlaced friends get engaged, their relationship gets turned upside down. To put the rules to the test, they will go on the road to the Hamptons to crash the biggest party of the year where love triangles collide and off-the-wall mayhem ensues.

Ren MacCormack is transplanted from Boston to the small southern town of Bomont where loud music and dancing are prohibited. Not one to bow to the status quo, Ren challenges the ban, revitalizing the town and falling in love with the minister’s troubled daughter Ariel in the process.

A young man is rocked by two announcements from his elderly father: that he has terminal cancer, and that he has a young male lover.

Two romantically-engaged corporate spies team up to manipulate a corporate race to corner the market on a medical innovation that will reap huge profits and enable them to lead an extravagant lifestyle together.

The lives of two struggling musicians, who happen to be brothers, inevitably change when they team up with a beautiful, up-and-coming singer.

Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.

A modern reimagining of the classic romantic comedy, this contemporary version closely follows new love for two couples as they journey from the bar to the bedroom and are eventually put to the test in the real world.

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.

A hard-partying high school senior's philosophy on life changes when he meets the not-so-typical "nice girl."

At a family reunion, the Cooper clan find that their parents' home is being foreclosed. "Temporarily," Ma moves in with son George's family, Pa with daughter Cora. But the parents are like sand in the gears of their middle-aged children's well regulated households. Can the old folks take matters into their own hands?

A 29-year-old lawyer and her lesbian best friend experience a dramatic shift in their longtime bond after one enters a serious relationship

When Jay and Annie first got together, their romantic connection was intense – but ten years and two kids later, the flame of their love needs a spark. To kick things up a notch, they decide – why not? – to make a video of themselves trying out every position in The Joy of Sex in one marathon three-hour session. It seems like a great idea – until they discover that their most private video is no longer private. With their reputations on the line, they know they’re just one click away from being laid bare to the world... but as their race to reclaim their video leads to a night they'll never forget, they'll find that their video will expose even more than they bargained for.

A fidgety, wisecracking video store clerk develops a fixation on a particularly reclusive customer, a frequent visitor to the pornography section of Cinefile, the video store where he works in Los Angeles. After multiple failures to impress her during their brief daily transactions, he finds her street address in the store's database, drives to her apartment building and initiates an unconventional campaign to win her affections.

Cursed since childhood, dentist Charlie Kagan cannot find the right woman. Even worse, he learns that each of his ex-girlfriends finds true love with the man she meets after her relationship with him ends. Hearing of Charlie's reputation as a good-luck charm, women from all over line up for a quick tryst. But when Charlie meets the woman of his dreams, he must find a way to break the curse or risk losing her to the next man she meets.

Brian Cox stars as Jacques, the curmudgeonly owner of a gritty New York dive bar that serves as home to a motley assortment of professional drinkers. Jacques is determinedly drinking and smoking himself to death when he meets Lucas (Dano), a homeless young man who has already given up on life. Determined to keep his legacy alive, Jacques deems Lucas is a fitting heir and takes him under his wing, schooling him in the male-centric laws of his alcoholic clubhouse: no new customers, no fraternizing with customers and, absolutely no women. Lucas is a quick study, but their friendship is put to the test when the distraught and beautiful April (Isild Le Besco) shows up at the bar seeking shelter, and Lucas insists they help her out.

As the devoutly single Don Johnston is dumped by his latest girlfriend, he receives an anonymous pink letter informing him that he has a son who may be looking for him.

After a one-night stand a couple is faced with the terrifying possibility of what they really want.

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life-dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge-he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues-and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled; he succumbs to his own jealousy and arranges to have her followed.

On a flight home to Chicago for a family wedding, childhood friends Josh and Molly innocently agree to fake a wedding engagement to make Josh's dying father happy. Things quickly get out of hand with their two boisterous families, and a series of events causes them to pretend to be a couple and start planning a phony wedding. When the playacting begins to foster real feelings, the two must make some serious decisions: Split up and return to their lives in LA, or make a life as a couple back in Chicago?

A young man gets in over his head when he convinces a small-town girl he's a secret agent.

Mickey, a free-spirited New York cabbie, and Francis, a materialistic Wall Street stockbroker, are extremely competitive and confused about women as a result of their father's influence. Though they disagree about everything, they have one thing in common: Mickey's ex-fiance Heather is Francis's secret love. Though both brothers have beautiful wives, Heather triggers their longtime sibling rivalry

As a parting shot, fired reporter Ann Mitchell prints a fake letter from unemployed "John Doe," who threatens suicide in protest of social ills. The paper is forced to rehire Ann and hires John Willoughby to impersonate "Doe." Ann and her bosses cynically milk the story for all it's worth, until the made-up "John Doe" philosophy starts a whole political movement.

Cheated on, mistreated and stepped on, the women are holding their breath, waiting for the elusive "good man" to break a string of less-than-stellar lovers. Friends and confidants Vannah, Bernie, Glo and Robin talk it all out, determined to find a better way to breathe.

On a small town college campus, a philosophy professor in existential crisis gives his life new purpose when he enters into a relationship with his student.

In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.

An ambitious young man wins an heiress's heart but has to cope with his former girlfriend's pregnancy.

Jim McAllister, a well-liked high school government teacher, can't help but notice that successful student Tracy Flick uses less than ethical tactics to get what she wants. When Tracy runs for school president, Jim feels that she will be a poor influence on the student body and convinces Paul, a dim-witted but popular student athlete, to run against Tracy. When she becomes aware of Jim's secret involvement in the race, a bitter feud is sparked.

Overachieving actress, Rebecca (Moore), must come to grips with her failing marriage to stay-at-home dad, Tom (Duchovny). While Rebecca's slacker brother, Tobey (Billy Crudup), can't seem to commit to his aspiring-novelist girlfriend, Elaine (Maggie Gyllenhaal). As both relationships spin out of control, the two couples embark on a quest to rediscover the magic and romance of falling in love in New York.

Thirty-nine-year old divorcé Louise Harrington (Linney) works in the admissions office at Columbia University School of the Arts. She is unnerved when she receives an application from F. Scott Feinstadt, the same name of her high school sweetheart who was killed in a car crash, and calls the student to arrange an interview. His appearance, mannerisms, and painting style closely resemble those of her former love, and she begins to suspect the young artist may be the reincarnation of her old flame. Hours after meeting, the two embark upon an affair. Also complicating Louise's life are her relationship with her ex-husband Peter , who confesses he is learning to cope with a sex addiction that, unknown to her, plagued their marriage; her ne'er-do-well brother Sammy, who is favored by their mother Ellie despite his shortcomings; and her best friend Missy, who stole the original Scott from Louise before his death and seems intent on doing the same with the contemporary version.

Nick and Meg Burrows return to Paris, the city where they honeymooned, to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary and rediscover some romance in their long-lived marriage. The film follows the couple as long-established tensions in their marriage break out in humorous and often painful ways.

The separation of a long married couple goes awry when they fall for each other again.

When Jack and Sally announce that they're splitting up, this comes as a shock to their best friends Gabe and Judy. Maybe mostly because they also are drifting apart and are now being made aware of it. So while Jack and Sally try to go on and meet new people, the marriage of Gabe and Judy gets more and more strained, and they begin to find themselves being attracted to other people.

In the 1950s, a poor Georgia cotton farmer and his sons search for the gold presumably buried on the farm by their grandfather but problems related to poverty, marital infidelity, unemployment and booze threaten to destroy their family.

An unemployed Brit vents his rage on unsuspecting strangers as he embarks on a nocturnal London odyssey.

Feeling pressured to become more sexually experienced before she goes to college, Brandy Klark makes a list of things to accomplish before hitting campus in the fall.

Conception is a clever, romantic comedy that proves it takes more than sex to make a baby. From a couple fighting the odds of fertility to young teenagers losing their virginity, the film follows nine very different couples on the night they conceive, showing that sex can sometimes be more neurotic than erotic. The hilarious ensemble cast includes Emmy-winner Julie Bowen and Sarah Hyland (“Modern Family”), Connie Britton (“Friday Night Lights”), David Arquette (Never Been Kissed), Jason Mantzoukas (“The League”), and Alan Tudyk (Dodgeball).

In this bifurcated crime narrative, a disillusioned hitman attempts to escape from his violent lifestyle against the wishes of his partner, who is infatuated with him, and an eccentric mute repeatedly encounters, then subsequently falls for a depressed woman looking for the prostitute who supposedly stole her ex-boyfriend's affections.

A couple who can't stop fighting embark on a last-ditch effort to save their marriage: turning their fights into songs and starting a band.

A troubled loner, Bob Maconel, imagines blowing up the tower in Los Angeles where he works. He takes a revolver to his office intent on killing colleagues, and then himself. At home, he holds conversations with his fish, who encourage him to do it. His supervisor picks on him. As he's screwing his courage to the sticking place, he drops a bullet; while on the floor looking for it, another colleague does exactly what Bob has been planning. Bob emerges a hero and the one colleague he likes, a woman with a bright smile, is severely wounded. Can Bob help her through despair and find himself and joy in life? Or, as everyone says, is this impossible for a man like him?