20 best movies like The Classic (2003)

The daughter of a right-winger, schoolgirl Jing Qiu (Zhou Dong-Yu) is sent to the countryside for reeducation, and tasked to help write a textbook. There she meets Lao San (Shawn Dou), a young soldier with a bright future ahead. Despite the class divide and parental disapproval, romance blooms against turbulent times.

When Seung Min was on his first year at the Academy of Architecture, he met Seo Yeon. She was a musician student, and Seung Min totally fell in love with her. Years have passed, and now he meets Seo Yeon again - she asks him to rebuild her father's old house.

Korea, 1950. A child's vow to take care of his family marks the beginning of a lifelong promise spanning sixty years.

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.

Oasis is a love story of two young people abandoned by families. A young man released from prison visits the widow of the man he killed drunk-driving. There he meets her daughter, wheelchair bound with cerebral palsy. Will these two lost people find a way to make their relationship work?

Determined to leave the ravages of war behind, 38 year old Gian Singh resigns from the British Indian Army to a quiet life. His world is soon thrown in turmoil, when he suddenly finds himself responsible for the life of a 17 year old girl, traumatized by the events that separated her from her family.

A boy experiences first love, friendships and injustices growing up in 1960s Taiwan.

Three lives of three young people intersect over the course of one summer. A rich student and a young working-class man accidentally destroy a diner when their impromptu road race takes a disastrous turn. Ordered by a judge to spend the summer repairing the building, they find themselves becoming rivals for the affections of the owner's daughter.

During WWII, the United States set up army bases in Great Britain as part of the war effort. Against their proper sensibilities, many of the Brits don't much like the brash Yanks, especially when it comes to the G.I.s making advances on the lonely British girls. One relationship that develops is between married John, an Army Captain, and the aristocratic Helen, whose naval husband is away at war. Helen loves her husband, but Helen and John are looking for some comfort during the difficult times.

In a village, a young archaeologist falls in love with a landlord's daughter. Their union seems doomed. But destiny brings them together a year later. Will they live happily ever after?

Dangerous Liaisons is a Chinese film by Hur Jin-ho based on the novel with the same title by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.

Based on actual events that took place at Gwangju Inhwa School for the hearing-impaired, where young deaf students were the victims of repeated sexual assaults by faculty members over a period of five years in the early 2000s.

Thirteen-year-old Heo Yeon Woo, the daughter of a high-ranking official, accompanies her mother to the royal palace to attend her brother, Heo Yeom's civil service examination congratulatory ceremony. By chance, she comes across Crown Prince Lee Hwon. They fall in love, and Yeon Woo is chosen as the Crown Princess of Joseon. Before they can marry, the Dowager Queen secretly orders her death, in order to secure more power for herself. Yeon Woo becomes cursed and is stricken with an illness. All believe her to be dead, including the Crown Prince Lee Hwon. Heartbroken, he refuses to love another. Eight years later, the young king meets a shaman named Wol. He can’t help but find similarities between her and Yeon Woo and begins investigating Yeon Woo’s death.

The son of a North Korean spy decides to follow in his father's footsteps to protect his little sister. After his father’s botched espionage mission, North Korean Myung-hoon and his young sister Hye-in are sent to a labor prison camp. In order to save his sister’s life, Myung-hoon volunteers to become a spy and infiltrates the South as a teenage defector. While attending high school in the South, he meets another girl named Hye-in, and rescues her when she comes under attack. South Korean Intelligence soon discover Myung-hoon’s activities and begin tracking him, all the while his own government sends a vicious assassin to eliminate him.

A 12-year-old Jewish boy hides with a family of Catholic peasant farmers to escape the Nazis.

English-language adaptation of Albert Cohen's epic Swiss tale of a tortured love affair between a high-ranking Jewish official and the protestant wife of one of his employees.

An unexpected phone call brings an elderly woman to her childhood country cottage, and memories of an orphan boy she knew 47 years ago come flooding back to her.

A married fisherman struggles to reconcile his devotion to his male lover within his town's rigid traditions.

Grandmother Mi Ja works part-time as a caretaker, and struggles to raise a teen grandson by herself. Despite her tough situation, she speaks softly, dresses fashionably, and approaches the world with child-like curiosity. Enrolling in a poetry class, she endeavors to capture life in verse form, but her simple dream of completing a poem is stalled by the early signs of Alzheimer's disease and the heavy financial and emotional burden of her grandson's shocking wrongdoing.

A deadbeat teacher helps an angry, aimless teenager find direction in life during his final year of high school.

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.

The Popes are a family who haven't been able to use their real identity for years. In the late sixties, the parents set a weapons lab afire in an effort to hinder the government's Vietnam war campaign. Ever since then, the Popes have been on the run with the authorities never far behind.

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

David Sinclair seems to have everything going for him: he's smart, musically talented, and very successful. To top off his senior year in high school, his band is trying to get a recording session. Therefore, David's suicide leaves everyone, especially his best friend and band-mate, Chris, with a lot of questions.

An epic love story centered around an older man who reads aloud to a woman with Alzheimer's. From a faded notebook, the old man's words bring to life the story about a couple who is separated by World War II, and is then passionately reunited, seven years later, after they have taken different paths.

It’s a sweltering summer, but Jung-won, a terminally ill, thirty-something photographer, is already in the winter of his life when he begins a tentative romance with a young traffic cop who doesn’t know about his condition. Is their relationship doomed before it even begins?

Na-mi, a transfer student, becomes a laughingstock on her first day of school because of her strong southern dialect. Six girls jump in to help the new kid adapt to the new environment, and the girls come to call their circle of friends "Sunny."

Maurice, a reticent young homeless man, somehow manages to get by in Brooklyn; he spends his nights in parked cars until he finds himself at Bizarre, an underground club renowned for its burlesque shows. Maurice is fascinated by the club’s playful revues celebrating self-determined sexuality and creative otherness, and the two female club owners both adore him. He soon becomes a part of their self-selected family, and begins to bond with introverted Luka. But Maurice turns his back on Luka’s growing affection. Running away from his true emotions he drifts aimlessly through the city. He tries to find his feet at a boxing club, where he meets Charlie. Unable to withstand the pressure of his repressed feelings, Maurice unleashes a mounting foment of emotions, pervaded by tenderness and menace.

In the fall of 1963, Eddie Birdlace is an 18-year-old Marine Corps volunteer who is about to ship out with three of his buddies for a tour of duty in Vietnam. Planning a massive blowout for their last night in San Francisco, Eddie, his buddies, and a number of other Marines set up a contest they call a "dogfight."

Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver (Marlon Brando) is reassigned to a Japanese air base, and is confronted with US racial prejudice against the Japanese people. The issue is compounded because a number of the soldiers become romantically involved with Japanese women, in defiance of US military policy. Ordinarily an officer who is by-the-book, Gruver must take a position when a buddy of his, an enlisted man Joe Kelly (Red Buttons) falls in love with a Japanese woman Katsumi (Miyoshi Umeki) and marries her. Gruver risks his position by serving as best man at the wedding ceremony.

Algeria, the 1930s. Younes is nine years old when he is put in his uncle's care in Oran. Rebaptized Jonas, he grows up among the Rio Salado youths, with whom he becomes friends. Emilie is one of the gang; everyone is in love with her. A great love story develops between Jonas and Emilie, which is soon unsettled by the conflicts troubling the country.

Rebbe Mendel is a single father who teaches the Talmud, a sacred text of Judaism, to the boys of his small Polish town. Behind closed doors, he also instructs his daughter, Yentl, despite the fact that girls are forbidden to study religious scripture. When Yentl's father dies, she still has a strong desire to learn about her faith -- so she disguises herself as a male, enrolls in a religious school, and unexpectedly finds love along the way.

A headstrong young teacher in a private school in 1930s Edinburgh ignores the curriculum and influences her impressionable 12 year old charges with her over-romanticized world view.

An Irish lass is branded a traitor when she falls for a British soldier.

A blind, uneducated white girl is befriended by a black man, who becomes determined to help her escape her impoverished and abusive home life.

When an itinerant reluctantly returns home to help his sickly mother run her shop, they're both tempted to turn to crime to help make ends meet.

Set in the late 15th century during the reign of King Yeonsan, two male street clowns and tightrope walkers, Jangsaeng (Gam Wu-seong) and Gong-gil (Lee Joon-gi), are part of an entertainer troupe. Their manager prostitutes the beautiful Gong-gil to rich customers, and Jangsaeng is sickened by this practice. After Gong-gil kills the manager in defense of Jangsaeng, the pair flee to Seoul, where they form a new group with three other street performers...

A widowed doctor of both Chinese and European descent falls in love with a married American correspondent in Hong Kong during China's Communist revolution.

An ex-convict is tracked down by his estranged teenage son, and the pair try to build a relationship and life together in Seattle.

A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.

With World War 2 looming, a prominent family in China must confront the contrasting ideas of traditionalism, communism and Western thinking, while dealing with the most important ideal of all: love and its meaning in society.

Set in the fields of Devon and the WW1 battlefields of Flanders, two brothers fall for the same girl while contending with the pressures of their feudal family life, the war, and the price of courage and cowardice.

British teenager Leo Colston spends a summer in the countryside, where he develops a crush on the beautiful young aristocrat Marian. Eager to impress her, Leo becomes the "go-between" for Marian, delivering secret romantic letters to Ted Burgess, a handsome neighboring farmer.

The fashionable Hye-joo is focused on her career at a brokerage house. She's making a decent living, but her co-workers look down on her. Tae-hee is sick of living under the thumb of her domineering father. She spends her time doing volunteer work for a poet with cerebral palsy. Sullen Ji-young lives in poverty with her grandparents and struggles to find work. The girls, close friends in high school, find themselves drifting apart as their adult lives begin to take shape.

An American professional gambler named Jack Weil (Redford) decides to visit Havana, Cuba to gamble. On the boat to Havana, he meets Roberta Duran (Olin), the wife of a revolutionary, Arturo (Julia). Shortly after their arrival, Arturo is taken away by the secret police, and Roberta is captured and tortured. Jack frees her, but she continues to support the revolution.

Harry is a 23-year-old former boy band idol who is watching his younger brother Max, 16, follow in his footsteps. Harry has detoured on his way to a Japanese concert tour to escort Max on a long-promised camping adventure. Their trip begins on a note of camaraderie but quickly turns serious as old wounds resurface, forcing them to come to terms with their dysfunctional past--Harry's drinking problems, his disconnection from the family, and, most of all, his relationship with Max and the emotional dependency that keeps them from moving into adulthood.

China, during the rule of the Qing Dynasty. The arranged marriage between Wang Lung, a humble farmer, and O-Lan, a domestic slave, will endure the many hardships of life over the years; but the temptations of a fragile prosperity will endanger their love and the survival of their entire family.

Clarissa Dalloway looks back on her youth as she readies for a gathering at her house. The wife of a legislator and a doyenne of London's upper-crust party scene, Clarissa finds that the plight of ailing war veteran Septimus Warren Smith reminds her of a past romance with Peter Walsh. In flashbacks, young Clarissa explores her possibilities with Peter.

A gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.

A small-town piano teacher is shocked by the arrival of her foster daughter's real mother, whose young lover soon follows and causes further disruption.