Movies like The Shipping News (2001)
The best movies like The Shipping News (2001) are The Bridges of Madison County (1995), The Piano (1993) and Stanley & Iris (1990). If The Shipping News hooked you with its drama and romance, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Bridges of Madison County (1995)7.7/10 from 2,476 votes
- NewestLovely, Still (2009)Released 2009
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Piano (1993)
When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited pre-teen daughter Flora to the wilderness of 19th-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStanley & Iris (1990)
An illiterate cook at a company cafeteria tries for the attention of a newly widowed woman. As they get to know one another, she discovers his inability to read. When he is fired, she takes on trying to teach him to read in her kitchen each night.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCross Creek (1983)
In the 1930s, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings moves to Florida's backwaters to write in peace. She feels bothered by affectionate men, editors and confused neighbors, but soon she connects and writes The Yearling, a classic of American literature.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Shadowlands (1993)
C.S. Lewis, a world-renowned writer and professor, leads a passionless life until he meets spirited poet Joy Gresham.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe House of the Spirits (1993)
A rancher, his clairvoyant wife and their family face turbulent years in South America.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLoverboy (2005)
A neglected daughter becomes a possessive mother in an emotional journey into the heart and mind of a woman who loved too much.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Cider House Rules (1999)
Homer is an orphan who was never adopted, becoming the favorite of orphanage director Dr. Larch. Dr. Larch imparts his full medical knowledge on Homer, who becomes a skilled, albeit unlicensed, physician. But Homer yearns for a self-chosen life outside the orphanage. What will Homer learn about life and love in the cider house? What of the destiny that Dr. Larch has planned for him?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAway from Her (2007)
Fiona and Grant have been married for nearly 50 years. They have to face the fact that Fiona’s absent-mindedness is a symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. She must go to a specialized nursing home, where she slowly forgets Grant and turns her affection to Aubrey, another patient in the home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUnder the Sun (1998)
Olof lives alone on his family's farm after the death of his mother. Unable to read and write, he is dependent on his younger friend, Erik, who helps him in the afternoons. Once a sailor, Erik brags of having known hundreds of women. Out of the blue, Olof advertises in the local paper for a young lady housekeeper, and Ellen, a middle-class city woman, arrives to take over the house and, as the summer goes on, Olof's heart and Erik's desire as well.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Painted Veil (2006)
A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSnow Falling on Cedars (1999)
In the 1950s, a Japanese-American fisherman is suspected of killing his neighbour at sea. For Ishmael, a local reporter, the trial strikes a deep emotional chord when he finds his ex-lover is linked to the case. As he investigates the killing, he uncovers some startling clues that lead him to a shocking discovery.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCarried Away (1996)
Based on Jim Harrison's book, "Farmer". 47-year-old Joseph Svenden lives on the family farm with his dying mother and teaches at a two room schoolhouse with Rosealee, his lover and his best friend's widow. Joseph, who lacks a college degree, learns that he will lose his teaching job at the end of the year when the school district expands into his town. Meanwhile, he is seduced by 17-year-old Catherine, a new student in his class. His affair with Catherine and losing his teaching job forces Joseph to take a look at his previously dull life and to decide how he wants to live the rest of it.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)
Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble. Settled into a job at a grocery store and an ongoing affair with local woman Betty Carver, Gilbert finally has his life shaken up by the free-spirited Becky.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOne True Thing (1998)
A career woman reassesses her parents' lives after she is forced to care for her cancer-stricken mother.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAn Unfinished Life (2005)
Stoic and heartbroken, Einar Gilkyson quietly lives in the rugged Wyoming ranchlands alongside his only trusted friend, Mitch Bradley. One day, the woman he blames for the death of his only son arrives at his door broke, desperate, and with a granddaughter he's never known. But even as buried anger and accusations resurface, the way is opened for unexpected connection, adventure, and forgiveness.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLovely, Still (2009)
A holiday fable that tells the story of an elderly man discovering love for the first time.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTwo Lovers (2008)
A depressed man moves back in with his parents following a recent heartbreak and finds himself with two women.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWinter People (1989)
Wayland Jackson, a widower with a young daughter, moves to a small, impoverished mountain village in North Carolina, circa 1934. They are taken in by Collie Wright, a single mother with an illegitimate baby, and she and Wayland soon fall in love. Trouble starts when the identity of her baby's father is revealed.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Closing the Ring (2007)
During the 1940s, a group of young men go off to war, leaving behind Ethel Ann, who is in love with one of them, Teddy. In modern-day Belfast, a man named Jimmy endeavors to return a ring found in the wreckage of a crashed plane. He travels to Michigan, where the grown Ethel Ann, who married another man after Teddy was killed in battle, now lives. Ethel Ann must decide whether to go with Jimmy to meet the soldier who last saw Teddy alive.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Straight Story (1999)
Retired farmer and widower Alvin Straight learns one day that his estranged brother Lyle has suffered a severe stroke. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. He then has the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOne Special Night (1999)
Builder Robert is visiting his ailing wife in a nursing home and is having problems getting a taxi home due to an intense snow storm. One of the doctors, Katherine offers him a lift home however their car gets stuck and they have to spend the night in an empty cabin nearby. They talk and bond, but afterwards seem to have difficulty beginning a relationship.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
On Golden Pond (1981)
For Norman and Ethel Thayer, this summer on golden pond is filled with conflict and resolution. When their daughter Chelsea arrives, the family is forced to renew the bonds of love and overcome the generational friction that has existed for years.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA River Runs Through It (1992)
The Maclean brothers, Paul and Norman, live a relatively idyllic life in rural Montana, spending much of their time fly fishing. The sons of a minister, the boys eventually part company when Norman moves east to attend college, leaving his rebellious brother to find trouble back home. When Norman finally returns, the siblings resume their fishing outings, and assess where they've been and where they're going.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOscar and Lucinda (1997)
After a childhood of abuse by his evangelistic father, misfit Oscar Hopkins becomes an Anglican minister and develops a divine obsession with gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a rich Australian heiress shopping in London for materials for her newly acquired glass factory back home. Deciding to travel to Australia as a missionary, Oscar meets Lucinda aboard ship, and a mutual obsession blossoms. They make a wager that will alter each of their destinies.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Best Intentions (1992)
In this film about Ingmar Bergman's parents, Henrik Bergman is studying for the priesthood and trying to make ends meet when he encounters the lovely, affluent Anna. Despite their social differences, Henrik and Anna fall in love, wed and move to the country. They lead a quiet life as Henrik works as a priest, but it isn't long before the simple people and plain surroundings make Anna long for a more lavish lifestyle, which causes marital stress.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMarilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School (2006)
Frank Keane, a baker by trade, has been consumed by grief over his wife's untimely death. But everything changes when he pulls his bread truck over on a rural highway to help a dying stranger entangled in a car wreck, who was on his way to a fateful reunion.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisHeartlands (2003)
Gentle Colin 'Col' Lawes happily lead a quiet life, running a news agency with his soiled-rotten wife Sandra and playing competition darts in the Atletic Arms team. Colin catches her committing adultery with team captain Geoff, a cop, who pretends Colin abused her. Col is thrown off the team just after it qualified for the league finals in Blackpool. He decides to travel there alone, hoping to win her back.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Two Family House (2000)
Buddy Visalo (Michael Rispoli) is a factory worker, a frustrated crooner who once had a shot at the big time. Buddy's dreams of greatness have been reduced to an endless series of failed moneymaking schemes. His latest is buying a two-family house for him and his wife, Estelle (Katherine Narducci) and converting the ground floor into a neighborhood bar where he can perform. The wrench in the works is that he also inherits the upstairs tenants, Mary,a pregnant Irish girl fresh off the boat (Kelly Macdonald) and her abusive, alcoholic husband, Jim (Kevin Conway). As Buddy's gang of Italians tries to handle the situation, the girl goes into labor, and a baby is born, forcing them all to confront the limits of their tolerance and compassion.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Bee Season (2005)
Wife and mother Miriam begins a downward emotional spiral as her husband avoids their collapsing marriage by immersing himself in his 11-year-old daughter's quest to become a spelling-bee champion.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Shipping News?
The closest matches to The Shipping News are The Bridges of Madison County (1995), The Piano (1993) and Stanley & Iris (1990). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Shipping News?
People who watched The Shipping News most often go on to The Bridges of Madison County (1995), The Piano (1993) and Stanley & Iris (1990).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Shipping News?
The Bridges of Madison County (1995), rated 7.7/10 by 2,476 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Shipping News?
Lovely, Still (2009) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Shipping News?
Yes: The Bridges of Madison County (1995), The Piano (1993) and Stanley & Iris (1990).
How are movies similar to The Shipping News chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Shipping News, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.