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Movies like Places in the Heart

Key Features:
Widowhood, Survival, Racism, 1930s, Rural setting, Great Depression, Ku Klux Klan, Unlikely friendship, Community, Perseverance, Family
Tone:
serious, earnest, dramatic
Target Audience:
Fans of historical dramas, Viewers interested in social issues, Those who appreciate character-driven stories
Emotional Arc:
Grief → Resilience → Hope

Places in the Heart

1984-09-11
Places in the Heart Poster - Find Similar Movies

In 1935 rural Texas, recently widowed Edna Spaulding struggles to survive with two small children, a farm to run, and very little money in the bank - not to mention a deadly tornado and the unwelcome presence of the Ku Klux Klan. Edna is aided by her beautician sister, Margaret; a blind boarder, Mr. Will; and a would-be thief, Moze, who decides to teach Edna how to plant and harvest cotton.

Genres
Drama
Cast
Sally Field, Lindsay Crouse, John Malkovich, Danny Glover, Ed Harris, Ray Baker, Amy Madigan, Terry O, Bert Remsen, Jay Patterson
Crew
Robert Benton, Robert Benton
Rating
7.177(181 votes)
Places in the HeartPlaces in the Heart
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Sounder
Sounder(1972)
7.5

The oldest son of a loving and strong family of black sharecroppers comes of age in the Depression-era South after his father is imprisoned for stealing food.



The Trip to Bountiful
7.205

Carrie Watts is living the twilight of her life trapped in an apartment in 1940s Houston, Texas with a controlling daughter-in-law and a hen-pecked son. Her fondest wish – just once before she dies – is to revisit Bountiful, the small Texas town of her youth which she still refers to as "home."



The River
The River(1984)
6.35

Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.



Manderlay
Manderlay(2005)
6.9

In 1933, a young woman and her father discover an Alabama plantation whose inhabitants live as if slavery had never been abolished. Feeling a sense of duty to those behind the heavy gates, she stays to liberate the people and see them through their first harvest. With four of her father's colleagues and a lawyer, she faces the daunting task of resurrecting the place known as Manderlay.



Cold Mountain
6.9

In this classic story of love and devotion set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, a wounded Confederate soldier named W.P. Inman deserts his unit and travels across the South, aiming to return to his young wife, Ada, who he left behind to tend their farm. As Inman makes his perilous journey home, Ada struggles to keep their home intact with the assistance of Ruby, a mysterious drifter sent to help her by a kindly neighbor.



Our Souls at Night
6.6

Addie Moore and Louis Waters, a widow and widower, have lived next to each other for years. The pair have almost no relationship, but that all changes when Addie tries to make a connection with her neighbour.



Hold Your Breath
5.882

In 1930s Oklahoma amid the region's horrific dust storms, a woman is convinced that a sinister presence is threatening her family.



Shenandoah
6.9

Charlie Anderson, a farmer in Shenandoah, Virginia, finds himself and his family in the middle of the Civil War he wants nothing to do with. When his youngest boy is taken prisoner by the North, the Civil War is forced upon him.



Where the Heart Is
7.098

Novalee Nation is a 17-year-old Tennessee transient who has to grow up in a hurry when she's left pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend on a roadside, and takes refuge in the friendly aisles of Wal-Mart. Eventually, some eccentric but kindly strangers 'adopt' Novalee and her infant daughter, helping them buck the odds and build a new life.



Tornado Valley
6.4

Liz McAdams is haunted by the memories of a tornado that destroyed her home 25 years ago. Now a professional storm tracker, she and her family are in danger once again as another devastating twister rapidly gains momentum. Caught in the path of destruction, Liz and her estranged husband struggle to save those they love...



Yearning
Yearning(1964)
8.1

War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly built supermarket and Reiko's in-laws plan to convert their small shop into a supermarket, to her detriment.



Crazy Heart
6.923

When reporter Jean Craddock interviews Bad Blake—an alcoholic, seen-better-days country music legend—they connect, and the hard-living crooner sees a possible saving grace in a life with Jean and her young son.



Giant
Giant(1956)
7.6

Wealthy rancher Bick Benedict and dirt-poor cowboy Jett Rink both woo Leslie Lynnton, a beautiful young woman from Maryland who is new to Texas. She marries Benedict, but she is shocked by the racial bigotry of the White Texans against the local people of Mexican descent. Rink discovers oil on a small plot of land, and while he uses his vast, new wealth to buy all the land surrounding the Benedict ranch, the Benedict's disagreement over prejudice fuels conflict that runs across generations.



I'll See You in My Dreams

A sudden loss disrupts Carol’s orderly life, propelling her into the dating world for the first time in 20 years. Finally living in the present tense, she finds herself swept up in not one, but two unexpected relationships that challenge her assumptions about what it means to grow old.



Bernie
Bernie(2012)
6.579

In small-town Texas, affable and popular mortician Bernie Tiede strikes up a friendship with Marjorie Nugent, a wealthy widow well known for her sour attitude. When she becomes controlling and abusive, Bernie goes to great lengths to remove himself from her grasp.



In Country
5.6

Samantha Hughes, a teenaged Kentucky girl, never knew her father, who died in Vietnam before her birth. Samantha lives with her uncle Emmett, who also served in Vietnam. Emmett hangs around with Tom, Earl, and Pete, three other Vietnam vets who, like Emmett, all have problems of one kind or another that relate to their war experiences. Samantha becomes obsessed with finding out about her father.



Fried Green Tomatoes
7.682

Amidst her own personality crisis, a southern housewife meets an outgoing old woman who tells her the story of Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison, two young women who experienced hardships and love in 1920s Whistle Stop, Alabama.



The Hi-Lo Country
6.099

An intimate story of the enduring bond of friendship between two hard-living men, set against a sweeping backdrop: the American West, post-World War II, in its twilight. Pete and Big Boy are masters of the prairie, but ultimately face trickier terrain: the human heart.



King of the Hill
6.791

Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis. His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.



Clara's Heart
5.447

David is a teenager whose parents are in a deteriorating marriage after their infant daughter dies. Clara is a chambermaid at a Jamaican resort who's hired to be a housekeeper. She and David develop a close bond, opening his eyes and heart to new experiences, and eventually leading to a disturbing secret in Clara's past.



Untamed Heart
6.866

Caroline, a young waitress who seems to have bad taste in men, is on her way home one night when thugs attempt to rape her. Adam, the mysterious busboy who works at the same diner, helps fight off the assailants, and she begins a relationship with him -- but not all their fellow Minnesotans are happy for them. Meanwhile, the couple face their own difficulties when Caroline finds about Adam's past, including his unique health condition.



Steel Magnolias
7.2

A young beautician, newly arrived in a small Louisiana town, finds work at the local salon, where a small group of women share a close bond of friendship and welcome her into the fold.



Forrest Gump
8.463

A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.



Days of Heaven
7.492

In 1916, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer.



Hearts in Atlantis
6.8

A widowed mother and her son change when a mysterious stranger enters their lives.



Lost in the Sun
5.914

A small time crook and a newly-orphaned teenage boy team up to perform a string of robberies.



Winter's Bone
6.8

After discovering her father put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared, 17-year-old Ree Dolly must confront the local criminal underworld and the harsh Ozark wilderness in order to to track down her father and save her family.



Sommersby
Sommersby(1993)
6.346

Set in the South just after the US Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband, believed killed in battle. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he suddenly returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an imposter. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home, and perhaps later into her heart.



Maudie
Maudie(2016)
7.714

Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis falls in love with a fishmonger while working for him as a live-in housekeeper.



The Color Purple
7.7

An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing 'Mister' Albert Johnson, things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she can. She perseveres, holding on to her dream of one day being reunited with her sister in Africa.



Crimes of the Heart

Three sisters try to come to grips with the meaning of their mother's suicide.



Radio
Radio(2003)
7.308

In the racially divided town of Anderson, South Carolina in 1976, football coach Harold Jones spots a mentally disabled African-American young man nicknamed Radio near his practice field and is inspired to befriend him. Soon, Radio is Jones' loyal assistant, and he becomes a student at T.L. Hanna High School. But things start to sour when Coach Jones begins taking guff from parents and fans who feel that his devotion to Radio is getting in the way of the team's quest for a championship.



Fertile Ground
4.264

Emily and Nate Weaver leave the city for the rural comfort of Nate’s ancestral home in the country. Once there, Emily is plagued by horrifying visions and haunted by the ghosts inhabiting their isolated new home. When Nate’s behavior undergoes a strange and fearful metamorphosis, Emily fears she might be the latest target in a murderous tradition.



Ghosts of Mississippi

A Mississippi district attorney and the widow of Medgar Evers struggle to bring a white supremacist to justice for the 1963 murder of the civil rights leader.



Deep in the Heart
7.5

An unrecognizable, charred corpse discovered in a remote mountain village in China connects three local stories.



Here
Here(2024)
6.543

An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.



The Guardians
6.1

In this ensemble drama set in rural France, the women of the Paridier farm are left to run it by themselves while their men are off fighting in World War I. But things become complicated with the arrival of American troops.



The Milagro Beanfield War

The accidental breakdown of an irrigation valve launches a hot confrontation between the mainly Latino farmers in a tiny New Mexico town and the real estate developers and politicians determined to acquire their land for a golf resort.



The Parts You Lose
6.719

An unlikely friendship unfolds between a young deaf boy, Wesley, and a fugitive criminal who takes refuge in an abandoned barn on the family’s rural North Dakota farm.



Still Mine
6.9

Craig, a fiercely determined New Brunswick farmer, sets out to build a more suitable house for his ailing wife, Irene, despite their children's concerns. As he starts building, he is blindsided by the bureaucratic codes and officials. As Irene becomes increasingly ill, Craig fights back. Based on a true story.



Norma Rae
Norma Rae(1979)
7.2

Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.



God Bless the Broken Road

The story of a young mother who loses her husband in Afghanistan and struggles to raise their young daughter in his absence.



Raintree County
6.4

In 1859, idealist John Wickliff Shawnessey, a resident of Raintree County, Indiana, is distracted from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither by Susanna Drake, a rich New Orleans girl. This love triangle is further complicated by the American Civil War, and dark family history.



In the Land of Women
5.871

After a bad breakup with his girlfriend leaves him heartbroken, Carter Webb moves to Michigan to take care of his ailing grandmother. Once there, he gets mixed up in the lives of the mother and daughters who live across the street.



Safe Haven
7.234

A young woman with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her.



Dreamland
Dreamland(2019)
5.9

Amid the dust storms and economic depression of Dust Bowl Era Oklahoma, Eugene Evans finds his family farm on the brink of foreclosure. Discovering fugitive bank robber Allison Wells hiding in his small town, he is torn between claiming the bounty on her head and his growing attraction to the seductive criminal.



Shame
Shame(1968)
7.517

In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.



In Cold Blood
7.5

After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.



Land
Land(2021)
6.716

Edee, in the aftermath of an unfathomable event, finds herself unable to stay connected to the world she once knew and in the face of that uncertainty, retreats to the magnificent, but unforgiving, wilds of the Rockies. After a local hunter brings her back from the brink of death, she must find a way to live again.



Honkytonk Man
6.349

During the Great Depression, a young boy leaves his family's Oklahoma farm to travel with his country musician uncle who is trying out for the Grand Ole Opry.



7 Women
7 Women(1965)
6.4

In a mission in China in 1935, a group of women are preyed on by Mongolian bandits, led by Warlord chief Tunga Khan.



Nutcrackers
5.789

Just as Mike is on the heels of closing the biggest deal of his career, he's pulled away from his bachelor life in the big city to a farm in rural Ohio in order to help his recently orphaned nephews find a new home.



The Blind Side
7.7

The story of Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All American football player and first round NFL draft pick with the help of a caring woman and her family.



40 Acres
40 Acres(2025)
6.125

Hailey Freeman and her family are the last descendants of African American farmers who settled in rural Canada after the Civil War. In a famine-decimated near future, they now struggle to safeguard their farm, as they make one last stand against a vicious militia hell-bent on taking their 40 Acres.



Of Mice and Men
7.242

Two drifters, one a gentle but slow giant, try to make money working the fields during the Depression so they can fulfill their dreams.



The Violent Men
6.4

A former Union Army officer plans to sell out to Anchor Ranch and move east with his fiancée, but the low price offered by Anchor's crippled owner and the outfit's bullying tactics make him reconsider. When one of his hands is murdered he decides to stay and fight, utilizing his war experience. Not all is well at Anchor with the owner's wife carrying on with his brother who also has a Mexican woman in town.



Coming Home
7

In 1968 California, a Marine officer's wife falls in love with a former high school classmate who suffered a paralyzing combat injury in the war.



The Woman in the Yard

In the aftermath of her husband's death, widow Ramona's struggle to raise her two kids is hindered by the arrival of a mysterious woman with supernatural abilities.



The New Land
7.52

A Swedish immigrant family struggles to adapt to their new life on the American frontier during the second half of the 19th century amidst civil war, native uprising and the lure of gold in California.



The Color Purple

A decades-spanning tale of love and resilience and of one woman's journey to independence. Celie faces many hardships in her life, but ultimately finds extraordinary strength and hope in the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.



The Searchers
7.7

As a Civil War veteran spends years searching for a young niece captured by Indians, his motivation becomes increasingly questionable.



Cows
Cows(1992)
6.4

A film set in the Spanish side of the Basque Country, beginning in the Carlist war of 1875 and ending during the Spanish Civil war of 1936. The film portrays how one single act of cowardice shapes the life of the next three generations of two families and fuels the intense rivalry which will span the next sixty-one years.



Love in the Time of Cholera

In Colombia just after the Great War, an old man falls from a ladder; dying, he professes great love for his wife. After the funeral, a man calls on the widow - she dismisses him angrily. Flash back more than 50 years to the day Florentino Ariza, a telegraph boy, falls in love with Fermina Daza, the daughter of a mule trader.



The Lost Husband
6.8

Trying to put her life back together after the death of her husband, Libby and her children move to her estranged Aunt's goat farm in central Texas.



After the Storm
6.1

Lauren wants to rebuild her community, including her family home, in the aftermath of a devastatingly disastrous storm.



The Journey of Natty Gann

America is in the depths of the Great Depression. Families drift apart when faraway jobs beckon. A courageous young girl confronts overwhelming odds when she embarks on a cross-country search for her father. During her odyssey, she forms a close bond with two diverse traveling companions: a magnificent, protective wolf, and a hardened drifter.



Mississippi Burning
7.68

Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.



Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

After her husband dies, Alice and her son, Tommy, leave their small New Mexico town for California, where Alice hopes to make a new life for herself as a singer. Money problems force them to settle in Arizona instead, where Alice takes a job as waitress in a small diner.



Tim
Tim(1979)
6.195

Handsome but backward gardener Tim Melville has a new woman in his life. She is Mary, his widowed employer, a woman who had given up on love until she had found Tim. At first they are friends. But soon they become lovers, as Mary, drawn to Tim's innocence and magnetism, begins to teach him all about life - and love.



Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.



Where the Crawdads Sing

Abandoned by her family, Kya raises herself all alone in the marshes outside of her small town. When her former boyfriend is found dead, Kya is instantly branded by the local townspeople and law enforcement as the prime suspect for his murder.



13 Minutes
5.9

As a new day begins in the small American town of Minninnewah, the residents start their day as ordinary as the next. Mother Nature, however, has other plans for them. Inhabitants have just 13 minutes to seek shelter before the largest tornado on record ravages the town, leaving them struggling to protect their loved ones and fighting for their lives. Left to deal with the aftermath, four families must overcome their differences and find strength in each other in order to survive.



A Bluebird in My Heart

An ex-con's attempts to live a quiet life are derailed when the daughter of the woman sheltering him is the victim of a vicious attack.



That Evening Sun
6.579

An aging Tennessee farmer returns to his homestead and must confront a family betrayal, the reappearance of an old enemy, and the loss of his farm.



The Far Country
6.9

During the Klondike Gold Rush, a misanthropic cattle driver and his talkative elderly partner run afoul of the law in Alaska and are forced to work for a saloon owner to take her supplies into a newly booming but lawless Candian town.



Mudbound
Mudbound(2017)
7.374

In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.



Yellow Earth
7.211

A communist soldier is sent to a remote region of China in order to collect folk songs. Staying with a peasant family (a widower with two small children), he discovers a community whose way of life is completely alien to him, but he gradually wins their trust…



Heart and Souls
6.9

A fateful night in 1959, four people die when the bus they are riding crashes. They continue as ghosts; their souls become eternally entwined to the life of a child born at the moment of their deaths as his guardians. Baby Thomas grows up to be a businessman who has memories of his playmates, but assumes they are products of his youthful imagination. When the ghosts realize they need Thomas' help to move on to the afterlife, they decide to make an appearance once more.



Mr. Blake at Your Service!

Since his wife's death, Andrew Blake is depressed. In an ultimate impetus, he leaves London to go back to France, in the house he met her. This journey through happy days memories won't go as planned.



Things We Lost in the Fire

A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.



Dead Birds
5.681

Towards the end of the Civil War, a group of Confederate soldiers hole up on an abandoned plantation after robbing a bank, and find themselves at the mercy of supernatural forces.



Free State of Jones
6.768

In 1863, Mississippi farmer Newt Knight serves as a medic for the Confederate Army. Opposed to slavery, Knight would rather help the wounded than fight the Union. After his nephew dies in battle, Newt returns home to Jones County to safeguard his family but is soon branded an outlaw deserter. Forced to flee, he finds refuge with a group of runaway slaves hiding out in the swamps. Forging an alliance with the slaves and other farmers, Knight leads a rebellion that would forever change history.



The House of the Spirits

A rancher, his clairvoyant wife and their family face turbulent years in South America.



Straw Dogs
7.148

David Sumner, a mild-mannered academic from the United States, marries Amy, an Englishwoman. In order to escape a hectic stateside lifestyle, David and his wife relocate to the small town in rural Cornwall where Amy was raised. There, David is ostracized by the brutish men of the village, including Amy's old flame, Charlie. Eventually the taunts escalate.



Jacknife
Jacknife(1989)
6.35

A conflict develops between a troubled Vietnam veteran and the sister he lives with when she becomes involved romantically with the army buddy who reminds him of the tragic battle they both survived.



Farm House
5.164

Stranded in the remote countryside after wrecking their car, a couple seeking to start over discovers that there's no escape from the sins of their past.



God's Country
5.55

When a grieving college professor confronts two hunters she catches trespassing on her property, she's drawn into an escalating battle of wills with catastrophic consequences.



Life
Life(1999)
6.7

Two men in 1930s Mississippi become friends after being sentenced to life in prison together for a crime they did not commit.



A Place in the Sun
7.3

A young social climber wins the heart of a beautiful heiress but his former girlfriend's pregnancy stands in the way of his ambition.



The Night of the Hunter

In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.



All of My Heart
6.957

A young caterer’s life suddenly changes course when she inherits a country home and learns she must share it with a career obsessed Wall Street trader. At first, these opposites do not attract, but feelings begin to change when they find themselves having to work side-by-side to restore their newly acquired home.



Beloved
Beloved(1998)
5.757

After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved". Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things start to happen...



A Home of Our Own
6.845

In 1960s Los Angeles an energetic widow and her six children try to make a dream of theirs come true: to have a home of their own. They leave L.A. and head for the countryside, all the while facing numerous difficulties and obstacles during their journey.



Buster's Mal Heart
6.1

An eccentric mountain man on the run from the local sheriff recalls the mysterious events that brought him to his present fugitive state.



The Country Girl
6.901

An actor on the skids is given one more chance to regain his stardom, as well as his self-respect, yet his alcoholism may prevent that from happening.



In the Heart of the Sea

In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex is assaulted by something no one could believe—a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance.



Hard Times
6.8

In the depression, Chaney, a strong silent streetfighter, joins with Speed, a promoter of no-holds-barred street boxing bouts. They go to New Orleans where Speed borrows money to set up fights for Chaney, but Speed gambles away any winnings.



A Patch of Blue
7.6

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



Water
Water(2005)
6.8

The year is 1938, and Mahatma Gandhi's groundbreaking philosophies are sweeping across India, but 8-year-old Chuyia, newly widowed, must go to live with other outcast widows on an ashram. Her presence transforms the ashram as she befriends two of her compatriots.

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