ShenandoahMovies like Shenandoah
- Key Features:
- American Civil War, Family drama, Pacifism, Loss of innocence, Moral conflict, Father-son relationship, Violence-moderate, Historical backdrop
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Historical drama fans, Family drama enthusiasts, Classic film viewers
- Emotional Arc:
- Peace → Loss → Resolve
Shenandoah

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.
Shenandoah
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.

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

A young father and his two children struggle to find harmony after his wife leaves them for another man.

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.

A sheriff sees his state senate bid slide out onto the ice when his daughter begins to date the son of a charming but psychologically disturbed woman with whom the sheriff has engaged in a two-decade-long affair.

After relocating his family - and his prized restored Sherman tank - to a small Georgia town, Sargeant Major Zack Carey butts heads with the local sheriff. Zack doesn't agree with the ways of the local police, and when the sheriff goes after Zack's son, it's time for Zack to roll out the Sherman tank and wage a little war of his own.

A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smouldering settler and rancher conflict forces him to act.

A career officer and his wife work with a police detective to uncover the truth behind their son's disappearance following his return from a tour of duty in Iraq.

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.

On their way to start a new life at a sheep farm in rural Virginia, the Turner family are halted by a wreck on the highway that has claimed the life of a truck driver. Spotting the trucker's now-abandoned collie on the side of the road, they take pity on the dog and adopt her. As the city family copes with the change to rural life, including a feud with a neighboring farm family who resent the city interlopers, the ever-loyal Lassie helps them adjust to their new surroundings.

After avenging his family's brutal murder, Wales is pursued by a pack of soldiers. He prefers to travel alone, but ragtag outcasts are drawn to him - and Wales can't bring himself to leave them unprotected.

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...

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.

After the unexpected death of his survivalist father, an eleven year old boy raised in the Alabama wilderness must learn how to make a home in the modern world.

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.

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.

In the summer of 1863, General Robert E. Lee leads the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia into Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with the goal of marching through to Washington, D.C. The Union Army of the Potomac, under the command of General George G. Meade, forms a defensive position to confront the rebel forces in what will prove to be the decisive battle of the American Civil War.

Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke is posted on the Texas frontier to defend settlers against depredations of marauding Apaches. Col. Yorke is under considerable stress by a serious shortage of troops of his command. Tension is added when Yorke's son (whom he hasn't seen in fifteen years), Trooper Jeff Yorke, is one of 18 recruits sent to the regiment.

After a cavalry group is massacred by the Cheyenne, only two survivors remain: Honus, a naive private devoted to his duty, and Cresta, a young woman who had lived with the Cheyenne two years and whose sympathies lie more with them than with the US government. Together, they must try to reach the cavalry's main base camp. As they travel onward, Honus is torn between his growing affection for Cresta.

The story of a family of Quakers in Indiana in 1862. Their religious sect is strongly opposed to violence and war. It's not easy for them to meet the rules of their religion in everyday life but when Southern troops pass the area they are in real trouble. Should they fight, despite their peaceful attitude?

A Southern belle frees a Rebel officer and his men from a Union captain's Arizona fort.

After Drew Dixon, an upright young man, is sent west by his religious family to avoid being drafted into the Civil War, he drifts across the land with a loose confederation of young vagrants.

On the outskirts of the Civil War, a boy is sent north by a bounty hunter gang to retrieve a wanted man.

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan's vested interests so that justice and workers' rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.

Young Travis Coates is left to take care of the family ranch with his mother and younger brother while his father goes off on a cattle drive in the 1860s. When a yellow mongrel comes for an uninvited stay with the family, Travis reluctantly adopts the dog.

With his bronco-busting career on its last legs, Junior Bonner heads to his hometown to try his luck in the annual rodeo. But his fond childhood memories are shattered when he finds his family torn apart by his greedy brother and hard-drinking father.

The story of a widower and his two sons, focusing on their complex and sometimes difficult relationships.

Ukraine, 16th century. While the Poles dominate the Cossack steppes, Andrei, son of Taras Bulba, a Cossack leader, must choose between his love for his family and his folk and his passion for a Polish woman.

Detective Matthias Breecher, hired to track down the worst of the Confederate war criminals, roams the Old West seeking justice. His resolve is tested when he meets a determined pioneer woman who is far more than she seems.

Two friends hired to police a small town that is suffering under the rule of a rancher find their job complicated by the arrival of a young widow.

A simple yet proud rancher conspires to murder his wife for financial gain, convincing his teenage son to participate.

Cattle baron John Chisum joins forces with Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett to fight the Lincoln County Land War in the New Mexico Territory of 1878.

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.

The son of a Vietnam War Veteran must deal with neighborhood bullies as well as his dad's post-traumatic stress disorder while growing up in the deep south in the 1970's.

A mountain man who wishes to live the life of a hermit becomes the unwilling object of a long vendetta by Indians when he proves to be the match of their warriors in one-to-one combat on the early frontier.

The Munns, father John and sons Chris and Tim, recede to the woods of rural Georgia. Their life together is forever changed with the arrival of Uncle Deel, though the tragedy that follows forces troubled Chris to become a man.

Ageing, wealthy, rancher and self-made man, George Washington McLintock is forced to deal with numerous personal and professional problems. Seemingly everyone wants a piece of his enormous farmstead, including high-ranking government men and nearby Native Americans. As McLintock tries to juggle his various adversaries, his wife—who left him two years previously—suddenly returns. But she isn't interested in George; she wants custody of their daughter.

Will Lockhart arrives in Coronado, an isolated town in New Mexico, in search of someone who sells rifles to the Apache tribe, finding himself unwillingly drawn into the convoluted life of a local ranching family whose members seem to have a lot to hide.

A powerful rancher always protects his wild adult son by paying for damages and bribing witnesses, until his crimes become too serious to rectify.

A peace-loving, part-time sheriff in the small town of Firecreek must take a stand when a gang of vicious outlaws takes over his town.

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.

A pregnant woman and her husband are taken in by a farmer and his wife after crashing their car in the Scottish countryside. Once inside, they realize their hosts’ daughter is a missing child from the news years earlier. Things take a sinister twist when the farmer and his wife inform the couple they intend to keep their baby once born.

After a family tragedy, Chuck Wilson hopes to start a new life in Ashland Falls with his wife Maria and little sister Elizabeth, but he quickly discovers that the town has a dark history of being haunted by a ghostly woman who drives residents to suicide.

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…

An outlaw band flees a posse and rides into Refuge, a small town where no one carries a gun, drinks, or swears. The town is actually Purgatory, and the peaceful inhabitants are all famous dead outlaws and criminals such as Doc Holiday and Wild Bill Hickok who must redeem themselves before gaining admittance to Heaven... or screw up and go to Hell.

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.

A decade after the American Civil War, Edward Young returns home from a hunting trip to find a horrific reanimation of his wife and that their son Adam has disappeared. He must battle his way through an unexplainable outbreak of the walking dead.

A family with buried secrets reunite at a farmhouse after two decades to pay for their past sins.

An aging, booze-addled father takes a trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim what he believes to be a million-dollar sweepstakes prize.

During the last winter of the Civil War, cavalry officer Amos Dundee leads a contentious troop of Army regulars, Confederate prisoners and scouts on an expedition into Mexico to destroy a band of Apaches who have been raiding U.S. bases in Texas.

The revealing story of the 16th US President's tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come.

The relationship between a middle-aged French widow and a young drifter takes a turn when her young niece pays a visit.

A small town policeman must investigate a suspicious hunting accident. The investigation and other events result in him slowly disintegrating mentally.

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.

The origins, exploits and the ultimate fate of the James gang is told in a sympathetic portrayal of the bank robbers made up of brothers who begin their legendary bank raids because of revenge.

In 1950s Pittsburgh, a frustrated African-American father struggles with the constraints of poverty, racism, and his own inner demons as he tries to raise a family.

Troy and his young transgender son Joe are on the run from his conservative mother in the Montana wilderness, with a detective in hot pursuit.

Pat Garrett is hired as a lawman on behalf of a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid.

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.

An eight-year-old boy is willing to do whatever it takes to end World War II so he can bring his father home. The story reveals the indescribable love a father has for his little boy and the love a son has for his father.

Harry Collings returns home to his farm after drifting with his friend, Arch. His wife, who had given up on him, reluctantly allows him to stay, and soon believes that all will be well again. But then Harry has to make a difficult decision regarding his loyalties and priorities.

After the Civil War, a former Union colonel searches for the two traitors whose perfidy led to the loss of a close friend.

J.D. Cahill is the toughest U.S. Marshal they've got, just the sound of his name makes bad guys stop in their tracks, so when his two young boy's want to get his attention they decide to rob a bank. They end up getting more than they bargained for.

An itinerant farmer and his young son help a heart-of-gold saloon singer search for her estranged husband.

In Apache territory, a supply Army column heads for the next fort, an ex-scout searches for the killer of his Native wife, and a housewife abandons her husband to rejoin her Apache lover's tribe.

A Southern Colonel, his three sons, and a card shark embark on an odyssey through the Southwest carrying a coffin full of stolen money with which the Colonel plans to revive the Confederacy.

Half-breed Keoma returns to his border hometown after service in the Civil War and finds it under the control of Caldwell, an ex-Confederate raider, and his vicious gang of thugs. To make matters worse, Keoma's three half-brothers have joined forces with Caldwell, and make it painfully clear that his return is an unwelcome one. Determined to break Caldwell and his brothers' grip on the town, Keoma partners with his father's former ranch hand to exact violent revenge.

Jubal Troop is a cowboy who is found in a weakened condition, without a horse. He is given shelter at Shep Horgan's large ranch, where he quickly makes an enemy in foreman Pinky, a cattleman who accuses Jubal of carrying the smell of sheep.

A group of working-class friends decide to enlist in the Army during the Vietnam War and finds it to be hellish chaos -- not the noble venture they imagined. Before they left, Steven married his pregnant girlfriend -- and Michael and Nick were in love with the same woman. But all three are different men upon their return.

The story follows a band of former Confederate soldiers who were part of a cavalry unit. Their commander, Graff, had once been a heroic and staunch supporter of the Southern cause, but after losing his family, he became coldhearted and ruthless. His second-in-command is Eustis, whom Graff has trained on the strategies of leadership and combat command.

At the end of the Civil War, a Confederate team is ordered to rob a Union payroll train but the war ends leaving these men with their Union loot, until the Feds come looking for it.

Isaac LeMay, a murderous outlaw, learns he is cursed by a prophecy: one of his children will kill him. To prevent this, he hunts down each of his estranged children, including long-lost son Cal. With bounty hunters and Sheriff Solomon on his tail, LeMay must find a way to stop his children and end the curse.

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.

When the South loses the war, Confederate veteran O'Meara goes West, joins the Sioux, takes a wife and refuses to be an American but he must choose a side when the Sioux go to war against the U.S. Army.

Mary Surratt is the lone female charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination trial of Abraham Lincoln. As the whole nation turns against her, she is forced to rely on her reluctant lawyer to uncover the truth and save her life.

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

In 1864, during the American Civil War, Mexican cattleman Alvarez Kelly supplies the Union with cattle until unexpected circumstances force him to change his customers.

A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago. After gunning down three gunmen who tried to kill him, the townsfolk decide to hire the Stranger to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.

In 1859, families discover the lure of the Old West as they settle in territories from Wyoming to Kansas. Meanwhile, a gruff cowboy finds himself on the run with a prostitute and a young boy after killing a fellow gunman.

The mother of a severely traumatized daughter enlists the aid of a unique horse trainer to help the girl's equally injured horse.

Set in postwar America, a man watches his seemingly perfect life fall apart as his daughter's new political affiliation threatens to destroy their family.

A Vietnam veteran, Charles Rane, returns home after years in a POW camp and is treated as a hero. He has a hard time adjusting, and things go badly. A movie about the walking dead, before that meant just flesh-eating zombies.

In 1306, Scottish King Robert the Bruce turns a defeated outlaw when his country is invaded. But before to free his sacred land, he must manage to regain his will to fight back and survive the persecution of those who want take his head and the English gold.

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.

On the brink of the First World War, Albert's beloved horse Joey is sold to the Cavalry by his father. Against the backdrop of the Great War, Joey begins an odyssey full of danger, joy, and sorrow, and he transforms everyone he meets along the way. Meanwhile, Albert, unable to forget his equine friend, searches the battlefields of France to find Joey and bring him home.

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.

Jim Craig has lived his first 18 years in the mountains of Australia on his father's farm. The death of his father forces him to go to the lowlands to earn enough money to get the farm back on its feet.

Former P.O.W. Jack Calgrove moves Heaven and Earth to be reunited with his children following the Civil War. After returning home, Jack discovers that his wife has tragically died and his children, presumed to be orphans, are heading deep into the West on a train crossing enemy lines, with the intent of being placed into new homes. Calgrove and another soldier team up with a troop of Native American sharpshooters and a freed slave as they try to stop the train.

A troubled veteran gets a chance at redemption by protecting a girl from an assassin after she witnesses a murder. Holding a shotgun with a single shell, he engages in physical and psychological warfare in a desperate fight for the girl's life.

A former rodeo star, now a motel manager, meets a young man who is responsible for the violence that suddenly has seized his small town.

Pocahontas, daughter of a Native American tribe chief, falls in love with an English soldier as colonists invade 17th century Virginia.

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.

A dishonored Union Army officer leads a group of convicts to retake Fort Holman from the Confederate Army.

Warren Maxwell, the owner of a run-down plantation, pressures his son, Hammond, to marry and produce an heir to inherit the plantation. Hammond settles on his own cousin, Blanche, but purchases a sex slave when he returns from the honeymoon. He also buys his father a new Mandingo slave named Mede to breed and train as a prize-fighter.

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.

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.



