WonderstruckMovies like Wonderstruck
- Key Features:
- Parallel narratives, Mystery, Deafness, Family history, New York City, Midwest, Historical setting, Child protagonist, Self-discovery, Loneliness, Hope
- Tone:
- earnest, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Literary adaptation fans, Art house enthusiasts, Family audiences, Viewers interested in history
- Emotional Arc:
- Curiosity → Wonder → Connection
Wonderstruck

The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection.
Wonderstruck
As a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), Ruby is the only hearing person in her deaf family. When the family's fishing business is threatened, Ruby finds herself torn between pursuing her love of music and her fear of abandoning her parents.

The story of August Pullman – a boy with facial differences – who enters fifth grade, attending a mainstream elementary school for the first time.

After falling in love in Paris, Marina and Neil come to Oklahoma, where problems arise. Their church's Spanish-born pastor struggles with his faith, while Neil encounters a woman from his childhood.

A novelist is blinded in a car crash that killed his wife and several years later rediscovers his passion for life and writing when he embarks on an affair with the neglected wife of an indicted businessman.

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.

When a young man learns that his overbearing father is having an affair, he tries to stop it, only to be seduced by the older woman as well.

A non-verbal, autistic girl and a chatty boy are partnered on a canoeing trip. To complete their journey across an urban lake, they must both learn how the other experiences the world.

The story of four characters whose lives intertwine amid the hustle and bustle of the Coney Island amusement park in the 1950s: Ginny, an emotionally volatile former actress now working as a waitress in a clam house; Humpty, Ginny’s rough-hewn carousel operator husband; Mickey, a handsome young lifeguard who dreams of becoming a playwright; and Carolina, Humpty’s long-estranged daughter, who is now hiding out from gangsters at her father’s apartment.

With their father away as a chaplain in the Civil War, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy grow up with their mother in somewhat reduced circumstances. They are a close family who inevitably have their squabbles and tragedies. But the bond holds even when, later, male friends start to become a part of the household.

Marie Heurtin is born both blind and deaf. Sister Marguerette wins her trust and teaches her how to express herself.

The true story of the frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness of 7-year-old Helen Keller who, since infancy, has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. Then Annie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touch, the only tool they have in common, and leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation to happiness and light.

A boy in New York is taken in by a wealthy family after his mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In a rush of panic, he steals 'The Goldfinch', a painting that eventually draws him into a world of crime.

Simon Birch and Joe Wenteworth are boys who have a reputation for being oddballs. Joe never knew his father, and his mother, Rebecca, is keeping her lips sealed no matter how much he protests. Simon, meanwhile, is an 11-year-old dwarf whose outsize personality belies his small stature. Indeed, he often assails the local reverend with thorny theological questions and joins Joe on his quest to find his biological father.

After weeks of traveling through Europe, the immature William finds himself in Copenhagen, the place of his father’s birth. He befriends the youthful Effy, who works in William’s hotel as part of an internship program, and they set off to find William’s last living relative. Effy’s mix of youthful exuberance and wisdom challenges William unlike any woman ever has. As the attraction builds, he must come to grips with destabilizing elements of his family’s sordid past.

Alice is a young hearing-impaired girl who, after a supposed visitation from the Virgin Mary, is inexplicably able to hear, speak and heal the sick. As word spreads and people from near and far flock to witness her miracles, a disgraced journalist hoping to revive his career visits the small New England town to investigate. When terrifying events begin to happen all around, he starts to question if these phenomena are the works of the Virgin Mary or something much more sinister.

In 1950s Ireland and New York, young Eilis Lacey has to choose between two men and two countries.

Marie is a violent cello and very talented teenager in school. Victor is a friendly boy, dynamic, but who knows some academic difficulties. Ignoring that Mary is losing sight, Victor falls in love with her. And little by little, to his great surprise, Marie starts to help her ... When Marie reveals her secret, a pact is concluded between the two teenagers: Victor helps her to hide her condition so that she can pass The entrance examination to the conservatory. An unfailing friendship will emerge from this unlikely duo, ready to do anything to face the rest of the world.

Precocious young Harriet and her older sister Gwen live at their mother's motel in small-town New Hampshire. Harriet dreams of a life beyond her inattentive family and the stultifying town. A mentally disabled man named Ricky comes to stay at the motel, and Harriet finds him kinder and more interesting than anyone she has ever met. After tragedy strikes, Harriet and Ricky cling to each other ever more tightly.

A young owl meets a lost little girl in New York City. Together, they try to get home for Christmas.

A nearly sightless boy is sent to a school for blind children, where he secretly discovers the possibilities of the recorded sound.

Follows a young boy who runs away from home in the search of his estranged mother.

While working a case as an interpreter, a hearing-impaired police detective must confront a group of criminals trying to eliminate a deaf murder witness in her apartment building.

Kevin, an intelligent guy helps out Maxwell to improve his reading skills. In return, Kevin wants Maxwell to take him out places since he is not authorized to go out. Being the social outcasts of the town, Kevin and Maxwell come to realize that they are similar to each other and accept that they are "freaks" and nothing will stop them.

Six-year-old Susan Walker has doubts about childhood's most enduring miracle—Santa Claus. Her mother told her the secret about Santa a long time ago, but, after meeting a special department store Santa who's convinced he's the real thing, Susan is given the most precious gift of all—something to believe in.

With the world under attack by deadly creatures who hunt by sound, a teen and her family seek refuge outside the city and encounter a mysterious cult.

In the town of Blithe Hollow, Norman Babcock can speak to the dead, but no one other than his eccentric new friend believes his ability is real. One day, Norman's eccentric uncle tells him of a ritual he must perform to protect the town from a curse cast by a witch centuries ago.

Louise, a widow with two children, almost crushes a stranger with her car. She takes care of him, even if he's not really wounded. It turns out that he has mental disorders and that they can help each other much more than they thought.

While spending the summer at her grandmother's farm, a girl discovers a talent for communicating with horses and tries to tame a fierce stallion.

A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York.

When Juli meets Bryce in the second grade, she knows it's true love. After spending six years trying to convince Bryce the same, she's ready to give up - until he starts to reconsider.

In an effort to tap into his original talent, a wheelchair-bound author moves to a rural town, where he befriends a single mother and her three kids, who help reignite his passion for writing.

Every choice has a consequence. But what if the flip of a coin could trigger two separate but parallel destinies? Bobby and Kate are a young New York couple at a crossroads whose lives are about to take very different directions. A seemingly ordinary July 4th is cleaved in two by the flip of a coin. One path leads them to gentle discoveries about family, loss and each other on a visit to Brooklyn, and the other plunges them into an urban nightmare of pursuit, suspense and murder in Manhattan.

After decades apart, childhood friends Nora and Hae Sung are reunited in New York for one fateful weekend as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life.

Lila and Mo meet at a bus stop. Lila has a paralyzing speech impediment. Mo is chatty and exuberant. Lila is preparing for her exams. Mo illegally races cars for a living. Opposites attract, and they fall in love. But Mo carries a secret burden…

Lyla and Louis, a singer and a musician, fall in love, but are soon compelled to separate. Lyla is forced to give up her newborn but unknown to her, he grows up to become a musical genius.

Ethan Wate just wants to get to know Lena Duchannes better, but unbeknownst to him, Lena has strange powers. As Lena's 16th birthday approaches she might decide her fate, to be good or evil. A choice which will impact her relationship forever.

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, Quentin arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Quentin soon learns that there are clues, and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer Quentin gets, the less he sees of the girl he thought he knew.

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.

At the end of the 1960s, when the air is filled with rock-and-roll and student rebellions are changing the world, the older of two brothers joins a prestigious newsroom of the public radio broadcaster. Not long after, he finds himself in the middle of a dangerous conflict between journalists and the secret service.

As a child, Michael Walker wished every day could be Christmas. That is, until a tragic accident crushed his holiday spirit. Thirty years later, Michael still can't muster any joy for the holidays, despite encouragement from his playful wife and well-intentioned parents. But when his young son faces a tragedy, Michael needs to make amends with his past. A mysterious man named Nick gives Michael a gift and instills in him the courage to find the joy that he lost.

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.

A family living on a farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields which suggests something more frightening to come.

A re-imagining of "Peter Pan" from the point of view of Wendy Darling, who finds herself lost on a mysterious island where aging and time have come unglued. She must fight to save her family, her freedom and the joyous spirit of youth.

Beyond Silence is about a family and a young girl’s coming of age story. This German film looks into the lives of the deaf and at a story about the love for music. A girl who has always had to translate speech into sign language for her deaf parents yet when her love for playing music grows strong she must decide to continue doing something she cannot share with her parents.

As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes.

A Hungarian family forced to flee the Communist country for the United States must leave a young daughter behind. Six years later, the family arranges to bring the absent daughter to the United States where she has trouble adjusting. The daughter then decides to travel to Budapest to discover her identity.

In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.

After her widowed father dies, deaf teenager Dot moves in with her godparents, Olivia and Paul Deer. The Deers' daughter, Nina, is openly hostile to Dot, but that does not prevent her from telling her secrets to her silent stepsister, including the fact that she wants to kill her lecherous father.

Young Native American man Thomas is a nerd in his reservation, wearing oversize glasses and telling everyone stories no-one wants to hear. His parents died in a fire in 1976, and Thomas was saved by Arnold. Arnold soon left his family, and Victor hasn't seen his father for 10 years. When Victor hears Arnold has died, Thomas offers him funding for the trip to get Arnold's remains.

Melody Brooks, a sixth grader with cerebral palsy, has a quick wit and a sharp mind, but because she is non-verbal and uses a wheelchair, she is not given the same opportunities as her classmates. When a young educator notices her student's untapped potential and Melody starts to participate in mainstream education, Melody shows that what she has to say is more important than how she says it.

Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.

A celebrated author takes a journey with some old friends to have some fun and heal old wounds. Her nephew comes along to wrangle the ladies and finds himself involved with a young literary agent.

Neglected by her husband, Sarah embarks on an impromptu road trip with her young daughter and her best friend, Mindy. Along the way, the dynamic between the two friends intensifies before circumstances force them apart. Years later, Sarah attempts to rebuild their intimate connection in the days before Mindy’s wedding.

A young boy whose parents just divorced finds an unlikely friend and mentor in the misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic, war veteran who lives next door.

A street-wise teen from Baltimore who has been raised by a single mother travels to New York City to spend the Christmas holiday with his estranged relatives, where he embarks on a surprising and inspirational journey.

When the young orphan boy James spills a magic bag of crocodile tongues, he finds himself in possession of a giant peach that flies him away to strange lands.

Teenager David Clemens develops a hysterical fear that he will die if he comes into physical contact with another person. Perturbed, David's overbearing mother places him in a home for mentally disturbed young people, but David remains withdrawn from the other patients and his psychiatrist. Over time, however, David grows interested in 15-year-old Lisa, who suffers from multiple personalities – one who can only speak in rhyme, and the other, a mute.

A young refugee of the Sudanese Civil War who wins a lottery for relocation to the United States with three other lost boys. Encountering the modern world for the first time, they develop an unlikely friendship with a brash American woman assigned to help them, but the young man struggles to adjust to this new life and his feelings of guilt about the brother he left behind.

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

Simon and Robyn are a young married couple whose life is going as planned until a chance run-in with Simon's high school acquaintance sends their world into a tailspin.

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.

A young woman held in captivity discovers the realities of truth and lies in the outside world.

Pop star Christopher Wilde has fame, fortune and a big-budget Hollywood movie awaiting him. But after meeting Jessica Olson, a down-to-earth girl from the Midwest, he is faced with following his heart or doing what's best for his career.

Harvard Law student Oliver Barrett IV and music student Jennifer Cavilleri share a chemistry they cannot deny - and a love they cannot ignore. Despite their opposite backgrounds, the young couple put their hearts on the line for each other. When they marry, Oliver's wealthy father threatens to disown him. Jenny tries to reconcile the Barrett men, but to no avail.

Matthew, a young advertising executive in Chicago, puts his life and a business trip to China on hold when he thinks he sees Lisa, the love of his life who left him without a word two years earlier, walking out of a restaurant one day.

Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.

It's the summer before 6th grade, and Clark is the new-in-town biracial kid in a sea of white. Discovering that to be cool he needs to act 'more black,' he fumbles to meet expectations, while his urban intellectual parents Mack and Gina also strive to adjust to small-town living. Equipped for the many inherent challenges of New York, the tight-knit family are ill prepared for the drastically different set of obstacles that their new community presents, and soon find themselves struggling to understand themselves and each other in this new suburban context.

In 1950s New York, a department-store clerk who dreams of a better life falls for an older, married woman.

In 1920s New York City, a Black woman finds her world upended when her life becomes intertwined with a former childhood friend who's passing as white.

While hiding from bullies in his school's attic, a young boy discovers the extraordinary land of Fantasia, through a magical book called The Neverending Story. The book tells the tale of Atreyu, a young warrior who, with the help of a luck dragon named Falkor, must save Fantasia from the destruction of The Nothing.

In 1856, two women forge a close connection despite their isolation on the American frontier.

Two seemingly unconnected souls from different corners of the United States make a telepathic bond that allows them to see, hear and feel the other's experiences, creating a bond that apparently can't be broken.

A recently-widowed science fiction writer considers whether to adopt a hyper-imaginative 6-year-old abandoned and socially-rejected boy who says he's really from Mars.

Two siblings begin to develop special talents after they find a mysterious box of toys, and soon their parents and even their teacher are drawn into a strange new world – and find a task ahead of them that is far more important than any of them could imagine.

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.

An unexpected meeting on a train leads two travelers to spend an evening wandering through Vienna. As the night unfolds, they share stories and conversations about life and love, exploring new ideas while a quiet intimacy grows between them, knowing it may be their only night together.

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

Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.

Max imagines running away from his mom and sailing to a far-off land where large talking beasts—Ira, Carol, Douglas, the Bull, Judith and Alexander—crown him as their king, play rumpus, build forts and discover secret hideaways.

After overhearing a shocking secret, precocious orphan Lyra Belacqua trades her carefree existence roaming the halls of Jordan College for an otherworldly adventure in the far North, unaware that it's part of her destiny.

The elder one of each generation in the Furlong family is equipped with an extraordinary capacity. James discovers the nature of his at the time of an accident which causes the death of his father and his grandmother. Haunted by this mysterious evil he hides in a forest not to harm anybody. A few years later, Mae also takes refuge it in the forest and meets James.

A 10-year-old child prodigy cartographer secretly leaves his family's ranch in Montana where he lives with his cowboy father and scientist mother and travels across the country on board a freight train to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute.

The story of a long-lost book that mysteriously reappears and connects an old man searching for his son with a girl seeking a cure for her mother's loneliness.

Following an unexpected tragedy, child psychologist Malcolm Crowe meets a nine year old boy named Cole Sear, who is hiding a dark secret.

A week in the life of the exploited, child newspaper sellers in turn-of-the-century New York. When their publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, tries to squeeze a little more profit out of their labours, they organize a strike, only to be confronted with the Pulitzer's hard-ball tactics.

A three-year-old boy disappears during his mother's high school reunion. Nine years later, by chance, he turns up in the town in which the family has just relocated.

A young Brooklyn boy witnesses the brutal murder of his mother and grows up obsessed with finding her killer. Thus begins his life as a quiet, straight-A student by day and a self-appointed hero at night. But what is a real hero? And who decides what is right or wrong? As the boundaries blur, Sean's dual life wears on his psyche and his two worlds careen dangerously close to colliding. Like a graphic novel you can't put down, Boy Wonder challenges morality, distorting perceptions of what is right and what is justified, as it races to its shocking conclusion.

A woman who is robbed on her way to catch the 1:30 train to Boston is left stranded in New York City. She meets a man who helps her during the course of the night and the two form a romance.

A year after his father's death, Oskar, a troubled young boy, discovers a mysterious key he believes was left for him by his father and embarks on a scavenger hunt to find the matching lock.

A delivery boy falls for a young girl who is hearing impaired. Comparing themselves with water birds and trees, together they are going to break the barrier and pursuit their dreams and take their relationship to the next level.

A blind man has an operation to regain his sight at the urging of his girlfriend and must deal with the changes to his life.

A group of settlers traveling through the Oregon High Desert in 1845 find themselves stranded in harsh conditions.

Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.

When Manny Singer's wife dies, his young daughter Molly becomes mute and withdrawn. To help cope with looking after Molly, he hires sassy housekeeper Corrina Washington, who coaxes Molly out of her shell and shows father and daughter a whole new way of life. Manny and Corrina's friendship delights Molly and enrages the other townspeople.

Wandering her rambling old house in her boring new town, 11-year-old Coraline discovers a hidden door to a strangely idealized version of her life. In order to stay in the fantasy, she must make a frighteningly real sacrifice.

A young woman is returned home to her biological parents after living with her abductor for 17 years.

When a young woman unexpectedly arrives at an older man's workplace, looking for answers, the secrets of the past threaten to unravel his new life.

In the 1950s, brothers Jacey and Doug Holt, who come from the poorer side of their sleepy Midwestern town, vie for the affections of the wealthy, lovely Abbott sisters. Lady-killer Jacey alternates between Eleanor and Alice, wanting simply to break the hearts of rich young women. But sensitive Doug has a real romance with Pamela, which Jacey and the Abbott patriarch, Lloyd, both frown upon.

