Six sliders. No stars.
Nothing on this site is recommended because people liked it. Films are described by what they are (how heavy, how fast, how far from the real world), and you get the ones closest to what you asked for.
Neither of these is the better film. They are just at opposite ends.
31 films tagged theatre
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2025 · Comedy
On the opening night of Oklahoma! in 1943, the lyricist Lorenz Hart slips away to a Broadway bar and holds court, sore about the hit his old partner wrote without him. One room, and almost all talk.
AI estimate, not yet described
2023 · Comedy
Families gather in a tiny desert town in 1955 for a junior stargazing convention, and the week does not go to plan. The whole thing is staged inside a story about a play being written.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
An Italian director's film about the actor Carmelo Bene falls apart, and a friend puts everyone involved through a mock inquiry into what went wrong. It is a film about its own making, and mostly talk.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
After her father dies, a ten-year-old girl and her mother are left with almost nothing, and she takes refuge in the theatre. Short, at 82 minutes, and told from the girl's side.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
The Italian stage actress Eleonora Duse goes back to work after the First World War, at an age when her body will not do what she asks of it. Slow and quiet, as much about the power around her as about the theatre.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
In 1989 a family moves from town to town running a small theatre company, chasing the father's idea of a bigger stage. One son dreams of the New York theatre, the other just wants to stay put.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
An actress is raped on New Year's Eve and pours what it leaves her with into rehearsals for a production of Medea. Her brother cannot get past having failed to protect her.
AI estimate, not yet described
2014 · Comedy
An actor known for playing a superhero two decades ago is directing and starring in a Broadway play, days from opening night. It is shot to look like one unbroken take and barely leaves the theatre.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
The son of a Nagasaki yakuza boss is taken in as an apprentice by a great kabuki actor and grows up performing women's roles alongside the master's own son and heir. It runs close to three hours and covers decades.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Thriller
A young Black man on the subway is drawn into conversation by a white stranger who seems to know things about him. It comes from Amiri Baraka's 1964 play, and it is largely the two of them talking.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Comedy
A Hollywood action star, typecast and out of work, flies to England expecting the West End and is cast as Buttons in a small-town panto of Cinderella. It is a Christmas comedy, and most of it is him stuck in a village theatre.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
The director of a Paris nursing home tries to get her overworked staff to take up a gentler way of caring for people with dementia, and meets a Japanese playwright who is dying. Over three hours, and most of it is people talking.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
A gay actor in late-1980s New York, ill with AIDS, sets out to stage a play with his theatre group while his boyfriend looks after him at home. Much of it is the apartment, the rehearsals, and the people coming and going.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Musical
Sophie, sixteen, is rehearsing the lead in her school's production of Waitress when her mother's cancer comes back and turns terminal. It is a musical, and it plays out over the run-up to the show.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
A Turkish couple who work in theatre lose their jobs to political persecution shortly after their play opens, and their marriage begins to come apart. In Turkish, and it stays close to the two of them.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
In the Belgian trenches in 1916, a soldier meets Francis, who is openly gay and set on putting on a stage revue with the rest of the men. Slow and tender, with more waiting than fighting.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Comedy
An allegation of sexual assault derails a French company's production of The Marriage of Figaro. It is a comedy drama, and the people involved still have to get the opera on.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2021 · Drama
A stage actor takes a job in Hiroshima directing a Chekhov play, and the theatre assigns him a young woman to drive him there and back each day. Three hours, mostly conversation, much of it in the car.
AI estimate, not yet described
2016 · Drama
A Pittsburgh garbage man in the 1950s, who nearly made it as a ballplayer, holds forth in his backyard to his wife, his sons and his oldest friend. Nearly all talk, nearly all one yard, and it started as a play.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2020 · Drama
A blues singer and her band gather at a Chicago recording studio on a hot afternoon in 1927 and spend most of it waiting. From a play: one building, long speeches, four musicians in a rehearsal room.
AI estimate, not yet described
2019 · Drama
A theatre director and the actor married to him are separating, and what starts as a decent, agreed split turns into lawyers on two coasts. Mostly conversations, and a few of them are very long.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2022 · Mystery
In 1950s London someone is killed backstage at a long-running West End murder mystery, and a tired inspector is paired with an eager young constable. Light, quick, and full of jokes about whodunnits.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2023 · Drama
Men in a maximum security prison put on plays, and this year they are writing their own comedy, with a new member who is not sure he wants in. Mostly rehearsals and talk, played by men who were actually there.
AI estimate, not yet described
2006 · Mystery
Two London stage magicians fall out after an accident and spend years trying to work out and wreck each other's best trick. Told in pieces, out of order, out of the two men's notebooks.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2016 · Drama
A Tehran couple rehearsing a stage production of Death of a Salesman move into a new flat, where something happens to the wife one evening and the husband sets out to find who was responsible. Quiet and slow, and built almost entirely out of arguments.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2021 · Drama
A Scottish general meets three witches who tell him he will be king, and goes home to his wife with the news. Black and white, bare sets, and the original language kept word for word.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2023 · Comedy
The staff of a shabby theatre camp in upstate New York try to keep the place open for one more summer while putting on an original musical. Shot like a documentary, and mostly improvised jokes.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2006 · Drama
A Stasi officer in 1984 East Berlin is assigned to bug a playwright's flat and listen, day after day. What he hears starts to work on him.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2024 · Drama
An actor with a facial difference takes an experimental treatment that changes his face, then watches another man get cast as the old him. It gets steadily stranger and funnier.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
In Stratford a herbalist marries a Latin tutor who leaves for London, and their son falls ill while he is away. Slow and domestic, and the playhouse is barely in it.
AI estimate, not yet described
2008 · Drama
A theatre director with a grant builds a life-size replica of New York in a warehouse and rehearses his own life inside it, for decades. Very long and very hard to hold.
AI estimate, not yet described