Drama Movies of 1989
Steel Magnolias
The title refers to those seemingly frail Southern belles who survive any and all deprivations through whims of iron. Robert Harling's original stage play was set exclusively in a Louisiana beauty parlor where ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Chattahoochee
Since Chattahoochee is a story based on true events, it may seem absurd to suggest that the actual events of Chattahoochee are pirated from ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Dad
Looking like death warmed over, Jack Lemmon plays the aging father of Ted ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Field of Dreams
"If you build it, he will come." That's the ethereal message that inspires Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) to construct a baseball diamond in the ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Fat Man & Little Boy
"Fat Man" and "Little Boy" were the nicknames given the atomic bombs that were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the waning ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Tango & Cash
Sylvester Stallone tries his luck with his first cop buddy movie in Tango and Cash, directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. Stallone is Ray Tango, a Los Angeles narcotics cop ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
My Name is Bill W.
My Name Is Bill W reunited the stars of the highly acclaimed 1986 TV movie The Promise: James Garner and James ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
1969
Ernest Thompson, the playwright responsible for the Pulitzer Prize winning On Golden ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Incident
Joseph Sargent's made-for-TV drama, set during World War II, stars Walter Matthau as an attorney coerced into defending a German POW who is accused of murdering the town physician (Barnard Hughes), Matthau's best friend. ~ ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Music Box
Jessica Lange plays an attorney whose affable Hungarian-immigrant father Armin Mueller-Stahl is ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Day One
This WW II-set drama follows the creation of the first atomic bomb. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Driving Miss Daisy
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Alfred ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Fabulous Baker Boys
Real-life siblings Beau and Jeff Bridges star as the eponymous Fabulous Baker Boys. Musical prodigies both, the Bakers have long been teamed as a twin-piano act, with the less talented Frank (Beau Bridges) coasting on the ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
In Country
Norman Jewison directed this subdued character study of the effect of the Vietnam War on a small-town Kentucky family -- based on the novel by Bobbi Ann Mason. The film centers upon 17-year-old Samantha (Emily Lloyd) who lives in ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Ministry of Vengeance
A Vietnam War veteran (John Schneider) renounces the military for a priest's habit, but after his ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Shell Seekers
The made-for-TV The Shell Seekers was based on the best-selling novel by Rosamunde Pincher. Heading the ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Dawning
A young woman in her late teens is caught up in the political unrest of ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Man Against the Mob: The Chinatown Murders
An L.A. policeman (George Peppard) works with several partners to destroy the prostitution ring run by Chinatown's version of the Mafia. The film was originally produced for television. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
A Dry White Season
Schoolteacher Ben du Toit (Donald Sutherland) has been insulated all his life from the ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Do the Right Thing
Director Spike Lee dives head-first into a maelstrom of racial and ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Physical Evidence
Though this police and courtroom drama did not do ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Stella
Bette Midler stars as Stella Claire, a working class, fun-loving barmaid in northern New York State. A brief affair with handsome Stephen Dallas (Stephen Collins) produces a daughter, Jenny (Trini Alvarado), who Stella insists upon raising ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Family Business
You've probably already guessed that the Family Business in this all-star melodrama is the business of crime. Adapted from a novel by Vincent Patrick, the film stars Sean Connery as Jessie McMullen, the patriarch of a family of career ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Image
Albert Finney stars as a TV-news anchorman who wrongly ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Beyond the Stars
In Beyond the Stars Martin Sheen plays a former astronaut who befriends misunderstood teenager Christian Slater. Gradually warming up to the boy, the ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Immediate Family
Glenn Close and James Woods star in this artery-clogging schmaltz ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Jacknife
This little-known Robert DeNiro film is set several years after the war in Vietnam. DeNiro plays an unpredictably explosive war ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Lock Up
Sylvester Stallone is a tough but essentially decent convict in a relatively humane prison. He's on such ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Long Walk Home
The Long Walk Home is a recreation of a troubled era in American history. The time is 1955; the place, Montgomery, Alabama. When Rosa ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Strapless
As she enters middle age, expatriate American M.D. Lillian Hempel (Blair Brown) ends a long-term ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Great Balls of Fire!
Until its last 10 minutes or so, this filmed biography of controversial recording star Jerry Lee Lewis plays like a live-action ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Triumph of the Spirit
Triumph of the Spirit is the true story of Salamo Arouch, a Greek-Jewish boxer imprisoned in ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Traveling Man
John Lithgow sets aside his patented drooling villainy to play the sympathetic title character in Traveling ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Act of Will
Made for British television, Act of Will focuses on three generations of women in a proud, indomitable family. Australian-born director Don Sharp brings to his soap-opera ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Killing Dad
When a father attempts to return to his abandoned family after 23 years his grown son ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Casualties of War
Casualties of War was based on a New Yorker article by Daniel Lang. This, in turn, was ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Drugstore Cowboy
The operative word in Drugstore Cowboy is "drug". Matt Dillon plays the leader of ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Passion and Paradise
The hour-hour TV movie Passion and Paradise traces the rise and fall of real-life British playboy Alfred de Marigny (Armand Assante). Little better than a gigolo, de Marigny finds himself in the Bahamas during World War II, where he romances the ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Look Back in Anger
Made for British television, 1989's Look Back in Anger is the third film adaptation of John Osborne's legendary "kitchen sink" stage drama. Kenneth Branagh plays ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Across the Tracks
Rick Schroder and Brad Pitt are cast as unlikely brothers in Across the Tracks. Schroder is a drug-dealing layabout, while Pitt is a hardworking "model son" (talk about ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Winter People
Set in the Appalachians during the Depression, this drama follows the events that take place when Wayland Jackson (Kurt Russell) falls in love with Collie Wright (Kelly McGillis) and becomes involved in the family feud that ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Sweet Bird of Youth
Previously filmed in 1962 with Geraldine Page and Paul Newman in the leads, Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth was restaged for television in 1989 by Nicolas Roeg. Elizabeth Taylor stars ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Born on the Fourth of July
The second of three films by co-writer/director Oliver Stone to explore the effects of the Vietnam War (Platoon and Heaven and Earth are ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Women of Brewster Place
Based on the novel by Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place was produced by and stars Oprah Winfrey. The film concerns a variety of women who live in the housing project located on Brewster Place, and tells about their lives as they ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Valmont
The third adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' classic novel Les Liasons Dangereuses, ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
True Believer
The only True Believer at the beginning of this drama is idealistic young attorney ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Dead Poets Society
Robin Williams toned down his usually manic comic approach in this successful period drama. In 1959, the Welton Academy is a staid but well-respected prep school where education is a pragmatic and rather dull affair. ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Heart of Dixie
Set at a Southern college during the 1950s, three co-eds ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
sex, lies, and videotape
Steven Soderbergh kickstarted the independent film movement of the 1990s with this landmark drama about the tangled relationships among four people and a video ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Paris by Night
British playwright David Hare both wrote and directed the complicated political melodrama Paris By Night. Charlotte Rampling plays a Tory member of the European ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
New Year's Day
Filmmaker Henry Jaglom plays the leading male role in his characteristically gabby New Year's Day. Jaglom is a writer who insists upon asking ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Big Time
Directed by Jan Egleson, Big Time follows a frustrated model (Mia Sara) through the ups and downs of the hectic and drug-addled late '80s fashion scene. The made-for-television ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Naked Lie
Victoria Principal plays a deputy District Attorney; that we can believe. James Farentino costars as a judge; this is also believable. Opponents in ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Summer's Lease
Adapted by John Mortimer from his own novel, the British miniseries Summer's Lease starred Susan Fleetwood as British ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Torrents of Spring
Based on the novel by Ivan Turgenev, this drama tells of a young Russian noble during the mid 19th century who, although engaged to a young ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Communion
Adapted by Whitley Strieber from his book about his alleged contacts with aliens, Communion dramatizes a story all the more compelling for the author's insistence that it is true, ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Lean on Me
After earning rave notices for powerful supporting turns as a pimp in Street Smart (1987) and an alcohol abuse counselor in Clean and Sober (1988), actor Morgan Freeman began ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Wizard
In this comedy, Corey Woods (Fred Savage) sneaks his emotionally disturbed little brother, Jimmy (Luke Edwards) out of the home he has been placed in, and sets off ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Alexandria Again and Forever
In the third and final film in director Youssef Chahine's Alexandria trilogy, the director plays Yehia, a filmmaker who joins in a hunger strike ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Stradivari
Anthony Quinn stars in this historical biography about the life and times of Antonio Stradivari, the man who raised the construction of violins to an art form. The supporting cast includes Valerie Kaprisky, Fanny Bastien, and Francesco Quinn ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Brain Dead
Brain Dead was based on a script by Charles Beaumont, leading some obtuse fans to hail the "return" of that frequent Twilight Zone contributor. Actually Beaumont has been dead since 1967, so this cookie spent a long ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
True Blood
When a man returns to Brooklyn, he finds his brother a gang member under the leadership of an old rival who framed him for the murder of a policeman ten years prior. ~ Kristie Hassen, ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Crack House
A drama involving the world of inner-city drug dealing, Crack House concerns two students (Gregg Gomez Thomsen, Cheryl Kay) ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Relentless
A man who fails to make the grade as a Los Angeles cop goes on a killing spree as the dangerous "Sunset Killer," to show the dupes who wouldn't hire him. He uses all his cop smarts to try to elude ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Champagne Charlie
Charles Heidseick's fight to introduce and popularize French bubbly in the ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
If They Tell You I Fell
This complex and confusing Spanish feature intercuts stories from 1936, 1940, 1970 and 1988, and has Victoria Abril play three different parts in them. The lives of many people are shown to be tangled together in nearly ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Full Exposure: The Sex Tape Scandal
Full Exposure: The Sex Tapes Scandal was advertised as ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Prancer
If you know the Clement Clark Moore poem, you'll know that Prancer is one of Santa Claus' "eight tiny reindeer." When 9-year-old Rebecca ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Francesco
Told in flashback, the film relates Francis of Assisi's evolution from rich man's son to religious humanitarian and eventually to full-fledged ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
My Left Foot
An alternative to the general run of "triumph over the odds" biopics, My Left Foot is the true story of Irish cerebral palsy victim Christy Brown. ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Simple Justice
When a group of criminals shoot all of the witnesses to their bank robbery, one woman (Cady McClain) survives her injuries. As the crooks discover that a witness survived their massacre, they begin to threaten her family to frighten them ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Tap
Gregory Hines plays the ex-convict son of a famed tap-dancer. Taking over his late father's Harlem dance studio, Hines can't shake memories of his childhood, when ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
For Queen and Country
With a cruel, keen edge, this taut social drama slices deeply into Thatcher's England to expose a grim ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Life and Nothing But
The grim post-World War I era in Europe is grist for director Bertrand Tavernier's mill in Life and ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
After the War
John Madden's sweeping drama After the War tells the tale of a quarter-century relationship between two men who share a ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
An Innocent Man
In Peter Yates' crime drama An Innocent Man, Tom Selleck plays Jimmie Rainwood, a stock figure airline maintenance supervisor with a perfect family. Then, one ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Raggedy Rawney
Actor Bob Hoskins made his big-screen directorial debut with the British Raggedy Rawney. The time is World War II: a band of gypsies, ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
A Deadly Silence
Made for TV, A Deadly Silence was based on the book by New York Times reporter Dena Kleiman. It is the doleful story of Long Island teenager Cheryl Pierson (Heather Fairfield), who in February of ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days
Lucas, a computer genius facing an unnamed terminal illness that causes him to lose his memory, meets Blanche, a young woman who seems unable to break free of her vicious environment. The two plunge into a brief but intense affair, understanding ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Monsieur Hire
Lonely and shy bachelor Monsieur Hire (Michel Blanc), ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
21 Jump Street: Season 03
Johnny Depp and the rest of the familiar cast of regulars report for duty as 21 Jump Street enters its third season. As before, Depp plays Officer Tom Hanson, one of a team of ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Coming Out
It seems like a good thing when Philip (Mathias Freihof), ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Gleaming the Cube
Gleaming the Cube does for skateboarding what Over the Top did for arm wrestling -- i.e. not a ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Never Come Back
Nathaniel Parker plays Desmond Thane, a young journalist in 1939 London. Much against his will, the wide-eyed Thane becomes embroiled in a murder case. Though the constabulary insists that everything is under control, Thane ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Roxanne: The Prize Pulitzer
Roxanne: The Prize Pulitzer was based on the best-selling 1987 autobiography of (who else?) Roxanne Pulitzer. Since both the book and the subsequent TV movie were told from Roxanne's point of view, it is to be ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Blood and Sand
Previously filmed in 1922 with Rudolph Valentino and in 1940 with Tyrone Power, Vicente Blasco Ibanez's mystical bullfight novel Blood & Sand was given a ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Mahabharata
Director Peter Brook collaborates with writer Jean-Claude Carriére ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Iguana
In this drama, a misshapen sailor with the features of a lizard is tormented all his life for his deformities. When he and others are marooned on an island the tables are turned and he rules them ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Jesus of Montreal
A modern-day Passion Play becomes a reenactment of the life and death of Jesus Christ in more ways than one with this critically acclaimed drama from Quebec filmmaker Denys Arcand. Lothaire ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Torn Apart
Based on the novel A Forbidden Love by Chayym Zeldis, this drama tells of a young Jewish Israeli soldier who meets up with his childhood Arabic friend and the two fall in love. Unfortunately, the couple must face a number of tragic ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Speaking Parts
"In my films, you're always encouraged to remember that you're watching a ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Summer of the Colt
This award-winning film by André Melançon -- set on a ranch on the pampas of Argentina -- tells the story of three ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Baxter
The French-filmed Baxter is based on the American novel Hell Hound. The title character is a bull terrier, who in the course of ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Lambada
One of several films released to trade on the short-lived Lambada craze (it was ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Acorralado
In this fugitive spree, the fleeing fellow gets angrier and angrier ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Emperor of the Bronx
Cycle-flick habitue William Smith is top-billed in Emperor of the Bronx. Virtually wall-to-wall ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Intimate Power
Based on a true story, this drama stars Amber O'Shea as ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Midnight Warrior
While investigating the seamy night life of Los ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Nightmare at Bitter Creek
In this made-for-TV thriller, a quartet of female ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Real Charlotte
In this serious drama from the PBS "Masterpiece Theatre" series, two cousins fall for the same guy, causing stress in the family. ~ All Movie Guide [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Sinners
In this film, the violence and despair that runs rampant in their New York City neighborhood forces an Italian family to find a way to survive in their unpleasant surroundings. ~ Iotis Erlewine, ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Tusks
When a famous artist agrees to visit a wildlife preserve in Africa to draw ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
A Very British Coup
Based on the speculative political novel by Chris Mullin, this British miniseries starred Ray McAnally as Harry Perkins, a third-generation Communist, lifelong ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
La Diosa del Puerto
The tragic course of one woman's life is traced in this drama from Mexico. Maria Ortiz is a lovely and virtuous 19-year-old schoolteacher who one day falls victim to a ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Abhimanyu
Anil Kapoor and Shakti Kapoor star in the Indian Abhimanyu, but their characters have absolutely nothing in common. Anil's sister Poonam Dhillon is raped by Shakti. Anil has no recourse; he is a dirt-poor peasant, while ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Men Behind the Sun
Purporting to tell the true story of Japanese medical experiments on the civilian populace of Manchuria during the Sino-Japanese war and ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Der 7. Kontinent
Three members of a middle-class family are followed as their lifestyle slowly disintegrates. Nothing spectacular happens: it's just the dreary un-ending grind of a go-nowhere existence. The film's final scene emulates ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?
The title refers to a Zen riddle for which there is no answer. Noted painter Bae Yong-kyun spent several years devoted to ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Perfect Model
Set within a Chicago housing project this low-budget, ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Ram Lakhan
Director Subhash Ghai also dreamed up the story of the Indian Ram Lakhan. Raakhee plays a widowed mother who lives for revenge. She raises her sons Ram (Jacki Shroff) and Lakhan (Anil Kapoor) with hatred in their hearts. It ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Desperate for Love
Friends in Georgia are broken up when an enticing teenager comes between them as told in this true story. ~ All Movie Guide [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Do You Know the Muffin Man?
Do You Know the Muffin Man? was the first of a brace of TV movies about day-care abuse (see also Unspeakable Acts). Pam Dawber and John Shea play the parents of a preschool child who ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Home Fires Burning
In this drama, set in a small town in Georgia, a curmudgeonly, strongly opinionated ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Lady Forgets
As the last two years come into focus for an amnesia victim, she finds her life endangered because of the truths. ~ ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Out on the Edge
In this drama, a troubled 17-year old is involuntarily ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Voice of the Heart
This drama, adapted from a best-seller by Barbara Taylor Bradford chronicles the convoluted love-lives of two rich women over 23 years. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
The Cyclist
The only thing that stands between Nasim and the deeply damaging personal disgrace of being unable to pay his wife's hospital bills is an insane bet. In this drama, Nasim ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Cross of Fire
The two-part TV movie Cross of Fire is set in the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan was at the height of its political power in Indiana. Part One, originally ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Rojo Amanecer
Set entirely in the city residence of a of a notable, but not ruling-class family of Mexico, this drama explores what ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Lola
In this tender family drama, Lola is a single mother living in Mexico City who earns her living as a street vendor. She and the other unlicensed vendors like her must keep an eagle eye out for the police, and at the same time must ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Berlin Jerusalem
This difficult-to-follow arthouse film explores the parallel stories of two very idealistic Zionist women who never met in real life. The story concerns the German poet Elsa Lasker-Schuller and the Russian Mania Schochat. Elsa (Lisa ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
El Costo de la Vida
Beginning in the late 80's, Mexico started experiencing some rapid economic ups and ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Lo Que Importa Es Vivir
This dreamy and somewhat improbable tale set in the Mexican countryside has been compared with the fantasy-laden social satires of (Luis Bunuel). Not coincidentally, the director of this film, ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
Guests of the Nation
Two Irish insurgents are assigned the task of guarding a pair of captured British soldiers in this dramatic adaptation of Frank O' Connor's prizewinning story starring Frank Converse, Estelle ... [ Drama movie - 1989 ]
