Backdrop fallback

Life as a House

Life as a House

Share

Life as a House

"Seen from a distance, it's perfect."

2001

2h 5m

7.1(462 votes)

Drama

Overview

When a man is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he takes custody of his misanthropic teenage son, for whom quality time means getting high, engaging in small-time prostitution, and avoiding his father.

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

New Line Cinema

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Kevin Kline

Kevin Kline

George Monroe

Hayden Christensen

Hayden Christensen

Sam Monroe

Kristin Scott Thomas

Kristin Scott Thomas

Robin Kimball

Jena Malone

Jena Malone

Alyssa Beck

Mary Steenburgen

Mary Steenburgen

Colleen Beck

Ian Somerhalder

Ian Somerhalder

Josh

Jamey Sheridan

Jamey Sheridan

Peter Kimball

Scott Bakula

Scott Bakula

Officer Kurt Walker

Sandra Nelson

Sandra Nelson

Nurse

Sam Robards

Sam Robards

David Dokos

Creative team

Directed by: Irwin Winkler
Written by: Mark Andrus
Produced by: Rob Cowan
Irwin Winkler

Similar Movies

Christmas for a Dollar

Christmas for a Dollar

America is in the midst of the Great Depression, and the Kamp family is struggling to get by, especially since Mrs. Kamp’s untimely death nearly a year ago. The older children do their best to take care of the family, but it’s the younger children—Hopalong Cassidy fan Norman and straight-talking little Ruthie—who struggle most. Now, with their mother gone and their father overwhelmed by doctor bills from young Norman’s battle with polio, the Kamp siblings fully expect a Christmas without presents. But when William scrapes together a dollar in coins to use for Christmas gifts, everything begins to change.

Starred Up

Starred Up

19-year-old Eric, arrogant and ultra-violent, is prematurely transferred to the same adult prison facility as his estranged father. As his explosive temper quickly finds him enemies in both prison authorities and fellow inmates — and his already volatile relationship with his father is pushed past breaking point — Eric is approached by a volunteer psychotherapist, who runs an anger management group for prisoners. Torn between gang politics, prison corruption, and a glimmer of something better, Eric finds himself in a fight for his own life, unsure if his own father is there to protect him or join in punishing him.

Believe

Believe

A journey of love and finding ones true self in a time of crisis.

Cracked Eggs and Noodles

Cracked Eggs and Noodles

Dae-kyu works hard to contribute Korean music industry's development: unfortunately, this hard work is for an illegal distributor, dealing in pirated albums.

Out of the Darkness

Out of the Darkness

A gripping thriller telling the true story of the hunt and capture of David Berkowitz, a.k.a. "Son of Sam" — the infamous serial killer who stalked New York in the 70s.

Wiener Brut

Wiener Brut

Austrian aristocracy, in order to get their supply of drugs flowing freely, associate with anarchist youths to plan a revolution against the socialist government.

Immortality

Immortality

Six families in different compartments of a train, moving through a rainy night. In a single, 145-minute take, the film depicts the families and how their lives are interwoven with each other. Vacillating between dream and reality, each story builds on the one before and leads into the next. Each destiny is influenced by the other one on board, and all hurtle to the same destination.

In the Name of the Daughter

In the Name of the Daughter

En el Nombre de la Hija tells the story of a nine-year old girl whose name is in dispute. Manuela has been named alter her socialist-atheist father, but her catholic-conservative grandmother insists she should carry the name the first daughters of the family have carried for generations: Dolores. The story takes place in a Valley in the Ecuadorian Andes, during the summer of 1976. Manuela and her little brother, Camilo, are spending vacations with their cousins and grandparents at the family's farmhouse. Eager to defend her father's ideas, Manuela confronts her cousins and grandparents, but an unexpected encounter leads her to confront herself instead. Hidden in the family's abandoned library, schizophrenic uncle Felipe is devoted to setting words free from the constraints of dogmas. His wisdom sets Manuela free from her own dogmas and forever changes her relationship with words, including her own name.

Once I Got in, It Was Hard to Get Out

Once I Got in, It Was Hard to Get Out

Ida is cleaning out the house that her grandfather, an artist, used to live in. She wades through a studio overflowing with artefacts, oddities and lost history. Similarly to S P A C E S, Štrbová treats the theme of memory and loss, combining fiction and documentary, letting the images of nostalgic childhood and the suffocating past flow associatively. To the sound of Francesco Geminiani's Concerto grosso no. 12, subtitled Madness, the fragile physicality of both dead and living relics stands out. The head of a dead parrot, a cast of her grandmother's breasts or a moss-covered real estate agent represent the discoveries of a personal archaeological site and exhibits of an introspective museum of family history.

Sinner: The Secret Diary of a Nymphomaniac

Sinner: The Secret Diary of a Nymphomaniac

Linda comes to the big city in search of fun and excitement. What she finds is exploitation and abuse at the hands of a succession of sleazy guys. Searching for love, she enters into a lesbian relationship with a beautiful countess, discovers drugs and swingers' parties and starts acting in porno movies. She also begins to write a secret diary...

Así en la tierra como en el cielo

Así en la tierra como en el cielo

Following the death of a close uncle, siblings Guillermo, Lucia, and Nora are forced to interact with each other and their extended family during the customary nine days of a Novenario.

Spicy Love Soup

Spicy Love Soup

Six different episodes about different generations' relationships. Love can be sweet, sour, or spicy.

Boys Feels: Desire in the Dark

Boys Feels: Desire in the Dark

These five award-winning coming of age short films offer a glimpse of how boys and young men tackle life's difficult desires: confronting one's demons, understanding sexual relationships, gaining the respect of one's father, or simply running away from it all. This is only the start of their complex formative years, where not every question has an answer, and not every answer makes sense. The short films are: Boys [Pojkarna] (2015); Ioana (2015); Kiem Holijanda (2017); Picnic [Piknik] (2015); Tomer & Elias [Tomer en Elias] (2016).

Hollywood

Hollywood

Hollywood, CA, a place of refuge for dreamers from all over the world. Enter a small town girl from Kansas who comes to LA to hit it big....a jaded Detective who's looking for a way out....and her disappearance that binds them. Perhaps he would find her, perhaps he would find himself.

A Guy Could Change

A Guy Could Change

A playboy is reformed by his daughter and fiancee.

Alone, Alone, Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea

Alone, Alone, Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea

In the wake of their Amma's deteriorating health, estranged brothers Rajesh and Shiva reunite, only to clash over BREATHE, an app offering to erase painful memories from their brains. Rajesh, a realist, and Shiva, a BREATHE addict, grapple with divergent approaches to coping. Against the backdrop of a society seduced by memory erasure, their battle becomes a poignant exploration of family, culture, technology, and the human spirit's resilience.

Chum

Chum

In the early 2000s, Lithuania undergoes a major transformation, moving away from its socialist past toward an uncertain future. Amidst this societal shift, two boys from vastly different worlds, Paulius and Glebas, unexpectedly cross paths

Lathi

Lathi

Atindranath Bannerjee, a retired teacher, faces harassment from his family members and decides to discipline them. Later, he shifts to a slum and starts teaching underprivileged children.

A Simple Story

A Simple Story

A woman arrives in Paris with her little girl to look for work. With limited funds and no luck, they end up penniless, homeless and dependent on the rare kindness of strangers.

Tonbi

Tonbi

Yasuo (Hiroshi Abe) grew up as an orphan. He married a woman he loved and they had a son Akira (later played by Takumi Kitamura). Yasuo's life seemed great at the time, but his life totally changed after his wife died in accident. Since that time, Yasuo, who never experienced parents' love himself, has to raise his son Akira alone.

Recommended Movies

Ken Park

Ken Park

Teen skater Ken Park (nicknamed Krap Nek; his name spelled and pronounced backward) kills himself at a Visalia skate park; his death bookends the lives of four other young people who knew him: Shawn, the most conventional; Tate brims with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother; and Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Boy

After he and his first wife separate, journalist David Sheff struggles to help their teenage son, who goes from experimenting with drugs to becoming devastatingly addicted to methamphetamine.

Palmer

Palmer

After 12 years in prison, former high school football star Eddie Palmer returns home to put his life back together—and forms an unlikely bond with Sam, an outcast boy from a troubled home. But Eddie's past threatens to ruin his new life and family.

Marriage Story

Marriage Story

A stage director and an actress struggle through a grueling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal extremes.

Snitch

Snitch

Construction company owner John Matthews learns that his estranged son, Jason, has been arrested for drug trafficking. Facing an unjust prison sentence for a first time offender courtesy of mandatory minimum sentence laws, Jason has nothing to offer for leniency in good conscience. Desperately, John convinces the DEA and the opportunistic DA Joanne Keeghan to let him go undercover to help make arrests big enough to free his son in return. With the unwitting help of an ex-con employee, John enters the narcotics underworld where every move could be his last in an operation that will demand all his resources, wits and courage to survive.

Ben Is Back

Ben Is Back

19-year-old Ben Burns unexpectedly returns home to his family's suburban home on Christmas Eve morning. Ben's mother, Holly, is relieved and welcoming but wary of her son staying clean. Over a turbulent 24 hours, new truths are revealed, and a mother's undying love for her son is tested as she does everything in her power to keep him safe.

Maps to the Stars

Maps to the Stars

Driven by an intense need for fame and validation, members of a dysfunctional Hollywood family chase celebrity, one another, and the relentless ghosts of their pasts. Their fragile ecosystem is disrupted by the arrival of Agatha, the scarred and estranged pyromaniac daughter.

The Thing with Feathers

The Thing with Feathers

Following the death of his wife, a young father's hold on reality crumbles, and a strange presence begins to stalk him from the shadowy recesses of the apartment he shares with his two young sons.

This Boy's Life

This Boy's Life

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.

Prisoner's Daughter

Prisoner's Daughter

Released from prison with terminal cancer, Max tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter and the grandson he’s never known. When his daughter’s abusive, drug-addicted ex-husband reappears, Max’s violent past comes back to haunt them all.

Honey Boy

Honey Boy

The story of a child star attempting to mend his relationship with his law-breaking, alcohol-abusing father over the course of a decade, loosely based on Shia LaBeouf’s life.

The Florida Project

The Florida Project

The story of a precocious six year-old and her ragtag group of friends whose summer break is filled with childhood wonder, possibility and a sense of adventure while the adults around them struggle with hard times.

Echo Valley

Echo Valley

Kate lives a secluded life—until her troubled daughter shows up, frightened and covered in someone else's blood. As Kate unravels the shocking truth, she learns just how far a mother will go to try to save her child.

Braven

Braven

A logger defends his family from a group of dangerous drug runners.

The Etruscan Smile

The Etruscan Smile

Rory MacNeil, a rugged old Scotsman, reluctantly leaves his beloved isolated Hebridean island and travels to San Francisco to seek medical treatment. Moving in with his estranged son, Rory sees his life transformed through a newly found bond with his baby grandson.

Like Father

Like Father

When a workaholic young executive is left at the altar, she ends up on her Caribbean honeymoon cruise with the last person she ever expected: her estranged and equally workaholic father. The two depart as strangers, but over the course of a few hilarious adventures, a couple of umbrella-clad cocktails and a whole lot of soul-searching, they return with a renewed appreciation for family and life.

House of Sand and Fog

House of Sand and Fog

Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.

A Family Man

A Family Man

Dane Jensen is a driven, Chicago-based headhunter, working at a cut-throat job placement firm. When his boss pits Dane against Lynn Vogel, Dane's equally driven but polar-opposite rival at the firm, in a battle for control over the company. When his young son is then given a harrowing diagnosis, Dane is suddenly pulled between achieving his professional dream and spending time with the family that needs him now more than ever.

Somewhere

Somewhere

After withdrawing to the Chateau Marmont, a passionless Hollywood actor reexamines his life when his eleven-year-old daughter surprises him with a visit.

Hellion

Hellion

When motocross and heavy metal obsessed, 13-year-old Jacob's delinquent behavior forces CPS to place his little brother Wes with his aunt, Jacob and his emotionally absent father must finally take responsibility for their actions and each other in order to bring Wes home.