Cancer Movies, an Incomplete List

After the Wedding
Brian's Song
The Bucket List
Calendar Girls
Dark Victory
Girls' Night
Ikiru
Life as a House
Love Story
One True Thing
Out of Time
Pieces of April
Stepmom
Terms of Endearment
The Doctor
The Family Stone
Wit

Send me your suggestions for additions to this list: jeanne.sather@gmail.com

Netflix DVD Rentals. NO LATE FEES; Free Shipping. Try for FREE!

Comments

[Megan Rutherford]

I still remember my horror at seeing The Family Stone three months after I was diagnosed. I went to it specifically because it was billed as a "feel-good" movie for the whole family. I just wanted a cheerful experience. Imagine my surprise when this "upbeat" movie turned out to be about a woman dying of breast cancer.

[Jeanne]

Megan--what did you do? Did you walk out?

That sounds so much like my experience with taking my son to see Pieces of April!

I'll add The Family Stone to the list.

Jeanne

[terri]

Why I wore lipstick to my mastcetomy was on a lifetime TV movie
If you go to that web site they have a lot about BC and there is also alot of TV series thats having Bc on them I was never treated like anyone of the movies /series that I watched so i just don't know who is right or wrong
The life time movie about lipstick well that part was kinda fictional but at the end and through out the story it wasn;t just at surgery it was like her blanket you know she was really sick at one point having personal problems so she held her head up high and put her lipstick on got backl in the groove of things.It was a pretty good movie. just part of the plot the story was true u can check it out at lifetimetv.com
I love your site
thank you
Terri
I am a major tv buff disabled so i watch alot of tv

[Carrie]

I loved the Family Stone. I rented it just before we knew what was wrong with Mom. Mom and I watched it together. And then...the call came literally a day or two later.

I still like the movie but agree it would be better if they could warn people about content such as cancer ahead of time.

There was a movie made years ago, which my now deceased sister and I loved. It was called Griffin and Phoenix. I read they're remaking it with Dylan McDermott. Anyway, if memory serves, that's a cancer movie too. So when/if it's released, and assuming they keep to the original storyline, be warned ;) Still, I loved the original with Peter Falk.

Here's the link to the remake from IMDB
http://imdb.com/title/tt0460812/
Notice there is no warning as to the cancer content. But the original listing for the first movie does share the truth about it. That info is here
http://imdb.com/title/tt0074592/

[Sara]

It's not a movie, but I remember I stopped watching that TV show Thirty Something when Patricia Wettig's character developed ovarian cancer. Though I have a different kind, I remember feeling as though my experience as a cancer patient was being trivialized.

Besides being blindsided there's the whole issue of having your personal pain used heartlessly as a vehicle for other people's material enrichment. There's a finer line than most Hollywood types seem to realize between sensitive portrayal and exploitation. I'm still working out where that is. Wit is definitely not exploitation. Terms of Endearment really, really is.

One of my favorite cancer movies of all time is Dark Victory with Bette Davis. It's *not* a sensitive portrayal. Oh, and it's supposed to be a tragedy, too, which you may not realize because you may be too busy falling over laughing. It's great in its own cheesy, campy, melodramatic way, though.

Long before there was Lifetime TV, there were Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.

[Alex]

Griffin & Phoenix with Dylan McDermott and Amanda Peet is so sad. Its a movie about two cancer patients who fall in love and it made me cry my eyes out. saddest movie i have ever seen.