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Favorite Imposter Films

Movie list created by kathy

Sort by: Showing 10 items

Decade: Rating: List Type:

2100

7.4

7.7

Changeling (2008)

Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Colm Feore, Amy Ryan, Gattlin Griffith and John Malkovich

Christine Collins’ prayers seem to have been answered when her kidnapped son is returned. But amidst the frenzy of the photo-op reunion, she realizes this child is not hers. Facing corrupt police and a skeptical public, she desperately hunts for answers, only to be confronted by a truth that will change her forever.

kathy's rating:

455

7.4

7.2

The Changeling

Director: Peter Medak
Starring: George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Melvyn Douglas, Jean Marsh, John Colicos and Barry Morse

A man whose family is killed in a road accident retires to a lonely mansion and begins to experience supernatural occurrences linked to the house's mysterious past and its previous owners.

kathy's rating:

6.1

I Was Monty's Double

Director: John Guillermin
Starring: M.E. Clifton-James, Cecil Parker, John Mills and Marius Goring

A few months before the D-Day landings during the Second World War, the British government decides to launch a campaign of disinformation; spreading a rumour that the landings just might take place at a location other than Normandy. The details of the operation are handed to two intelligence officers, Colonel Logan and Major Harvey. They are initially unable to devise such a plan – but one night, Harvey sees an actor at a London theatre, who looks just like General Bernard Montgomery.

Logan and Harvey discover that the actor is a lieutenant stationed in Leicester with the Royal Army Pay Corps and that he was a professional actor in peacetime. He is called to London, on the pretext that he is to make a test for an army film, and a plan is devised that he should tour North Africa, impersonating "Monty".

kathy's rating:

7.3

6.4

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) (1970)

Director: Basil Dearden
Based on the novel 'The Strange Case of Mr Pelham' by Anthony Armstrong
Starring: Roger Moore, Hildegard Neil, Alastair Mackenzie and Hugh Mackenzie

Harold Pelham encounters a duplicate of himself in the aftermath of a car crash. After that moment his life is in turmoil as the races to stop the imposter from replacing him.

kathy's rating:

6.8

The Prize (1963)

Director: Mark Robson
Starring: Paul Newman, Elke Sommer, Kevin McCarthy, Diane Baker and Edward G. Robinson

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Andrew Craig, who seems to be more interested in women and drinking than writing.

When Craig arrives at his hotel in Stockholm, he is introduced to another laureate, Dr. Max Stratman, a famous German-American physicist, who is accompanied by his niece Emily.

When Craig meets Stratman for the second time, at a press conference, Stratman acts as if they had never met before and also displays a change in personality, despising photographs and being less talkative.

Craig then, with no time to further talk to Dr. Stratman, has to give his interview and, in short succession admits to suffering from writer's block for years, having not even started his highly anticipated next novel, 'Return to Carthage', and having written pulp detective stories to pay the rent. He even suggests that he may have lost his talent. Asked for an example of developing a detective story, he suggests the possibility that Stratman may be an impostor.

As events progress toward the prize ceremony, Craig realizes that his offhand suggestion that Stratman is an impostor is actually the truth and pursues the case. Unfortunately, his adversaries are able to stay one move ahead of him and cover their tracks and, due to Craig's reputation of heavy drinking and fiction writing, nobody believes him.

kathy's rating:

480

6.2

6.4

Single White Female (1992)

Director: Barbet Schroeder
Starring: Bridget Fonda, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Steven Weber and Peter Friedman

When a 'Single White Female' places an ad in the press for a similar woman to rent a room (to replace the boyfriend she's just left), all the applicants seem weird. Then along comes a level headed woman who seems to be just right. But the new lodger has a secret past which haunts her.

kathy's rating:

247

6.5

6.8

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

Director: Fred Schepisi
Starring: Will Smith, Donald Sutherland, Stockard Channing, Ian McKellen, Mary Beth Hurt and Heather Graham

Fifth Avenue socialite Ouisa Kittredge and her art dealer husband Flan, are parents of "two at Harvard and one at Groton". But the narrow world inhabited by the Kittredges and their public status as people interested in the arts make them easy prey for Paul.

Paul is a skilful con-artist, who mysteriously appears at their door one night – injured and bleeding – and claiming to be a close college friend of their Ivy League kids, as well as the son of Sidney Poitier.

Ouisa and Flan are much impressed by Paul's fine taste, keen wit, articulate literary expositions and surprising culinary skill. His appealing facade soon has the Kittredges putting him up, lending him money and taking satisfaction in his praise for their posh lifestyle. Paul's scheme continues until he brings home a hustler and his actual indigence is revealed.

The shocked Kittredges kick him out when it is revealed that they are but the most recent victims of the duplicity with which Paul has charmed his way into many upper-crust homes along the Upper East Side. Paul's schemes become highbrow legend – anecdotal accounts of which are bantered about at their cocktail parties. In the end, Paul has a profound effect on the many individuals who encounter him, linking them in their shared experience.

kathy's rating:

204

5.9

6.2

Sommersby (1993)

Director: Jon Amiel
Starring: Richard Gere, Jodie Foster, Bill Pullman and James Earl Jones

Set in the south of the United States just after the Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband Jack, believed killed in the Civil War. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an impostor. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home and, perhaps later, into her heart...

kathy's rating:

5.9

The Stranger Within (1990)...

Director: Tom Holland
Starring: Rick Schroder, Kate Jackson, Chris Sarandon and Clark Sandford

A troubled young man mysteriously appears in a rural Minnesota town from which he claims he was abducted 16 years ago.

kathy's rating:

398

8.3

8.2

To Be or Not to Be

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Starring: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Rober Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Stanley Ridges, Sig Ruman and Tom Dugan

In occupied Poland during WWII, a troupe of ham stage actors led by Joseph Tura and his wife Maria match wits with the Nazis. A spy has information which would be very damaging to the Polish resistance and they must prevent it from being delivered to the Germans.

kathy's rating: