
A Good Death Beats a Dull Life
2006-04-07 · 108 min · ★ 5.4
The women of a prosperous provincial family hide unsuspected secrets which range from the entanglements of love to murder for mercy or for greed. The story of these eccentric women combines love, potions, black humor and death.
Trailers are previews, not full movies.
No authorized playback source configured. Use the legal watch options below.
Production details
- Directors
- Busi Cortés
- Production companies
- Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, Fondo para la Producción Cinematográfica de Calidad
- Countries
- Mexico
- Status
- Released
Top Cast
Evangelina ElizondoBrigida
Lumi CavazosAurora
Plutarco HazaHoracio
Jesús OchoaMacario
Patricio CastilloVicente
Marina de TaviraTere
Adriana FonsecaManuela
Rogelio GuerraMateo
Pilar Ixquic MataVioleta
Ana Ofelia MurguíaDoña Tere
Mercedes PascualTais
Marta ZamoraLibradaTitle information and images are supplied by TMDb. Explore our discovery guide for advice on comparing metadata and legal viewing options.
Where to watch
Availability provided by JustWatch via TMDb. Offers can change. Provider links are listed on TMDb; full playback requires a separately authorized source.
Availability not listed for this country.
Seasons & episodes
Recommendations

A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.

When an unexpected road rage incident puts his son in critical condition, an enraged father spirals down a dark path of emotional turmoil and vengeance.

In the quiet family town of Suburbicon during the 1950s, the best and worst of humanity is hilariously reflected through the deeds of seemingly ordinary people. When a home invasion turns deadly, a picture-perfect family turns to blackmail, revenge and murder.

Two brothers barely scrape by as their father continues to gamble and drink away the money they do bring home. They hatch a plan for a robbery but at what price?

Romulus, a misunderstood musician turned recluse hiding from personal demons in a New York City cave, finds the frozen body of a young drifter in a tree. The authorities, including his police officer daughter, claim the death is accidental. Romulus is convinced the man was murdered by a prominent art photographer but how can he prove he's right when everyone thinks he's insane?

During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.

A commentary on Spanish society dressed as a thriller about the misadventures of a gang of young petty criminals after the real estate crash.

Raised in opulence and culture, a boy's life contrasts with the darkness that seeps in from his father's criminal activities in this dark comedy.

Alma’s family has been producing quality olive oil in the Baix Maestrat area of Spain’s Castellón for generations. Yet changing pressures in the industry have made their traditional practices economically untenable, and the family is now in the mass-production poultry business. Alma’s grandfather has not spoken in years. Sadness envelopes him, and he no longer wants to eat. His sons—Alma’s father and uncle—are impatient with him, but Alma understands her grandfather. She realizes he has been grieving for a thousand-year-old olive tree that the family has uprooted and sold to pay some debts. (A sadly common reality in Castellón at present.) Unable to bear the idea that her grandfather could die without seeing this terrible wrong corrected, Alma undertakes a quixotic mission to locate the tree and return it to the family orchard, so that her grandfather may have peace in his final days.

A stroke of good luck turns lethal for Sam Phelan and his wife Leslie when they are faced with a life-changing decision that brings strange and sinister Pyke Kubic to their doorstep. As Pyke leads Sam and Leslie on a tumultuous adventure through the streets of Chicago, each are pulled deeper and deeper into a desperate spiral of deception and violence – all in the name of money.

Three girlfriends, neglected and mistreated by their husbands, plan to take revenge on them with the help of an experienced man in this type of job.

A student on a trip to France is tricked into smuggling secrets across the Iron Curtain by a sexy spy.

On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across the body of her uncle. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family.

A group of officers based in a labyrinthine top-secret prison must fight for their lives against Hatchet, a brilliant and infamous high-value detainee. When he escapes, his mysterious and deadly agenda has far reaching and dire consequences.

Young Claudia works in a supermarket where she promotes various types of products. One night, she ends up in the emergency room with severe appendicitis and meets Martha, a patient, laying in the bed next to hers.

A hard-luck limo driver struggling to go straight and pay off a debt to his bookie takes on a job with a crazed passenger whose sought-after ledger implicates some seriously dangerous criminals.

Alec Graham is sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend Jennie, with whom he spent a weekend at the English country home of the parents of his friend Brian Stanford. Alec’s father, David Graham, a not-so-successful writer and alcoholic who has neglected his son in the past, flies in from Canada to visit his son on death row. David then goes on a quest to try and clear his son’s name while battling “the bottle.”

Two brothers, on either side of the law, face off over organized crime in Brooklyn during the 1970s.

The story of a young woman who takes an epic journey to claim her own darkness and sexuality so she can stop putting it into the hands of her abusive lover. When Inanna, a young actress, working as a stripper, becomes obsessed with a mask maker, she sacrifices parts of herself and her life, piece by piece, in order to win his love. At the same time she enters a mythic journey in the theater. One that forces her to face the many abuses endured by women around that world and that blurs her performance, her dreams and her real life and results in a provocative and powerful confrontation that frees her. -- from official website

Injustice and the demands of the world can cause stress for many people. Some of them, however, explode. This includes a waitress serving a grouchy loan shark, an altercation between two motorists, an ill-fated wedding reception, and a wealthy businessman who tries to buy his family out of trouble.
Similar titles

She is the blonde poison of the backyards, the femme fatale of the Wedding side street. Coolness hangs heavy on her eyelids. It could be mistaken for boredom - if it weren't for her tough tone of voice and her willingness to ice-coldly clear her opponents out of the way. One of her license-free joyrides results in an accident. A court orders her to do community service in a shared flat for the disabled, which she finds an imposition. But the "normalos" she lives with aren't that great either, and it seems as if Kroko finds something in the "spastics" that she lacks in her everyday life.

In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.

When an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility falls in love with a soldier cast as an insurgent, their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance.

A young man races to save his son's life, but death – incarnated in the child's imagination as the titular Erl King – calls unceasingly.

A young British girl born and reared in India loses her neglectful parents in an earthquake. She is returned to England to live at her uncle's castle. Her uncle is very distant due to the loss of his wife ten years before. Neglected once again, she begins exploring the estate and discovers a garden that has been locked and forgotten. Aided by one of the servants' boys, she begins restoring the garden, and eventually discovers some other secrets of the manor.


A wry interweave film about baby making and how as time marches on the decision gets more intense and less romantic.

Paula, a young art student, witnesses the assassination of her father, a university professor. Frustrated by the local police she starts to investigate the murder herself. Driven by anger, frustration and sorrow, she commits fearless acts that put her and her family at risk.

Johnna's dad changed the world. Or so he says. Whilst Johnna and her dad are talking, they can't seem to connect, each growing more and more frustrated with one another, revolving around one another in their own orbits.

During a lazy Montreal summer day, preteen Clara decides to master the art of walking in high-heel shoes. It would probably be an easier undertaking if she didn't have to take the dog, Eddie, along for the ride.

Dede is a sole parent trying to bring up her son Fred. When it is discovered that Fred is a genius, she is determined to ensure that Fred has all the opportunities that he needs, and that he is not taken advantage of by people who forget that his extremely powerful intellect is harboured in the body and emotions of a child.

Two twenty-somethings, both reeling from bad break-ups, connect over the course of an eventful day in South London – helping each other deal with their nightmare exes, and potentially restoring their faith in romance.

Jackie is a CCTV operator. One day, a man shows his face on her monitor, a man she hoped never to see again. Now she has no choice and is compelled to confront him.

After a recent and difficult divorce, Alice hasn't seen her children in two months as she awaits a custody verdict. When her son calls her in the middle of the night, Alice takes action, abducting the children on an illicit charter trip to the Canary Islands.

A 50-year-old housewife, Manana, struggles with her dilemma - she has to choose between her family life and her passion, writing, which she had repressed for years - she decides to follow her passion and plunges herself into writing, sacrificing to it mentally and physically.

While on the run, a young woman finds herself stranded at a mysterious, isolated petrol station. Haunted by her memories and a sinister stranger, she must confront the dark truths she’s been running from before they consume her completely.

On the brink of her 30th birthday, Fanny feels the door to marital happiness closing on her. She is obsessed with death and even visits evening classes on dying, so it seems fitting that she encounters a skeleton in the malfunctioning elevator of her apartment building. The skeleton is her neighbour Orfeo, a Black, gay, self-declared psychic, who convinces her that she is about to meet "him". But is it really Lothar, the new yuppie apartment manager ...?

In 2001, Franny, a 16-year-old exchange student from Germany, arrives in the sleepy desert town of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Far from home, Franny struggles through awkward school days, stifling heat, and restless nights until she meets Elliott, a boy whose quiet sadness mirrors her own. As America reels from 9/11, something resonates within Franny and an unexpected tenderness begins to bloom.

The stories of a group of women training to become military nurses.