Best movies like 20th Century Women
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like 20th Century Women Starring Annette Bening, Lucas Jade Zumann, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning, and more. If you liked 20th Century Women then you may also like: Eighth Grade, Over the Edge, Real Women Have Curves, Riding in Cars with Boys, The Runaways and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
In 1979 Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbour – to help with Jamie's upbringing.
20th Century Women
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Over the Edge
A group of bored teenagers rebel against authority in the community of New Granada.
Real Women Have Curves
Freshly graduated from high school, Ana receives a full scholarship to Columbia University. Her very traditional, old-world parents feel that now is the time for Ana to help provide for the family, not the time for college.
Riding in Cars with Boys
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.
The Runaways
Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, two rebellious teenagers from Southern California, become the frontwomen for The Runaways -- the now-legendary group that paved the way for future generations of female rockers. Under the Svengali-like influence of impresario Kim Fowley, the band becomes a huge success.
Kelly & Cal
Punk-rocker turned suburban mom, Kelly, is nostalgic for a life she can no longer have and uncertain of a future she doesn’t yet fit in. Seventeen-year-old Cal is frustrated at his lack of control over the hand he's been dealt. When the two strike up an unlikely friendship, it's the perfect spark needed to thrust them both back to life.
All Over Me
Claude and Ellen are best friends who live in a not-so-nice area of New York. They're involved in the subculture of 90s youth, complete with drugs, live music, and homophobia. All is changed one night when a violent and meaningless death rocks their lives.
American Hardcore
Inspired by Steven Blush's book "American Hardcore: A tribal history" Paul Rachman's feature documentary debut is a chronicle of the underground hardcore punk years from 1979 to 1986. Interviews and rare live footage from artists such as Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, SS Decontrol and the Dead Kennedys.
Big Wednesday
Three 1960s California surfers fool around, drift apart and reunite years later to ride epic waves.
Terms of Endearment
Aurora, a finicky woman, is in search of true love while her daughter faces marital issues. Together, they help each other deal with problems and find reasons to live a joyful life.
Marvin's Room
A leukemia patient attempts to end a 20-year feud with her sister to get her bone marrow.
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.
Crossroads
Three friends get together and bury a box making a pact to open it at midnight at their high school graduation. In the little town in Georgia that they live in, things soon change. One is little miss perfect, one is an engaged prom queen, and the other is a pregnant outcast. The night of graduation, they open the box and they strike up a conversation. All of a sudden, one brings up the topic of her going to Los Angeles for a record contract audition. They all decide to go together and they leave. With a little money, they set out on the road with a guy named Ben. When one of them tells the other a rumor that he might be a homicidal maniac they are all scared of him. When they reach LA, Lucy falls in love with Ben and against her father's wishes, she stays and she goes to the audition.
Ghost World
Two quirky, cynical teenaged girls try to figure out what to do with their lives after high school graduation. After they play a prank on an eccentric, middle aged record collector, one of them befriends him, which causes a rift in the girls' friendship.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia.
Mermaids
Fifteen-year-old Charlotte Flax is tired of her wacky mom moving their family to a different town any time she feels it is necessary. When they move to a small Massachusetts town and Mrs. Flax begins dating a shopkeeper, Charlotte and her 9-year-old sister, Kate, hope that they can finally settle down. But when Charlotte's attraction to an older man gets in the way, the family must learn to accept each other for who they truly are.
It's Kind of a Funny Story
A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.
Gas Food Lodging
Nora, a single mother raising two teenage daughters, Shade and Trudi, waits tables at a truck-stop diner in a small New Mexico town. The beautiful and rebellious Trudi drops out of school and gets a job alongside Nora, while the younger Shade whittles away her time at Spanish movie matinees. Their lives are turned upside down when Trudi becomes pregnant and the girls' absent father returns.
Gimme Shelter
After running away from her abusive mother, a streetwise teen seeks refuge with her father, but he rejects her when he learns that she's pregnant.
Little Miss Sunshine
A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.
mid90s
Stevie is a sweet 13-year-old about to explode. His mom is loving and attentive, but a little too forthcoming about her romantic life. His big brother is a taciturn and violent bully. So Stevie searches his working-class Los Angeles suburb for somewhere to belong. He finds it at the Motor Avenue skate shop.
Parenthood
The story of the Buckman family and friends, attempting to bring up their children. They suffer/enjoy all the events that occur: estranged relatives, the 'black sheep' of the family, the eccentrics, the skeletons in the closet, and the rebellious teenagers.
Mr. Church
A unique friendship develops when a little girl and her dying mother inherit a cook - Mr. Church. What begins as an arrangement that should only last six months, instead spans fifteen years.
Miss Stevens
Stuck at a crossroads in her personal life, it falls on high school English teacher Miss Stevens to chaperone three of her students — Billy, Margot and Sam — on a weekend trip to a drama competition.
Ginger & Rosa
A look at the lives of two teenage girls - inseparable friends Ginger and Rosa -- growing up in 1960s London as the Cuban Missile Crisis looms, and the pivotal event the comes to redefine their relationship.
Girl in Progress
As single mom Grace juggles work, bills, and her affair with a married doctor, her daughter, Ansiedad, plots a shortcut to adulthood after finding inspiration in the coming-of-age stories she's reading for school.
The Greatest
Teenagers Rose and Bennett were in love, and then a car crash claimed Bennett's life. He left behind a grieving mother, father and younger brother, and Rose was left all alone. She has no family to turn to for support, so when she finds out she's pregnant, she winds up at the Brewer's door. She needs their help, and although they can't quite admit it, they each need her so they can begin to heal.
The Guilt Trip
An inventor and his mom hit the road together so he can sell his latest invention.
The Squid and the Whale
Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s.
The Sterile Cuckoo
Two students at neighboring colleges get swept up in first love. Pookie Adams, a kooky misfit with no family or friends, clings to the quiet and studious Jerry, who has the ability to make a choice of living in Pookie's private world or be accepted by the society that Pookie rejects. Unwittingly, it is through their awkward relationship that Pookie prepares Jerry for the world of "weirdos" that she doesn't fit into.
Men, Women & Children
Follows the story of a group of high school teenagers and their parents as they attempt to navigate the many ways the internet has changed their relationships, their communication, their self-image, and their love lives.
Paper Boys
A ragtag bunch of teenage door to door salesmen wreak havoc and spread the news of their coming of age in this summer before they begin their college lives. It centers around Sean, a sexually confused and drug afflicted teen who just can't seem to shake off his dysfunctional family history. Paper Boys is an adventure into the psychology of sales as a metaphor for life as these young "Glengarry Glen Ross" wannabes terrorize a suburban neighborhood near everyone!
Flower
Rebellious, quick-witted Erica Vandross is a 17-year-old firecracker living with her single mom, Laurie, and her mom's new boyfriend, Bob, in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. When Bob's mentally unbalanced son, Luke, arrives from rehab to live with the family, Erica finds her domestic and personal life overwhelmed. With Luke and her sidekicks Kala and Claudine in tow, Erica acts out by exposing a high school teacher's dark secret.
The House of Tomorrow
The film tells futurist, architect, and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller's incredible story through two teens hoping to get laid, become punk gods, and survive high school.
New Port South
A group of teenagers wish to rebel against the administrators and teachers (the system) in their suburban Chicago high school called New Port South
Anderson's Cross
Nick Anderson, Kevin Daniels, and Tracey Green do everything together. They are the best of friends, and yet they couldn't be more different. Neighbors from adolescence, they finish each other's thoughts and sentences, joys and pains, happiness and tears. Using Nick's house as their own members only clubhouse, they escape into their own world of contentment. Yet the inevitable intrusion of others tests their stability in ways never imagined.
A Friend's Betrayal
Old feelings of betrayal resurface, renewing a bitter rift between two girlfriends when one learns that the other seduced her son
Like Father Like Son
Life for Dee Stanton is improving at every turn. Her legal career is blossoming and her boyfriend Dominic unexpectedly proposes to her. Things were very different 11 years ago when her husband Paul was jailed for the brutal murders of four girls and Dee was hounded from her home. Dee has kept all this a secret from her 15-year-old son Jamie. Now he has discovered the truth about his father and demands to see him.
Skate Kitchen
Camille's life as a lonely suburban teenager changes dramatically when she befriends a group of girl skateboarders. As she journeys deeper into this raw New York City subculture, she begins to understand the true meaning of friendship as well as her inner self.
Cider with Rosie
A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story set in the Cotswolds during and immediately after the First World War.
Eighth Grade
Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.