Best movies like Admissions
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Admissions Starring Lauren Ambrose, Amy Madigan, Christopher Lloyd, Fran Kranz, and more. If you liked Admissions then you may also like: X+Y, Unstrung Heroes, Winter Stories, Old Enough, One Christmas 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.
A gifted high-school student flubs her college admissions interviews for the most unexpected reasons in this independent coming-of-age drama. Cynical, world-weary Evie is more interested in taking care of her family than getting into the Ivy League institutions for which she seems destined. Dad Harry spends all his time building model trains in the basement, while workaholic mom Martha depends on Evie to take care of her other daughter, developmentally challenged Emily. When she's not busy reading poetry to her sister Emily, Evie hangs out with James (Fran Kranz), the sensitive boy next door, whose romantic overtures prove too confusing to acknowledge. College also seems too daunting, so Evie deliberately blows one university interview after another in the hopes of staying at home as her sister's keeper. Meanwhile, Evie begins passing off her own poems as Emily's, fuelling the belief that her brain-damaged sister is actually a literary savant.
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Unstrung Heroes
Steven Lidz, unhappy with his home life since his mother became sick, moves in with his two eccentric uncles. As Steven grows closer to his uncles, he learns how to cope with his emotions and to value his own uniqueness.
Winter Stories
An adult Martin Roy reminisces about his life in the 1966/67 school year. At fifteen years old and in his last year of junior high school, he breathed, ate and slept hockey. He collected hockey cards, played street hockey with his friends, tried skating and ice hockey for the first time in his life, but was most fascinated with his local national league team, the Montréal Canadiens, and its star player, Henri Richard. He dreamed of growing up and working for the Canadiens franchise. But a more immediate goal was to get tickets to one of their games, using M. Richard and his banker father, Hervé, as possible conduits to that goal.
Old Enough
The 12 years old well-bred Lonnie meets the impudent Karen on the street. They spend some time together and Karen teaches Lonnie some of her favorite occupancies, like make-up, shoplifting, skipping school and lying to the parent about it, but confessing to the priest later. But Karen also learns some honesty from Lonnie. A film about social differences and growing up.
One Christmas
Based on Truman Capote's bittersweet tale of a young boy's adventures with the father he's never known in New Orleans in the 1930s..
The Only Thrill
A small-town store owner with a comatose wife shares a long-term relationship with his seamstress.
Raising Victor Vargas
Victor, a Lower East Side teenager, as he deals with his eccentric family, including his strict grandmother, his bratty sister, and a younger brother who completely idolizes him. Along the way he tries to win the affections of Judy, who is very careful and calculating when it comes to how she deals with men.
Black Girl
An aspiring dancer and her two wicked sisters resent their mother's love for a foster daughter.
Too Young to Be a Dad
When 15-year-old Matt Freeman gets his girlfriend, Francesca, pregnant, her family decides to put the unborn baby up for adoption. Matt agrees to the decision, but begins to rethink it. This movie is taken from the father's point of view.
Lost in Yonkers
In the summer of 1942 two young boys are sent to stay with their stern grandmother Kurnitz and their childlike aunt Bella in Yonkers, New York.
The Glass Menagerie
A son longs to escape from his stifling home, where his genteel mother worries about the future prospects of his lame, shy sister.
Grown Up Movie Star
The story of Ruby, 13, determined to grow up fast after her mother runs away to become a movie star, leaving Ruby with her hopelessly rural father.
Here on Earth
Three lives of three young people intersect over the course of one summer. A rich student and a young working-class man accidentally destroy a diner when their impromptu road race takes a disastrous turn. Ordered by a judge to spend the summer repairing the building, they find themselves becoming rivals for the affections of the owner's daughter.
Smile
Introduced to a volunteer opportunity with the Doctor's Gift Program, Katie (Mika Boorem) signs up for a trip to China, where she meets Lin (Yi Ding), a girl with whom she shares a birthday. Lin has a facial deformity that discourages her from ever showing her face, but her friendship with Katie helps her start to see life in a new way.
Tru Loved
Recently relocated from San Francisco to conservative suburbia by her lesbian mothers, Tru struggles like all teens to fit in and find love, but her quest is complicated by sexual politics, closed minds, and closeted friends as she seeks to establish her school's first Gay-Straight Alliance.
Growing Op
The story of a teenage boy coming of age in a suburban grow-operation, where every day is paradise or fresh hell. But it's always a trip. Sheltered all his life and home-schooled by loving parents who are also committed criminals, Quinn Dawson yearns to experience the normalcy of the suburban world which surrounds him.
Mommy Is at the Hairdresser's
in the summer of 1966, in Beloeil, Québec, where a young girl named Élise is enjoying summer vacation. Summer 1966. It's time to enjoy the summer holiday, total freedom. Suddenly her mother leaves her family to pursue her journalism career in London. Her urge to leave is triggered when she coincidentally listens in on a conversation between her husband and his male lover. Her brother Coco seeks solace in the garage, building a super racing car. Her youngest brother Benoît throws himself into his own inner world. The father seems absolutely knocked out by the situation. Élise decides to take control of her family, in an eloquent attempt to save them. With the assistance of flourishing nature around her, she stands on the threshold of an incomparable summer.
Doing Time on Maple Drive
Yale scholar Matt Carter introduces his wealthy fiancée, Allison, to his family, and initially everything goes smoothly. However, it isn't long before Allison learns that Matt has lied to her about his relatives to mask their failures and dysfunctions. His brother, Tim, flunked out of school and developed a drinking problem, and Matt struggles to keep his own troubling secret from his less than tolerant parents.
The Autumn Heart
When a school bus driving woman (Tyne Daly) has a heart attack, she makes one request of her three daughters (Ally Sheedy, Marla Sucharetza, Marceline Hugo) - she wants them to find their long lost brother, who was taken away by their father (Jack Davidson) 16 years ago. What they discover is that while they have struggled, their father has become a wealthy man and their brother is in school at Harvard.
Blue Citrus Hearts
A first love could quite possibly be the last for Sam, a Memphis teenager coming to terms with the romantic feelings he harbors for his best friend, Julian. Will the love he feels for this boy guide him through his struggles with his abusive father, ignorant girlfriend, and suicidal thoughts -- or will the conflict that his love for Julian stirs throughout his life prove to be more than one boy can handle?
Booky's Crush
The Thomsons - parents Thomas and Francie, and children Willa, Arthur, Beatrice (nicknamed Booky) and Jakey - are a loving working class family living in the Depression era in Toronto. Arthur is showing aptitude in drawing, and although his parents want to support his skill, Thomas in particular wants him to take up a vocation that is a little more stable. Willa, the part time librarian, is attracted to Russell, the medical student she meets at the library. And 11-year old Booky is happy that she has been asked to tutor the new older sixth grade student, Georgie Dunlop, in spelling, since she has a crush on him, her first ever. She just can't wait for him to ask her to the school dance. But she begins to have mixed feelings about Georgie based on a gift he gives to her. Digging a little deeper, Booky begins to understand both the good and bad of Georgie.
Future Weather
Abandoned by her dreamer single mom, a teenage loner becomes obsessed with ecological disaster, forcing her and her grandmother, a functioning alcoholic, to rethink their futures.
Paper Covers Rock
Samantha is recovering from a suicide attempt and ready for a fresh start in life. She has to fight for the custody of her daughter.
Carry Me Home
A widow named Harriet and her two children Carrie and Brian are living in rural New York in 1947 and are still recovering from the death of Harriet's husband killed in World War II. Carrie is a tomboy and hangs around with boys and they have their own clubhouse. Carrie and her friends make mischief and taunt their mentally challenged neighbor Charlie by stealing one of his puppies. Harriet meets a man named Bernard and begin a courtship, but Carrie is furious that her mother is dating Bernard and wants it to stop. The jealousy and anger of Carrie raises to a fever pitch when Carrie and her friends destroy their neighbor Mr. Grizzle's garden and pour sugar into his tractor. Grizzle then takes Charlie's other puppies away from him and then Grizzle's barn is destroyed by fire. Carrie learns it's time for her to grow up and make amends with her mother and her neighbors for the grief and pain she caused them.
What Girls Learn
Two teenage girls must come to terms with their stepfather when their mother is struck by illness.
Booky & the Secret Santa
Booky does everything she can to make an enjoyable Christmas, for her family, during the depression as her father is out of work.
The Bad Mother's Handbook
Karen Cooper wants to domineer her family and believes she's its pillar. In fact she does everything wrong. Thus she messes up all their lives and futures, rather then help her loved-ones.
Hello Sister, Goodbye Life
A college student must take care of her 7-year-old half sister after the death of their parents.
Hidden in America
Story of a man whose pride in being the head of his family won't let him accept help from his sick daughters doctor. He has to prove to his kids that even with the death of his wife and the loss of his job that they can and will survive. After hitting brick wall after brick wall comes a glimmer of hope.
Amy & Isabelle
In 1971, in the small town of Shirley Falls, in Maine, the odd and lonely secretary Isabelle Goodrow raises her teenager daughter Amy alone. She has only two friends in her job among her gossiper colleagues. When her overprotected daughter is seduced by her mathematic teacher Peter Robertson, the world of Isabelle falls apart. She becomes lost and loses her confidence on Amy, spoiling their relationship. Their bond gets tied again when Isabelle discloses her inner secrets from the past to Amy.
Toe to Toe
Out on the lacrosse pitch, wealthy but troubled Jesse and poor but driven Tosha form an easy and deep bond, but their relationship is threatened once they enter the hallways of an elite prep school they attend in Washington, D.C. There, they must work to overcome racial and other tensions in their classmates, and in themselves, if they hope to keep their friendship alive.
Zelly and Me
A young orphan who lives with her grandmother in a large Virginian home infatuates herself with the voices of Joan d'Arc. Her French nanny seeks out the help of a rich suitor to take her and the orphan away when she realizes that the grandmother cannot offer the orphan the love that she needs.
Drunkboat
After twenty years of broken bottles and empty hallways, Mort Gleason witnesses his nephew Moo being beaten while in a drunken stupor. The short contact with family brings Mort back to what are left of his senses and he returns to the last home he remembers in Chicago. His sister Eileen lives in their family home now with her sixteen year old son, Abe. Her older son Moo, the now missing nephew, helped spark Mort's return to his family. Three, four, five weeks pass as Mort waits outside his home and makes a tenuous re-entry into family life. Abe dreams of a sailboat and distant horizons. He saves money and sees an advertisement for the Kathy II. He and his friend calculate a way to buy the vessel from two unscrupulous rogues who make ends meet wholesaling liquor and operating a sometime boatyard.
X+Y
A socially awkward teenage math prodigy finds new confidence and new friendships when he lands a spot on the British squad at the International Mathematics Olympiad.