Best movies like Appleton

A simple yet proud rancher conspires to murder his wife for financial gain, convincing his teenage son to participate.

It's the winter of 1935 and Max Brown is newly arrived in Willowgreen, Saskatchewan - a rural Canadian prairie town - on his first teaching job in a one room schoolhouse. He quickly realizes that this is not a dream situation: the winter is harsher than he's ever experienced, he's living in the basement of the school, the older of his students treat him poorly and his wages are paltry if and when he ever does get paid.

Wayland Jackson (Russell), a widower with a young daughter, moves to a small, impoverished mountain village in North Carolina, circa 1934. They are taken in by Collie Wright (McGillis), a single mother with an illegitimate baby, and she and Wayland soon fall in love. Trouble starts when the identity of her baby's father is revealed.

After discovering her father put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared, 17-year-old Ree Dolly must confront the local criminal underworld and the harsh Ozark wilderness in order to to track down her father and save her family.

Lucy Hill is an ambitious up-and-coming executive living in Miami. She loves her shoes, she loves her cars and she loves climbing the corporate ladder. When she is offered a temporary assignment — in the middle of nowhere — to restructure a manufacturing plant, she jumps at the opportunity, knowing that a big promotion is close at hand. What begins as a straightforward assignment becomes a life-changing experience as Lucy discovers greater meaning in her life and, most unexpectedly, the man of her dreams.

Phil Broker is a former DEA agent who has gone through a crisis after his action against a biker gang went horribly wrong and it cost the life of his boss' son. He is recently widowed and is left with a 9-years-old daughter, Maddy. He decides to quit the turbulent and demanding life of thrill for Maddy's sake and retires to a small town. His daughter fights off a boy who was bullying her at school and this sets in motion a round of events that end in his direct confrontation with the local Meth drug lord. His past history with the biker gang also enters the arena, making matters more complex. But he has a mission in his mind to protect his daughter and he is ready to pay any cost that it demands.

Forced underground by the next ice age, a struggling outpost of survivors must fight to preserve humanity against a threat even more savage than nature.

When a grieving college professor confronts two hunters she catches trespassing on her property, she's drawn into an escalating battle of wills with catastrophic consequences.

Two rural teens sing and dance their way through a forbidden romance and a dangerous travelling carnival.

A young farmer in rural Yorkshire numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker.

An intimate portrait of a rural family's inner lives and their relationship to a harsh and shifting landscape.

A woman hires a Norwegian soccer player to be a male au pair and help her raise her two sons. It deals with personal loss and how a soccer ball can change sadness into laughter.

A family vacationing in the mountains is terrorized by local wackos.

A wounded bank robber takes over his brother's home.

An overworked farmhand who works also at the adjacent hotel dreams of marrying the village belle.

An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana's breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. This astonishingly beautiful reveals a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.

After inheriting a farm at Christmas time, a widowed father makes a bumpy adjustment to village life — while his kids hatch a plan to stay there forever.

Matt Ballot has returned home after 12 years of hard-drinking in all 48 states. His wife has managed to raise their 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son nicely without his help. Matt is considered a disgrace to the town he came from and now he finds himself trying to win the love of his children, his wife, and the respect of the townspeople. Set in Arkansas in the 1920s.

Welcome to Fuller Junction, Wisconsin, a friendly small town settled by Norwegian farmers. Here we see the exploits of two young cousins, Selma and Arnold, who learn about their world and experience the ups and downs of life as the season pass.

At an isolated log cabin in the harsh wilderness of Indiana circa 1817, the rhythms of love, tragedy, and the daily hardships of life on the developing frontier shaped one of our nation’s greatest heroes: Abraham Lincoln. Abe is a thoughtful and quiet boy who spends his days at the side of his beloved mother while learning to work the land from his stern father. When illness takes his mother, Abe's new guardian angel comes in the form of his new stepmother, who sees the potential in the boy and pushes for his further education.

Ted Daniels, a ranch hand working for a rodeo, captures a magnificent wild horse that he tames and trains. As Ted is recovering from an accident that happened during a rodeo, the rodeo owner cheats him out of his horse. Ted must decide whether to pursue him and try to recover the horse, or whether to settle down with the doctor's daughter who is nursing him back to health. Written by Snow Leopard

Set on a Wisconsin dairy farm, Randi, the daughter, is trying to find a way to escape the farm, but her devotion to her family especially Clovis her younger brother is preventing her from doing that; until, that is, she met the local milk truck driver.

Shawn (Michael Masurkevitch) and Manny (Mandip Brar) are spending the weekend at Shawn's family cabin. However, as the past and present begin to overlap, Shawn descends into horrific madness...

Katherine Whately, a tough, young Chicago cop, comes home to her small town to settle her teenage rape. She is welcomed by her brother but shunned by her father. Josh, the town doctor, is her only ally in her quest for the truth. Together Katherine and Josh find the bloody trail of a serial murderer and shatter the lie that is two decades old.

With his carefree lifestyle on the line, a wealthy charmer poses as a ranch hand to get a hardworking farmer to sell her family’s land before Christmas.

Missie three years later: being a single mother after her husband Willie was shot during a poker scuffle. She and Maddy move back in with her parents Clark and Marty. She finds a new home, and finds a new teaching position that she settles right into, but Missie has lost all faith in herself, until a chance encounter at her father's church where she adopts homeless orphan Belinda Marshall.

Sara and Lily grew up at Smith Mountain Lake. Sara became estranged from the family and without explanation moved to Los Angeles to study law. Her sister Lily, an artist, teaches locally and lives with their parents, Ray and Vivian, until Dad dies in an accident. Sara returns to help settle his estate, and all our ladies cross paths with an eclectic group of local oddballs, as they search for a Loch Ness-style monster they believe lurks in the lake's depths. A few real Smith Mountain Lake characters make appearances. The next week at the lake is filled with adventure, tears, and laughter as Vivian and her two daughters finally understand, through the guidance of Dad's spirit, if they still belong on the lake, even though Ray is gone. All paths converge at the Smith Mountain Lake Wine Festival, on course for a heart-warming and hilarious collision. Written by Mike McKay

After losing a custody battle, perpetual teenager Wayne Stobierski steals his son away for one last father-son weekend to the city of their dreams - Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What's supposed to be a light-hearted adventure soon transforms into a journey of profound redemption.

No man is perfect enough for Sarah Groves, except perhaps the impressive snowmen she sculpts annually with her childhood pal, Nick. In mid-December, her snowman disappears, and in his place, materializes Cole, who seems too perfect for Sarah to be true.

Ada, a reserved young woman with a passion for entomology, travels north with Marissa, her free-spirited musician girlfriend. She's finally meeting the three brothers who helped raise Marissa: the paternal Ozzie, sensitive Arthur, and wild child Wren. As Marissa and her kin settle into their familial dynamics, Ada finds herself on the outside looking in. Desperate to make a good impression over the course of a weekend packed with fun and frivolity, Ada instead struggles to find common ground, opening fissures in the one relationship she needs the most.

When an overachieving college senior makes a wrong turn, her road trip becomes a life-changing fight for survival in rural Kentucky.

Former professional skier Kat works as a ski aid and ski shop worker at Bliss Mountain, where she prepares for a Winterfest to drum up business for the quaint town. Widowed father Ty and his daughter Anna come from New York to train with ski champion (and Kat’s former teammate) Maddy, and quickly connect with Kat when Maddy’s coaching style proves to be too aggressive for Anna. A spark forms between Kat and Ty as Kat coaches Anna and prepares for Winterfest with Ty. When a fall down the hill causes Anna to rethink the race and plan to go home early with Ty, though, Kat may lose both her new relationship and her rekindled confidence as a coach. Kat, Ty and Anna must all look deep within to conquer their fears and push forward.

Holly Khun, known to Chicago as “Miss Christmas,” always finds a beautiful tree for the plaza, but this year’s was damaged, and the lighting ceremony is in 10 days. Hoping for a miracle, she combs through fan mail, and finds Joey McNary of Klaus, Wisconsin, has the perfect tree. Off she goes to Klaus, where she meets Joey’s handsome dad Sam.

The third installment of the Sarah trilogy provides a glorious and touching story of a family drawn together by adversity. On a cold winter day a stranger shows up at the farm. He is slow to reveal his identity. When they find out he is Jacobs father, John Witting, thought long ago dead, hard questions about the past are difficult to get answered.

A sweeping small town romance exploring the grit of craft, the heart of family, and the pains of love, told over the span of several years.