Best movies like Black Velvet Band

This fact-based prison drama tells the tale of a band of prisoners living in the innovative 2,600-acre prison at Chino, California. The place takes a humanistic approach to reform and there are no armed guards, no lockups and no uniforms. The underlying philosophy is that if these things are not there, the prisoners will not want to escape, and will instead accept their punishment. A new inmate arrives and soon accustoms himself to the new idea. The story includes the Oscar nominated song Unchained Melody.

When the great potato famine hits Ireland, the diaspora begins as thousands emigrate. Among those leaving the Emerald Isle is Katie O'Neill and her husband, who decide that the promised land is South Africa and make their way there. Once there, they discover the hardships that are the reality of the homesteader experience.

Experience the iconic rock band's legacy in the first major documentary to tell their story. Directed with the era’s avant-garde spirit by Todd Haynes, this kaleidoscopic oral history combines exclusive interviews with dazzling archival footage.

A petty crook finds himself mistaken for a murderer and a secret agent.

The explorer craft USS Palomino is returning to Earth after a fruitless 18-month search for extra-terrestrial life when the crew comes upon a supposedly lost ship, the USS Cygnus, hovering near a black hole. The ship is controlled by Dr. Hans Reinhardt and his monstrous robot companion, but the initial wonderment and awe the Palomino crew feel for the ship and its resistance to the power of the black hole turn to horror as they uncover Reinhardt's plans.

In the Victorian period, two British children survive a shipwreck in the South Pacific. After days afloat, they are marooned on a lush tropical island in the company of kindly old sailor. Together they survive solely on their resourcefulness and the bounty of their remote paradise.

The familiar story of Lieutenant Bligh, whose cruelty leads to a mutiny on his ship. This version follows both the efforts of Fletcher Christian to get his men beyond the reach of British retribution, and the epic voyage of Lieutenant Bligh to get his loyalists safely to East Timor in a tiny lifeboat.

Come Back, Africa chronicles the life of Zachariah, a black South African living under the rule of the harsh apartheid government in 1959.

South Africa, 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white political activists from the African National Congress imprisoned by the apartheid regime, put a plan in motion to escape from the infamous Pretoria Prison.

A Brooklyn pier racketeer bullies boat-owners into paying protection money but two fed-up fishermen decide to eliminate the gangster themselves rather than complain to the police.

In the early 1960s, a quintet of hopeful, young African-American men form an amateur vocal group called The Five Heartbeats. After an initially rocky start, the group improves, turns pro, and rises to become a top flight music sensation. Along the way, however, the guys learn many hard lessons about the reality of the music industry.

After young Kirra leaves her Australian home to summer with her grandfather in South Africa, she soon discovers a baby orca stranded in the lagoon near her grandfather’s rundown seaside amusement park. She names the lonely whale Willy--and embarks on a great quest to lead the little guy back to his anxious pod.

A gang of black militants plots to rob a factory to finance their "revolutionary struggle."

Two young misfits head for New York City to celebrate their idol and muse, Stevie Nicks, at The Night of 1,000 Stevies. Along the road, in order for them to escape their painful pasts, they must discover their strengths and learn self-acceptance.

In the aftermath of the terrible Civil War which has devastated the South, Amanda America Dixon returns home to find she has become the sole heir to a vast cotton plantation. But the dreadful secret which has blighted her life threatens to deprive her of the birthright which her beloved father David had struggled for so long to create. Raised by her father and grandmother to be the perfect white Southern Belle, Amanda's true mother was a black slave Julia. Confronted with the forces of greed and bigotry, Amanda has to face not only the hatred of a racist world, but the complex truth of a family whose lives have been built on a lie.

Nat Turner, a former slave in America, leads a liberation movement in 1831 to free African-Americans in Virginia that results in a violent retaliation from whites.

A biological experiment goes bad, this time releasing a gaggle of mutated great white sharks with a taste for human flesh. Soon enough, shark expert Nick West is on the case, leading a crew to study them and eventually bring them back into captivity. West's plans hit a snag, however, when Australian shark hunter Roy Bishop is called in to wipe out the fishy menace.

In the late 19th century, on board a ship sailing from Jamaica to England, Olivia Harwood, a recent widow, takes on the task of caring for several malaria patients, including Mark Bellis, a mysterious and tormented painter.

Laurent van Horn is the leader of a band of Dutch refugees on a ship seeking freedom in the Carolinas, when the ship is wrecked on the coast of Cartagene, governed by Don Juan Alvardo, a Spanish ruler. Alvarado has Laurent thrown in prison, but the latter escapes, and five-years later is a pirate leader. He poses as the navigator on a ship in which Contessa Francesca, daughter of a Mexican noble, is traveling on her way to marry Alvarado, whom she has never seen. Laurent's pirates capture the ship and Francesca, in order to save another ship, gives her hand-in-marriage to Laurent, who sails her to the pirate hideout. This irks his jealous pirate comrades Anne Bonney and Captain Benjamin Black. They overpower Laurent and send Francesca to Alvarado, and then Mario du Billar, a trusted right-hand man, makes a deal to deliver Laurent to Alvarado.

In 1959, Berry Gordy Jr. gathered the best musicians from Detroit's thriving jazz and blues scene to begin cutting songs for his new record company. Over a fourteen year period they were the heartbeat on every hit from Motown's Detroit era. By the end of their phenomenal run, this unheralded group of musicians had played on more number ones hits than the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Elvis and the Beatles combined - which makes them the greatest hit machine in the history of popular music. They called themselves the Funk Brothers. Forty-one years after they played their first note on a Motown record and three decades since they were all together, the Funk Brothers reunited back in Detroit to play their music and tell their unforgettable story, with the help of archival footage, still photos, narration, interviews, re-creation scenes, 20 Motown master tracks, and twelve new live performances of Motown classics with the Brothers backing up contemporary performers.

This South African movie tracks the rise of a once-petty criminal to the heights of the criminal underworld. After cutting his teeth on hijacking, before moving onto bigger game, an ambitious man hits a setback when most of his gang are shot.

Yuli is the nickname given to Carlos Acosta by his father, Pedro, who considers him the son of Ogun, an African god and a fighter. As a child Yuli avoids discipline and education, learning from the streets of an impoverished and abandoned Havana. His father, however, has other ideas, and knowing that his son has a natural talent for dance, sends him to the National Ballet School of Cuba. Despite his repeated escapes and initial poor behaviour, the boy is inevitably drawn to the world of dance, and begins to shape his legendary career from a young age, becoming the first black dancer to be cast in some of the most prestigious ballet roles, originally written for white dancers, in companies such as the Houston Ballet or the Royal Ballet in London.

In the South Pacific islands, two brothers, one good and one bad, fight over the same girl and over a bag of pearls.

Put upon greasy spoon waitress Julie gets raped by her drunken short order cook boss. After managing to escape, Julie hooks up with regular patron Brad Collins and heads off to Las Vegas for an impromptu wedding. However, Brad leaves Julie high and dry in a cheap motel the very next morning after coercing her into posing for a few nude photos. But that's just the start of poor Julie's woes.

When the boss of Boston's Irish mob abruptly skips town to escape a federal indictment, a low-level gangster gathers a group of petty crooks to seize control of the streets.

When two showgirls decide to leave South America and head for home, they sweet talk the purser of a clipper ship into giving them berths. In the course of the voyage, a band of thieves attempts to take over the ship and make off with its cash cargo. The heroic purser has other ideas and weighs in to save the day.

In San Francisco, Sylvia Douglas and her fiancée, James Callahan, a reformed crook, make their getaway after Jim, disgusted with his inability to find a job, un-reforms and steals a diamond necklace. Graham, a detective, gives chase to a desolate island in the South Pacific where a rum-running gangster, Murdock, holds him captive. Callahan becomes infatuated with a native girl, Leona, and Sylvia turns to Graham for protection against the offensive Murdock. A volcano eruption causes problems for all.

When Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested in South Central Los Angeles in 2010 as the suspected murderer of a string of young black women, police hailed it as the culmination of 20 years of investigations. Four years later documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield took his camera to the alleged killer’s neighborhood for another view.

Ex Con Armstrong Cane (Ving Rhames) returns to home a changed man looking to take over his father's old church and congregation. The neighborhood though is full of drugs and gangs. Those who are able are leaving for more prosperous areas and falling in with a slick preacher (Ricardo Chivara). Even with a dangerous gang leader (Dean McDermott) threatening his flock, Armstrong won't give up.

Spider, a young gang leader, gets in over his head when he robs a notorious gangster. On the run, he's taken in by a sheltered young woman and her reclusive uncle, a legendary mobster gunned down by the same gangster now pursuing Spider.

Mike Sullivan spends his nights kidnapping runaways so his boss, Lamar, can turn them into prostitutes. He is a crack addict and a thief and he is in love with a resentful prostitute, Rhonda, who doesn't love him back. Although he has aspirations of escaping this world, it isn't until he is nearly killed by corrupt cops for stealing money from his boss that he decides to redeem himself. In an attempt to save his own soul, he tries to get Rhonda out of the business, and is forced to battle Lamar and his henchmen, as well as Rhonda's unwillingness to change. As punishment for betraying Lamar, Mike is forced into a series of misdeeds, and in a shocking ending, must commit unredeemable acts as he tries to save Rhonda and himself.

Luke Billings (Lionel Jeffries) and his family have a problem with the new police sergeant Sam Hargis (Richard Todd) so they take over a small Transvaal town with the attention of drawing Hargis into a showdown. Hargis tries to get back up from the townsfolk who do not want to know, so is forced to lay low. As things get out of hand one of the Billings boys takes an interest in the storekeeper's wife, Priss Dobbs (Anne Aubrey). Having had enough her husband, Ernie (Jamie Uys) takes up the gun and heads down the main street alone. An act that prompts Hargis to join him. Slowly, the townsfolk turn up to back them up.

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.

Two 19th-century sailors jump ship only to discover their tropical paradise is a cannibal stronghold.

Adapted from the successful novel, Dead in 5 Heartbeats, by Ralph "Sonny" Barger with Keith and Kent Zimmerman. The story follows the Infidelz MC's former President, Patch Kinkade, who has left his personal demons behind for the calm of desert life. When war erupts between his brothers he left behind and the rival Hooligans, Patch rides back into town to either make peace or do battle.

Adult film starlet Vixen Velvet wants to be a real actress - she gets her chance when the remote town she's filming in finds itself in the grip of a zombie apocalypse.

After he is orphaned by an air raid on Port Said during the Suez Crisis, a young boy attempts to go by himself from the Suez Canal to Durban in South Africa where his nearest relative, Aunt Jane, lives. On the way he meets a variety of different people who help or hinder his journey - including an ageing diamond smuggler.

An English rock band from South Africa try to break in to the profitable Afrikaans music market... without even being able to speak the language! Stone Cold Jane Austen is a dark comedy about the trappings of fame and the type of ego it takes to be able to 'make it' - all the way down on the Southern tip of Africa!

After losing rugby’s holy grail, the Currie Cup, Schuks (Leon Schuster) sets off on a hilarious journey to pay for what he has done. In lieu of a R1 million fine, the Sports Minister (Desmond Dube) offers Schuks a lifeline to create a documentary film that shows South Africa in a positive light.As the documentary takes shape, the Currie Cup traverses its own perilous journey as it moves from two clueless crooks, Bossie (Ivan Lucas) and Savage (Gerrit Schoonhoven), to an enterprising traffic officer and a conniving pawnbroker, among others.True to form, the “documentary” features a series of brand new candid camera gags for which Schuster is so well known, featuring unsuspecting South African citizens and a host of famous personalities and celebrities - both past and current.

Two inept gamblers on the run from their debts and a gang of crooks find refuge in a film studio.

This local ensemble comedy is set in 2003, as a group of working-class South Africans try to come to terms with their changed society. Seen through the eyes of a family dog, we watch as friends, neighbours and lovers try to deal with their challenging relationships.

This time, Leon Schuster plays a filmmaker who is making a candid camera movie, only to discover that another filmmaker has stolen his ideas and is making the identical picture. How so? It seems that the thieving rival is blackmailing Schuster´s girlfriend. With the help of his friends and an ingenious talking cap that he designed himself, the good director manages to outwit the baddie, get the girl and make the country laugh.

In a series of short skits, Leon Schuster uses candid camera and several disguises to stitch up the general public of South Africa. Such sketches include: The watermelon pulse test, where Leon shows that a watermelon is only ripe when it does not have a heartbeat, much to the confusion of the seller. Cooking on the bonnet of a car, while upsetting the traffic police. Supposedly killing a cow in a butcher's shop.

After a botched robbery escalates to homicide, a north Philly gun runner has to escape or outsmart the south Philly Italian mob as they close in for vengeance.

Told for the first time, this is the story of the handful of people in the South Tower, on the actual floors hit by the hijacked plane, who made it out alive. That anyone could survive the devastating inferno ignited by 34,000 litres of jet fuel is surprising enough. But how they managed to escape before the tower collapsed is even more extraordinary. Now, those who were there recall the unique life and death struggles that took place inside the Tower that morning - and reveal how they got away.

In the 1830's in northern England, Riah Millican, a widow with three children, takes a job as housekeeper to a reclusive former teacher, Percival Miller. Miller makes Riah the gift of a black velvet gown, and even educates her children. But when Riah discovers the reason behind Miller's gifts, she vows to leave his house, but Miller has a hold on her, even after his death, when he leaves his house to her on the condition that she never marry. Riah's daughter, Biddy, grows up and becomes a laundress in a large house where her education keeps her from fitting in and makes her a target. But it also catches the eye of a son of the house, and with Miller's legacies, Biddy may yet find her way to happiness.

1. Snake Eyes 2. I Will Wait 3. Below My Feet 4. Wilder Mind 5. Awake My Soul 6. Lover Of The Light 7. Tompkins Square Park 8. Believe 9. Ghosts That We Knew 10. The Cave 11. Ditmas 12. Dust Bowl Dance 13. Wona 14. Lampenda 15. There Will Be Time 16. Little Lion Man 17. The Wolf DUST AND THUNDER chronicles the meeting of South Africa with their long-standing favourite British band, Mumford & Sons. Filmed live against the beautiful Pretorian outback, award-winning director Dick Carruthers gets to the very heart of what makes Mumford & Sons such a special act as the band performs new songs and classic hits in front of an exhilarated crowd. Made for the big screen in stunning Ultra HD with 5.1 surround sound, this truly spectacular concert film may go down as Mumford & Sons’ finest.

Marisa and Frank honeymoon in South Africa. A particularly favourable offer lures them to a lonely and run-down hotel. There, they are attacked by men. Frank is beaten and kidnapped, while Marisa barely escapes. She receives help from the young South African Biko, who helps her to escape the men. Marisa and Biko find out that people are abducted to be cannibalized for the trade in organs. Finally, the two try to find frank and save him.

A poor and humble community is threatened by a powerful criminal known as Dlamini, extorting the under-privileged villagers for protection money while stealing from them at the same time. When Makhosi returns home after years away, he is horrified to see what Dlamini is doing to his friends and family. After his good friend, Charlie, is threatened by the crook, Makhosi decides to take action.

In his provocative 2021 book, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto, New York Times opinion columnist Charles M. Blow calls for a “reverse Great Migration” of African Americans from the North back to the South to upend today’s political power structures while reclaiming the land and culture they left behind. South to Black Power does more than illustrate Blow’s enlightening ideas; we journey through Blow’s personal story, from his childhood in Louisiana to his role as father to young adult children in New York City, showing us the hard-won truths behind his vision for the future.