Best movies like Citizen Jake

A proud black man and his school-teacher wife face discriminatory challenges in 1960s America.

Dreams can make a life worth living, but they can also be dashed by bad decisions. This is the crossroads whare the Younger family find themselves when their father passes away and leaves them with $10,000 in life insurance money. Should they buy a new home for the family? Perhaps a liquor store? While no choice is easy, life on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s is even harder.

Two very different families converge on Martha's Vineyard one weekend for a wedding.

There are dysfunctional families... and then there are the Conways. After a family tragedy, 15-year-old Billy Conway has become the de facto glue between his bitter mom, distant brother, and stoic dad. But when Billy starts to act out, everything changes for him and his family

Old sailor Chris Christofferson eagerly awaits the arrival of his grown daughter Anna, whom he sent at five years old to live with relatives in Minnesota. He has not seen her since, but believes her to be a decent and respectably employed young woman. When Anna arrives, however, it is clear that she has lived a hard life in the dregs of society, and that much of spirit has been extinguished. She falls in love with a young sailor rescued at sea by her father, but dreads to reveal to him the truth of her past. Both father and young man are deluded about her background, yet Anna cannot quite bring herself to allow them to remain deluded.

Walter Lee Younger is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with his wife, son, sister and mother, he seems like an imprisoned man. Until, that is, the family gets an unexpected financial windfall.

A saga of class relations and changing times in an Edwardian England on the brink of modernity, the film centers on liberal Margaret Schlegel, who, along with her sister Helen, becomes involved with two couples: wealthy, conservative industrialist Henry Wilcox and his wife Ruth, and the downwardly mobile working-class Leonard Bast and his mistress Jackie.

In 1976, a lower-middle-class teenager struggles to cope living with her neurotic family of nomads on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.

It’s 2017 in Bisbee, Arizona, an old copper-mining town just miles from the Mexican border. The town’s close-knit community prepares to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bisbee’s darkest hour: the infamous Bisbee Deportation of 1917, during which 1,200 striking miners were violently taken from their homes, banished to the middle of the desert, and left to die. Townspeople confront this violent, misunderstood past by staging dramatic recreations of the escalating strike. These dramatized scenes are based on subjective versions of the story and “directed,” in a sense, by residents with conflicting views of the event. Deeply personal segments torn from family history build toward a massive restaging of the deportation itself on the exact day of its 100th anniversary.

Slice-of-life look at a sweet working-class couple in London, Shirley and Cyril, his mother, who's aging quickly and becoming forgetful, mum's ghastly upper-middle-class neighbors, and Cyril's pretentious sister and philandering husband. Shirley wants a baby, but Cyril, who reads Marx and wants the world to be perfect, is reluctant. Cyril's mum locks herself out and must ask her snooty neighbors for help. Then Cyril's sister Valerie stages a surprise party for mum's 70th birthday, a disaster from start to finish. Shirley holds things together, and she and Cyril may put aside her Dutch cap after all.

A man trying to put his life back on track gets some advice from an unexpected benefactor -- the ex-footballer Eric Cantona.

A working-class family in London's East End is struggling to stay afloat during the recession under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Only the mother Mavis is working; father Frank and the couple's two sons Colin, a timid, chronically shy individual and Mark, an outspoken, headstrong young man, are on the dole. This situation is contrasted by the presence of Mavis's sister Barbara, and her husband John, whose financial and social loftiness appears to be a comfortable facade over the unspoken soreness of a lackluster marriage.

David gives his wife, Joyce, an unexpected—and unpleasant—surprise when he suddenly demands a divorce. When she then learns that David has taken up with a younger woman, Joyce decides to make the most of this separation by taking a solo trip to the Caribbean. However, just before diving into a vacation fling, she runs into Emily, an old chum whose own divorce has left her embittered. Joyce then debates giving married life one last chance.

In 1935, 99-year-old former slave Shadrach asks to be buried on the soil where he was born to slavery, and that land is owned by the large Dabney family, consisting of Vernon, Trixie and their seven children, and to bury a black man on that land is a violation of strict Virginia law.

Casey has rejected her privileged upbringing and restores old boats for a living. She lives a cozy life with her beautiful social worker girlfriend Alex until her stuffy family demands that she come home for Christmas – without Alex. Casey is a longshorewoman who seems to have everything she wants; she and her girlfriend Alex are very much in love. But there’s nothing like the holidays to bring out the drama of the average family. Casey lives just across the bay from her upper crust New England family. The proximity seems no accident: Casey can’t quite let go, despite her family’s judgmental and inescapable hold on her otherwise independent and unconventional life. When the family reunites for Christmas, the unwrapping of presents takes a back seat to the unraveling of emotions.

Ricky and his family have been fighting an uphill struggle against debt since the 2008 financial crash. An opportunity to wrestle back some independence appears with a shiny new van and the chance to run a franchise as a self-employed delivery driver. It's hard work, and his wife's job as a carer is no easier. The family unit is strong but when both are pulled in different directions everything comes to breaking point.

Set during World War II, an upper-class family begins to fall apart due to the conservative nature of the patriarch and the progressive values of his children.

Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by social services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her history still haunts her.

An autobiographical film taken from the experiences of writer-director Rob Moretti, CRUTCH is a coming-of-age tale about a young man's struggle with family problems and substance abuse. Behind a facade of suburban middle class perfection, David's home life is falling apart. As he tries to cope with the impossible situation, the troubled and impressionable teenager falls under the spell of Kenny, a georgous, thirty-something, has-been actor turned theatre coach. When Kenny's "support" escalates into seduction, David slowly decends into an abyss of drinking and drug addition from which he must escape if he is to survive. CRUTCH is a dramatic tale of the confusion of youth and the difficulties in finding oneself.

A regular guy struggles with a repressive home and professional life, as well as making amends for the trouble his free-spirited brother and sister cause about town.

Two police officers who used to be the best friends are now torn between friendship and the call of duty. Cols. Baltazar and Ricarte graduated from the same class in Philippine Marine Academy. They even worked on the same assignment right after graduation. But that was the last news they heard about each other until they were caught in an awkward situation. Col. Ricarte is now considered a rebellious while Col. Baltazar is tasked to go after him. Now he has to set aside his personal interest for the welfare of the country.

Lisa Spinelli is a Staten Island teacher who is unusually devoted to her students. When she discovers one of her five-year-olds is a prodigy, she becomes fascinated with the boy, ultimately risking her family and freedom to nurture his talent.

Look Back in Anger is a love triangle involving the brilliant-but-disaffected young Jimmy Porter, his upper-middle-class, impassive wife Alison Porter, and her aristocratic best friend Helena Charles). Cliff , an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace.

Curse of the Starving Class is a play by Sam Shepard, considered the first of a series on family tragedies. Drama about a dirt-poor 1950's-era farm family. Dad's a foul talking drunk and Mom is desperately trying to save what's left of their family life.

A woman stuck in a stale marriage struggles to raise her children and manage her secret drug habit. But when winter comes to her small town, her balancing act begins to come crashing down.

Nathan's Kingdom is a dark fantasy, coming-of-age drama about Nathan, a 25-year-old autistic man struggling with his teenage prescription-addict sister, and rather than surrendering their lives to social services, they risk it all to find a kingdom that once existed only in their imaginations.

This adventure is set in the Philippines and chronicles the exploits of two men who survive a plane crash in the jungle. One of the men is an avaricious killer who has come to the islands to search for a fortune in diamonds. The other is an international adventurer. Now they must somehow overcome their vast personal differences and desires to survive in the steamy wilderness

Fanny Kemble is a famous star of the English stage, but while touring the United States, she gives up her career to marry wealthy American Pierce Butler. Moving with him from Philadelphia to his Georgia plantation, Fanny sees slavery firsthand, and her outrage leads her to help the family's slaves in open defiance of her spouse. Undaunted by the consequences, Fanny eventually writes a book that strengthens the anti-slavery movement.

The film is a true and faithful retelling of Saint Dominic’s life that it even allows viewers to meet him in an almost personal way. It was created in celebration of the 40th year of foundation of the Dominican Province of the Philippines. It is also the gift of the Province to the whole Dominican Family for the 800th anniversary year of the Order in 2016

In northern England around 1900, the worker John O'Brien lives near poverty in a small house in the worker's district. He falls in love with Mary, the teacher of his highly intelligent younger sister Kathy and daughter of a rich family. Their love is doomed by the social difference, but the vigorous Mary refuses to allow outer circumstances destroying their love.

Eli and Daniel, two Korean American brothers who own a struggling women's shoe store, have an unlikely friendship with 11-year-old Kamilla. On the first day of the 1992 L.A. riots, the trio must defend their store—and contemplate the meaning of family, their personal dreams and the future.

"A Couple" is a film about a long term relationship between a man and a woman. The man is Leo Tolstoy. The woman is his wife, Sophia. They were married for 36 years, had 13 children nine of whom survived. Each kept a diary. Although they lived together, in the same house, they wrote letters frequently to each other. Leo Tolstoy insisted that they read their diaries aloud to guests at dinner parties. The Tolstoy’s were also a dysfunctional couple, arguing frequently and being very unhappy with each other while occasionally enjoying passionate moments of reconciliation. The film is Sophia’s monologue about the joys and struggles of their life together, loosely drawn from their letters to each other and their diary entries.

Anna, a young slave girl, is rescued and adopted by Christians in 2ND Century Smyrna, and befriended by their aged bishop, Polycarp. As Anna is taught by Polycarp and her new family, she struggles to reconcile her beliefs with those of the Christians. When the Roman proconsul demands that all citizens worship Caesar to show their allegiance to Rome, Polycarp and the Christians must find courage to stand for their faith against the growing threat of persecution. Anna is forced to come to grips with the truth and choose whom she is willing to live, and die for.

Paradise East is a dark comedy about a desperately dysfunctional, lower middle class family, fiercely struggling to make it in the twentieth century.

When a man is released from prison for his involvement in a white nationalist gang, he begins to uncover the truth behind his troubled past with violent consequences.