Best movies like Desperate Lives

A young drug dealer watches as his high-rolling life is dismantled in the wake of his cousin's murder, which sees his best friend arrested for the crime.

After getting into a car accident while drunk on the day of her sister's wedding, Gwen Cummings is given a choice between prison or a rehab center. She chooses rehab, but is extremely resistant to taking part in any of the treatment programs they have to offer, refusing to admit that she has an alcohol addiction.

As her family falls apart, seventeen year old Sweetness O'Hara is left to fend for herself in a neighborhood where her survival is uncertain.

Sylvia, a novice schoolteacher, is hired to teach English in a high school, but she’s met with an apathetic faculty, a delinquent student body and an administration that drowns its staff in paperwork. The following days go from bad to worse as Sylvia struggles to reach her most troubled students.

On a prom-night dare, a trio of high school friends chant an incantation, unleashing an evil spirit from the past with deadly consequences.

The story of a mentally anguished high school history teacher going through a complete reassessment of his life. His method for reassessing his life is to narrate it to his class and interweave in it three generations of his family's history.

When a Chicago teen is arrested for drug possession, the ensuing investigation reveals that he has had sexual contact with an older man. Discovering his sexual encounter, other students start shunning him and call for his expulsion from school. His father as his conservative blue-collar dad also rejects him, while his mother does try to offer support.

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.

A teenaged drug addict is sent to Dr. Royce's controversial drug intervention program where the addicts in the program confront each other in supervised group meetings. Also, in evening meetings, the addicts are confronted by their families. The girl's parents want to remove her from the program because it upsets them that their daughter is being forced to associate with addicts who admit to stealing and trading sex for drugs.

Shaun Brumder is a local surfer kid from Orange County who dreams of going to Stanford to become a writer and to get away from his dysfunctional family household. Except Shaun runs into one complication after another, starting when his application is rejected after his dim-witted guidance counselor sends in the wrong form.

A bunch of high school misfits in Hawaii, introduced by their new teacher, attend a science fair in which they draw up inspiration to build their own solar car and win a trip to compete in the 1990 World Solar Challenge in Australia.

High-school principal Dr. Alfred Carroll relates to an audience of parents that marijuana can have devastating effects on teens: a drug supplier entices several restless teens, Mary and Jimmy Lane, sister and brother, and Bill, Mary's boyfriend, into frequenting a reefer house. Gradually, Bill and Jimmy are drawn into smoking dope, which affects their family lives.

In pursuit of fantasy, five teenagers hop the fence of a now defunct amusement park. While apparently a mindless diversion, for two of them the park is the setting for a more fatal bid at escape.

As four friends prepare for life after high school, different challenges bring about turning points in each of their lives. The dramas unfold and resolve at their local rollerskating rink, Cascade.

Nick comes to New York to temporarily live with a jazz musician friend of his late father's named Cal while his mom is in rehab. During his time in the city, he befriends a group of kids who show him what New York has to offer.

Michael, who lost his wife a few years back, has been use to being a single dad to his two daughters until his new girlfriend Maddie comes along.

Riley is struggling to make friends after transferring to a new high school where her father, Chris, is an English teacher. When she meets Kyla, they quickly becomes close friends. However, the friendship takes a strange turn when Riley learns that Kyla is obsessed with her dad. Will Kyla successfully seduce Chris and start a twisted new life with him by removing everyone in her path, or will Riley be able to save her father from Kyla’s treacherous plot before it’s too late?

Tess enlists her biological father – a lovable slacker from the wrong side of the tracks – and the charming juvenile delinquent next door to help her come to grips with the death of her little sister.

A drug dealer with upscale clientele is having moral problems going about his daily deliveries. A reformed addict, he has never gotten over the wife that left him, and the couple that use him for deliveries worry about his mental well-being and his effectiveness at his job. Meanwhile someone is killing women in apparently drug-related incidents.

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.

Like some other kids, 12-year-old Trevor McKinney believed in the goodness of human nature. Like many other kids, he was determined to change the world for the better. Unlike most other kids, he succeeded.

A controlling father’s attempts to ensure that his two children succeed in high school backfire after his son experiences a career-ending sports injury. Their familial bonds are eventually placed under severe strain by an unexpected tragedy.

A 16-year-old tomboy and high school athlete becomes embroiled with the lives around her boyfriend whose conservative father is running for mayor.

A young man moves to a new town after experiencing a tragedy and becomes involved with a gang of Satan-worshipping teens who believe they have supernatural powers. But by the time he realises he’s in too deep, it may be too late to escape.

A teacher trying to break up a local drug ring is framed and arrested for possession of marijuana.

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman takes us inside Northeast High School as a fly on the wall to observe the teachers and how they interact with the students.

An Ivy League professor returns home, where his pot-growing twin brother has concocted a plan to take down a local drug lord.

When a high school senior is dumped by her boyfriend, her grades fall drastically...to avoid failing, she begins seducing her male teachers. Thus begins her downward spiral into drug addiction and prostitution, and ultimately assassinations for a kingpin mob boss.

Husband, wife, and daughter have moved from Boston to Williamstown. At 16, Samantha treats her mother shabbily, but when the two of them are in a horrific car crash, the mother wills Sam to live, somehow losing her own life while her spirit enters Sam.

Rick and Melissa are a pair of young lovers hoping to get out of the slums for good and escape the poverty and crime their families and friends have gotten involved in. All this comes to an end when Rick feels he must rejoin his old gang to avenge the killing of his brother by a rival gang. In the course of getting even, Rick is arrested, leaving Melissa without anyone to protect her. She falls in with a crack dealer and quickly becomes addicted to the drug. When she gets sold to a drug kingpin by a minor dealer to pay off a debt, only Rick can save her.

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!

An inside glimpse of how it feels to be a teen in today's disconnected world. PURGATORY HOUSE chronicles the after-life journey of Silver Strand: a lonely teen who abandons her life of turmoil and drug addiction, only to find herself caught somewhere between heaven and hell. There, she must choose whether she will accept her drab existence or discover within herself the power to change.

In Los Angeles, the young Jenny has a nice childhood with her Korean parents Joanne and David Kim. However, after the divorce of her parents, the judge gives her custody to her selfish mother that neglects Jenny while the disappointed David returns to Seoul. Six years later, Jenny is a troubled and reckless teenager expelled from the public school that has easy sex and uses drugs and booze, and her best friend is the orphan drug dealer Becky. The lawyer Elliot Krasner decides to call his former friend David to tell him about the self-destructive behavior of Jenny, and David returns to Los Angeles. He brings Jenny to live with him and support her, but the lack of emotional structure of Jenny imposes tough difficulties for their relationship.

A group of teenagers wish to rebel against the administrators and teachers (the system) in their suburban Chicago high school called New Port South

A teenage boy is sent to a juvenile reform facility in the wilderness. As we learn about the tragic events that sent him there, his struggle becomes one for survival with the inmates, counselors, and the retired war colonel in charge.

The plot chronicles the exploits of Michael, a teenager who is using marijuana and stealing his father's beer. His younger sister, Corey, is worried about him because he started acting differently. When her piggy bank goes missing, her cartoon tie-in toys come to life to help her find it. After discovering it in Michael's room along with his stash of drugs, the various cartoon characters proceed to work together and take him on a fantasy journey to teach him the risks and consequences a life of drug-use can bring and save the world. Financed by Ronald McDonald House Charities, it features an introduction by President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush.

Based on the inspiring and powerful true story and journal entries of Rachel Joy Scott, the first student killed in the Columbine High School shooting in 1999.

A suburban town is torn apart in the aftermath of an accidental teen drug overdose in this ensemble film exploring the mysteries of modern faith.

Fabricating credentials to score a last-ditch job as a high school guidance counsellor, a boozing, drug-addled former child star becomes an improbable hit with his students by dispensing the worst advice possible, in this hilarious reprobate comedy from writer-director-star Pat Mills.

Angel celebrates the birth of his daughter by taking his first hit of crack cocaine. With the hesitant support of his wife, Monika, he joins a friend of his to deal drugs for a short time--enough time to get out of debt and buy some nice things for the family. Three years later, Angel is still dealing, and has not saved any money, instead spending it on crack. His addiction grows, straining his friendship and his family life, and he gradually loses control.

Old feelings of betrayal resurface, renewing a bitter rift between two girlfriends when one learns that the other seduced her son

With the support of her parents, an Arizona adolescent overcomes severe injuries to run in a 10K race.

The Charters family falls into despair over their drug-addicted son Gary. They discuss his problems through the "Toughlove" program in searching for answers.

A troubled boy becomes addicted to heroin, and his mother and foster father help him fight it.

A 14-year-old girl in late 1960's America is inadvertently sucked into an odyssey of sex and drugs. She eventually seeks help.

In a Mexican border town plagued by neglect, corruption, and violence, a frustrated teacher tries a radical new method to break through his students’ apathy and unlock their curiosity, their potential… and maybe even their genius. Based on a true story.

A high-school track star (Nick Stahl) watches without judgment as his two best friends (Summer Phoenix, Aaron Paul) abuse heroin.

Cautionary anti-drug film based on a true story about the effects on Jean Stapleton and Arthur Hill when their teenage son (John Putch, Stapleton's real-life son) gets spaced out on a marijuana joint laced with PCP, or "angel dust," and the family is forced to wrestle with the crisis.

Five very different characters are thrown together in one weird, mashed up day. It started out like any other, but 24 hours later everything had changed. South West 9 takes you through the windscreen of the new millenium. The death of idealism, capitalism, religion and hippies. Even the drugs don't work anymore. The 'summer of love' generation have come down and they're ready to riot. Seattle. Stockholm. Paris. Genoa. May Day riots.

A young man in Los Angeles dreams of striking it big as a singer in the music business. One day he gets signed to a big record contract, but along with the fame and money he develops an addiction to the drug PCP.