Best movies like In the Custody of Strangers
His crime was a minor one. His sentence was a nightmare.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like In the Custody of Strangers Starring Martin Sheen, Jane Alexander, Emilio Estevez, Kenneth McMillan, and more. If you liked In the Custody of Strangers then you may also like: Yelling To The Sky, Unstrung Heroes, Walking Across Egypt, The War at Home, Return to Innocence 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 teenage delinquent who goes on a drunken joyride is left in jail overnight by his parents in the hope that he might learn a lesson from it. But events follow which result in the boy spending far longer behind bars than anyone had foreseen.
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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.
The War at Home
Jeremy Collier is a Vietnam veteran who has returned home and is struggling to cope with the war experiences that haunt him. He is also at odds with his family, who cannot begin to understand what he has been through. Jeremy's battles with his family finally spiral out of control on Thanksgiving Day, when a bitter secret is revealed
Return to Innocence
A searing legal drama that centers on a highly credentialed child psychologist whose life is shattered when he's accused of sexually assaulting a young boy he's been treating.
Rhymes for Young Ghouls
In 1976, a Mi'gMaq teenager plots revenge against the sadistic Indian agent who imprisoned her in a residential school where rape and abuse are common.
All Fall Down
Ralph and Annabell Willart are a feuding couple who are constantly bickering over their worthless, good-for-nothing son Berry-Berry. When Berry-Berry begins yet another meaningless love affair, this time with an older woman named Echo O’Brien, he really gets his parents at each others’ throats.
Black Girl
An aspiring dancer and her two wicked sisters resent their mother's love for a foster daughter.
Cadence
As punishment for drunken, rebellious behavior, a young white soldier is thrown into a stockade populated entirely by black inmates. But instead of falling victim to racial hatred, the soldier joins forces with his fellow prisoners and rises up against the insanely tyrannical and bigoted prison warden.
Reviving Ophelia
No one listens when a teenager suspects that her cousin is in an abusive relationship.
Mom, Dad and Her
Sydney is a troubled teen heading for trouble. After being caught shoplifting and a case of alcohol poisoning, Sydney's desperate single mother sends her off to the country to live with her father, Ben, and his new pregnant wife, Emma. Sydney misses her boyfriend, her city life and doesn't get on with her dad or stepmom. Slowly she starts to settle in as she makes friends with Jess, a local girl whose mother died of cancer. Sydney makes a couple of mistakes but after her grandfather's death the extended family start to heal.
Return to Macon County
In 1958, two teenagers take their pride and joy, a hopped-up Chevy, and start a cross-country journey to enter it in the National Championship drag races in California. Along the way they hook up with a pretty but dingy waitress who quits her job and hops in their car--and turns out to be more trouble than they thought--drag-race a gang of town punks who lose to to them and then accuse them of cheating, and come up against a local cop who is obsessed with putting these two "juvenile delinquents" in jail.
That Was Then... This Is Now
A delinquent teenager's only link to society is the attachment he feels towards an older brother-figure. When the older boy starts spending time with a new girlfriend, the teenager begins to feel even more alienated, and gets involved with drugs and the police.
Square Dance
An awkward 13-year-old leaves her cranky grandfather in rural Texas, to live with her mother in Fort Worth.
Immediate Family
Linda and Michael, married for ten years, desperately want a baby and turn to an adoption agency which introduces them to Lucy, a teenage girl expecting her first baby. The three agree that Linda and Michael will adopt Lucy's baby and that Lucy will sign away custody. Things don't go quite to plan however..
A Lesson Before Dying
In the 1940s South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing a a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince school teacher go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity.
Shadrach
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.
A Horse for Summer
When a family emergency forces a troubled teen to do the wrong thing for the right reason, a community discovers the meaning of forgiveness.
Youth Aflame
One of several WW II-era "juvenile delinquent" dramas, Youth Aflame was filmed two years before its 1945 release, and frankly looks much older. It's the old saw about two sisters, one good, one bad. The nice sister (Kay Morley) tries to steer the nasty one (Joy Reece) towards the straight and narrow path, but it's no use. Only when it's too late does the erring sister learn the horrible price of fast driving, hard drinking and uninhibited sex. And it's ALL HER PARENTS' FAULT!!!! Youth Aflame was reissued in 1959 as Hoodlum Girls, during Hollywood's next J.D.-movie cycle.
Bright Angel
In Montana, naive teenager George longs to escape from his broken home before his dysfunctional parents push him over the edge. When George meets pretty drifter Lucy, she easily convinces him and his friend Claude to join her on a road trip to Montana in hopes of breaking her brother out of jail.
Steel City
After a tragic accident caused by the truck of the middle-aged Carl Lee where a woman dies with a crushed stern, he is arrested and sent to the county jail. His son PJ, who works washing dishes and cleaning tables in a restaurant, feels lost, without financial support to keep his father's house, and is fired from his job and evicted from his house.
Blame It on the Night
When his unmarried mother dies, custody of 13-year-old Job is assumed by his alleged father, Chris, whom he has never seen. Job is an enthusiastic cadet at a military academy, and Chris turns out to be a top-grossing rock star who removes Job from his beloved school to keep him company on tour. Getting acquainted is fraught with culture shock for both father and son. Written by Paul Emmons
Double Parked
A resourceful and high-spirited woman deals with financial distress and her asthmatic thirteen-year-old son when his life is gravely complicated by a new friendship with the son of her former drunken and abusive husband.
Levitation
Sarah Paulson stars as a pregnant teenager who searches for her biological mother, with the help of a guardian angel.
Terror in the Family
Fifteen-year-old Deena Marten wants the same freedom every teenager craves. But when she can't have her way, her rebellious temperament erupts in violence. Her parents, Cynthia and Todd, fear her new boyfriend, Garret, 17, is the cause. Distraught, Stephanie turns to alcohol, and Todd escapes in his work. They're unaware their Boy Scout son Adam, 13, sips from a vodka bottle hidden in his bedroom. And the problems in this dysfunctional family continue to worsen.
Shattered Spirits
When his drinking problem takes control of his life, a father tries to leave the bottle behind while putting his and his family's lives back together.
Sister, Sister
Heated confrontations and revelations result when a divorcee returns with her young son to the home of her two sisters.
Curse of the Starving Class
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.
Spin
"Spin" tells the story of a boy who loses his parents in a plane crash, is taken in by his uncle (Tucci), who then leaves him for ten years in the care of his Hispanic ranch hand (Blades) and his wife (Delany). Once in high school, Eddie (Merriman) reconnects with a girl from his past (Garces), and their growing interracial relationship teaches the sometimes-sullen Eddie to think of others before himself.
Getting Out
Breaking out of prison with a child in her womb and a dream of a normal existence, Arlene Holsclaw (Rebecca De Mornay) resolves to get a job and lead a good, Christian life. But the ghosts from her past -- including an ex-boyfriend (Rob Knepper) who wants to pimp her out and a sadistic mother (Ellen Burstyn) who plots to take away Arlene's baby -- have other plans. This made-for-TV drama is based on Marsha Norman's off-Broadway play.
Magnificent 7
Inspired by the life of Jacqui Jackson, the story follows a self-sacrificing mother of seven children, four of whom are, in one form or another, autistic.
What Girls Learn
Two teenage girls must come to terms with their stepfather when their mother is struck by illness.
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.
Something About Amelia
Counseling helps family deal with the discovery that their child was sexually abused by the closest relative.
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.
Just Ask My Children
Based on the true story of a modern-day witch hunt, in which a couple is falsely accused and imprisoned for molesting their own children.
Taken Away
A corrupt politician covers up his daughter Vicky's pregnancy by forcing her to give the baby up for adoption. The newborn is adopted by a loving couple unable to have children, but a year later Vicky, now in college, realizes she was forced into signing the papers and really wants her daughter back. After sneaking into the adoption agency to find out who the adoptive parents are, she takes them to court to fight for custody.
The Pride of Jesse Hallam
Jesse Hallum sells the family farm to see that his daughter receives the medical care she needs at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital. The big city challenges him, though, especially when his illiteracy is exposed.
The King and Queen of Moonlight Bay
A college girl decides to get to know her estranged father before she begins her education, but his life turns out to be nothing that she expected.
A teenage delinquent who goes on a drunken joyride is left in jail overnight by his parents in the hope that he might learn a lesson from it. But events follow which result in the boy spending far longer behind bars than anyone had foreseen.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like In the Custody of Strangers Starring Martin Sheen, Jane Alexander, Emilio Estevez, Kenneth McMillan, and more. If you liked In the Custody of Strangers then you may also like: Yelling To The Sky, Unstrung Heroes, Walking Across Egypt, The War at Home, Return to Innocence 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.
Yelling To The Sky
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.