Best movies like It's Good to Be Alive

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like It's Good to Be Alive Starring Paul Winfield, Louis Gossett Jr., Ruby Dee, Ramon Bieri, and more. If you liked It's Good to Be Alive then you may also like: 42, The Vancouver Asahi, Rhubarb, Rookie of the Year, The Jackie Robinson Story 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.

This movie details the struggles of former Brooklyn Dodger catcher Roy Campanella to adapt to life in a wheelchair following his crippling automobile accident in 1959. Cinematographer Ted Voigtlander was Emmy-nominated.

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42

In 1946, Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, took a stand against Major League Baseball's infamous colour line when he signed Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) to the team. The deal put both men in the crosshairs of the public, the press and even other players. Facing unabashed racism from every side, Robinson was forced to demonstrate tremendous courage and let his talent on the field wins over fans and his teammates – silencing his critics and forever changing the world by changing the game of baseball.

The Vancouver Asahi

In pre-WWII Vancouver, second-generation Japanese immigrants had it tough. Daily, they faced discrimination, hatred and injustice at the hands of their Caucasian counterparts. But one thing made their lives worth living: baseball. They may be the underdogs, but the Vancouver Asahi baseball team have a sense of fair play and smart tactics that set them apart from the brute force of their opponents. Under the guidance of new team captain Reggie Kasahara, can they be able to rise above all the negativity to win the tournament? This film is based on the true story of Vancouver Asahi, the Japanese-Canadian baseball team that was inducted into The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003.

Rhubarb

Rich, eccentric T.J. Banner adopts a feral cat who becomes an affectionate pet he names Rhubarb. Then T.J. dies, leaving to Rhubarb most of his money and a pro baseball team, the Brooklyn Loons. When the team protests, publicist Eric Yeager convinces them Rhubarb is good luck. But Eric's fiancée Polly seems to be allergic to cats, and the team's success may mean new hazards for Rhubarb.

Rookie of the Year

12-year-old Henry Rowengartner, whose late father was a minor league baseball player, grew up dreaming of playing baseball, despite his physical shortcomings. After Henry's arm is broken while trying to catch a baseball at school, the tendon in that arm heals too tightly, allowing Henry to throw pitches that are as fast as 103 mph. Henry is spotted at nearby Wrigley Field by Larry "Fish" Fisher, the general manager of the struggling Chicago Cubs, after Henry throws an opponent's home-run ball all the way from the outfield bleachers back to the catcher, and it seems that Henry may be the pitcher that team owner Bob Carson has been praying for.

The Jackie Robinson Story

Biography of Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player in the 20th century. Traces his career in the negro leagues and the major leagues.

Joe and Ethel Turp Call on the President

Joe and Ethel Turp are up in arms when their faithful old mailman is fired. Unable to get satisfaction on a municipal level, Joe and Ethel plead their mailman's case to the President himself.

Joni

Based on Joni Eareckson's autobiography. She becomes paralyzed after breaking her neck in a swimming accident at age 17. Trying to cope with her new life, she learns to paint using her mouth.

Babe Comes Home

A baseball-styled sports filmed centered on Babe Ruth and Anna Q. It is considered a lost film.

The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training

A troubled, rebellious teen drives his rambunctious baseball team out to Houston where they play an exhibition game and the boy meets his estranged father, and hires him as the teams coach.

Bang the Drum Slowly

The story of a New York pro baseball team and two of its players. Henry Wiggen is the star pitcher and Bruce Pearson is the normal, everyday catcher who is far from the star player on the team and friend to all of his teammates. During the off-season, Bruce learns that he is terminally ill, and Henry, his only true friend, is determined to be the one person there for him during his last season with the club. Throughout the course of the season, Henry and his teammates attempt to deal with Bruce's impending illness, all the while attempting to make his last year a memorable one.

Blue in the Face

Auggie runs a small tobacco shop in Brooklyn, New York. The whole neighborhood comes to visit him to buy cigarettes and have some small talk. During the movie Lou Reed tries to explain why he has to have a cut on his health insurance bill if he keeps smoking and Madonna acts as a Singing Telegram.

Body of Evidence

Nurse Carol Dwyer suspects that her new husband Alex, a forensic psychologist, may be responsible for serial murders in their neighborhood.

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Eugene, a young teenage Jewish boy, recalls his memoirs of his time as an adolescent youth. He lives with his parents, his aunt, two cousins, and his brother, Stanley, whom he looks up to and admires. He goes through the hardships of puberty, sexual fantasy, and living the life of a poor boy in a crowded house.

The Catcher

In Taft, California, 1981, Johnny (Fred Meyers) is a unassuming baseball hopeful who turned against his stern and demanding father (Joe Estevez) and beat him to death with a baseball bat on a baseball diamond field. 17 years later, Johnny is released from the local insane asylum and begins a killing spree, with his father's ghost as an umpire.

Outrage

Lainie Wheeler has two daughters, but her husband leaves them for a Thai monastery. She completely neglects her job in TV production but finds a new vocation in nursing terminal patients, even after the death of her friend in that home. She also finds a new lover, Matt Harper, who is also great with her kids, but still gets addicted to pills, causes a major accident, loses custody and needs long-term institutionalized therapy. After her release, a friend gets her another job in TV production, which makes her meet baseball star Harry Brewer. When he proves adulterous and gets too intimate, she ends up murdering him. Detective Webster investigates..

Tiger Town

Alex believed in his baseball hero Billy Young. When Billy's performance struggled, Alex's friends began to doubt Alex; and Billy began to doubt himself. Alex wants to prove to his friends, to Billy, and to himself that believing in someone can make the difference.

Comrade X

An American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow is blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country.

The Catcher Was a Spy

Former major league baseball player Moe Berg lives a double life working for the Office of Strategic Services in World War II Europe.

Four Boys and a Gun

The moving story of four young men struggling against overwhelming odds to remain honest. When their crooked employer shorts their earnings; they turn to crime, their first theft ending in tragedy.

Speedy

Speedy loses his job as a soda jerk, then spends the day with his girl at Coney Island. He then becomes a cab driver and delivers Babe Ruth to Yankee Stadium, where he stays to see the game. When the railroad tries to run the last horse-drawn trolley (operated by his girl's grandfather) out of business, Speedy organizes the neighborhood old-timers to thwart their scheme.

Major League

When Rachel Phelps inherits the Cleveland Indians from her deceased husband, she's determined to move the team to a warmer climate—but only a losing season will make that possible, which should be easy given the misfits she's hired. Rachel is sure her dream will come true, but she underestimates their will to succeed.

Major League: Back to the Minors

At the behest of Roger Dorn -- the Minnesota Twins' silver-tongued new owner -- washed-up minor league hurler Gus Cantrell steps up to the plate to take over as skipper of the club's hapless farm team. But little does he know that Dorn has an ulterior motive to generate publicity with a grudge match between the big leaguers and their ragtag Triple A affiliate.

Postcards from the Edge

Substance-addicted Hollywood actress, Suzanne Vale is on the skids. After a spell at a detox centre her film company insists as a condition of continuing to employ her that she live with her mother, herself once a star and now a champion drinker. Such a set-up is bad news for Suzanne who has struggled for years to get out of her mother's shadow, and who still treats her like a child. Despite these and other problems, Suzanne begins to see the funny side of her situation, and also realises that not only do daughters have mothers—mothers do too.

Street of Women

An architect has an affair with a woman who inspires him. Her brother is in love with the architect's daughter. The complicated entanglement leads to misunderstanding and dissolution, but ultimately love.

Penguin Bloom

When an unlikely ally enters the Bloom family's world in the form of an injured baby magpie they name Penguin, the bird’s arrival makes a profound difference in the struggling family’s life.

Explosion

During the height of the Vietnam war, a hippie and a draft dodger get together and hatch a plan to flee to Canada. They steal a car and head towards Vancouver, but the trip doesn't go as smoothly as they planned, and before long they're being chased by the police, accused of murdering several police officers.

War Eagle, Arkansas

Based on a True Story War Eagle, Arkansas is a character-driven drama about a young man’s choice of whether to leave his family and friends for a career in baseball or stay and redeem his struggling community. The story takes place over a few pivotal weeks in the summer after Enoch Cass’s senior year, and is set against the backdrop of Arkansas’ beautiful Ozark Mountains. War Eagle, Arkansas poses important questions that face all young people in rural America. The answers we find could touch us all.

Bindlestiffs

Three high school virgins, suspended from school on a bogus graffiti charge, flee to the inner city in an attempt to live out the plot of The Catcher in the Rye - a book they neither have read nor understand. BINDLESTIFFS documents their struggles along the way as they surrender their virginities to vagrants, prostitutes, and crack fiends. Hot on their tail is Charlie, the deranged school security guard. Under the impression that the boys are planning a school shooting, he takes the law into his own hands to stop them and save America.

Senior Year

One of the most widely seen youth films of the late 70's, this dramatic motion picture follows the life of Steve and Angie during their senior year of high school. They each try to live for Christ and reach out to others around them. But, as they deal with their own struggles to share the Lord, a fellow classmate makes things very difficult for them.

Monkey Trouble

Dodger, a criminal monkey, belongs to a crooked street performer but escapes his life of crime only to end up in the arms of Eva, an innocent little girl whose mother has no idea that her daughter is harboring a fugitive.

Iron And Silk

Iron and Silk is a 1990 movie based on the eponymous book by American writer Mark Salzman. It details his journey to China after college to study Chinese wu shu, better known in the west as kung fu, and to teach English. Though not trained as an actor, Salzman starred as himself, as did Pan Qingfu, who claimed no one else could portray him on film. Salzman's experiences occurred in Changsha, Hunan, though the film was shot in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. (Wikipedia)

Turn Back the Clock

While recuperating in a hospital after he's hit by an automobile, a struggling shopowner dreams what his life might have been like if he'd made different choices twenty years earlier.

Silent Predators

In 1979, a delivery truck makes its way up a lonely southern California highway in a storm, bound for the San Diego Zoo with a deadly tropical rattlesnake as cargo. When the truck suffers a blowout, the driver loses control and hits a tree, shattering the snake's aquarium in the back and the window separating the snake from the driver. The snake slithers into the front of the truck, kills the driver with its bite and then moves off into the forest. Flash forward to 1999. The small southern California town of San Vicente has grown from 6,000 to 30,000, and the rattler, which escaped nearby years ago, has bred. There are now 25,000 of these hybrid rattlesnakes, and they are slowly making their way downhill into the town, attracted by the movement of the blasting as the town paves its way toward progress. Progress, in this case, brings terror, in this tale originally penned by John Carpenter.

Hit Lady

At a Texas barbecue, a pretty woman chats up a wealthy rancher, and soon they're off on a horseback ride. Before she shoots him on an isolated road, she gives him a minute to reflect on who he might have offended on his rise to the top. She's Angela de Vries, a contract killer based in L.A. She wants this to have been her last job; her contractor wants one more death, a national union leader, made to look like an accident. She starts her homework on this mark. Meanwhile, in her private life, she's in love with a budding photographer. Is there any way that she can get out of the game and have a full love life?

Drive Hard, Drive Fast

A race-car driver finds himself in a romantic triangle and a machete-swinging stranger trying to kill him.

Onassis: The Richest Man in the World

Biography of the life of Aristotle Onassis, a Greek who rose to become one of the world's most wealthiest men, detailing his rise to power and unhappy marriages.

Ford: The Man and the Machine

Adapted from a book by Robert Lacey, this biographical film chronicles both the private and public life of automobile manufacturer Henry Ford (Cliff Robertson).

Casey Stengel

Charles Durning appears as the legendary baseball manager Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel in this one-man show presented before a live studio audience.

The Angriest Man in Brooklyn

After learning that a brain aneurysm will kill him in about 90 minutes, a perpetually unhappy man struggles to come to terms with his fate and make amends with everyone he has ever hurt.

It Happens Every Spring

A scientist discovers a formula that makes a baseball which is repelled by wood. He promptly sets out to exploit his discovery.

It Happened in Flatbush

A washed up baseball player returns to Brooklyn to manage his old team but an old sports reporter is eager to prove that he is a loser.

Shot Heard 'Round the World

With one swing of a bat, Bobby Thomson became a legend. His dramatic home run on October 3, 1951, led the New York Giants to win the National League pennant over the rival Brooklyn Dodgers. This documentary looks at the teams, personalities and events that combined to create one of the most heated pennant races ever witnessed...one that ended with an unforgettable homer.

Aunt Mary

The true-life drama about a handicapped Baltimore woman living on welfare who organized a sandlot baseball team and ended up coaching more than 50,000 boys and girls over nearly 40 years.

Sand Castles

A young man who dies in an auto accident returns from the dead to meet up with the young woman who tried to save him.

Good Morning, Judge

A songwriter is sued for libel, and when he gets to court he discovers that his girlfriend is the plaintiff's attorney.

Born to Run

An outlaw drag racer (Richard Grieco) tries to save his brother (Jay Acovone) from a crime boss (Joe Cortese) in Brooklyn.

Kiss of Death

After having an affair with a married millionaire, Blair is driven by jealousy to get her way no matter what she must do.

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