Best movies like One Year in a Life of Crime

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like One Year in a Life of Crime Starring Jon Alpert, Robert Steffey, Freddie Rodriguez, and more. If you liked One Year in a Life of Crime then you may also like: The Upper Footage, V/H/S, New Jersey Drive, Newark Athlete, Row Your Boat 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.

Their job is stealing, their lives a cruel dead end. Director Jon Alpert takes his cameras undercover for this hard-hitting look at men who live by theft and suffer addiction. Focusing on a year in the lives of three professional criminals, this gritty profile—which includes hidden-camera footage of actual thefts—exposes the "petty" crimes that are paralyzing America.

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The Upper Footage

'THE UPPER FOOTAGE' is the first film experience of its kind. The film is an edited version of 393 minutes of recovered footage documenting a young girl's tragic overdose death and subsequent cover up by a group of affluent socialites. What started as a blackmail plot played out over YouTube, became Hollywood's biggest drug scandal, turned into a heavily controversial film property that was rumored to be held by some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Now, after playing itself out in the media for 3 years it is finally making its way to the public.

V/H/S

When a group of misfits is hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house and acquire one rare VHS tape, they discover more found footage than they had bargained for.

New Jersey Drive

New Jersey Drive is a 1995 film about black youths in Newark, New Jersey, the unofficial "car theft capital of the world". Their favorite pastime is that of everybody in their neighborhood: stealing cars and joyriding. The trouble starts when they steal a police car and the cops launch a violent offensive that involves beating and even shooting suspects.

Newark Athlete

Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.

Row Your Boat

Jon Bon Jovi plays Jamey Meadows, a man newly released from prison who has found himself homeless on the crazy streets of New York City. Slowly, he must try to build his life up from the gutter. Resisting constant offers from his brother, played by William Forsythe (Dick Tracy, The Rock, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo) to rejoin the insidious world of crime, Meadows takes a menial job as a door to door census worker. Among his many encounters throughout this job, he meets a young Chinese immigrant who is just as unhappy in her life as he is in his. These two slowly hit it off and a relationship gradually begins to develop between them. Can Jamey Meadows learn to live in this new life, or will the temptations of his old ways drag him back to where he started?

Rush

Undercover cop Jim Raynor (Jason Patric) is a seasoned veteran. His partner, Kristen Cates (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is lacking in experience, but he thinks she's tough enough to work his next case with him: a deep cover assignment to bring down the notoriously hard-to-capture drug lord Gaines (Gregg Allman). While their relationship turns romantic during the assignment, they also turn into junkies, and will have to battle their own addictions if they want to bring down Gaines once and for all.

Sex and Lies in Sin City

Star-studded thriller about the sordid murder of reckless Las Vegas casino mogul Ted Binion. This gritty film delves into the twisted world of Binion's beauty-queen-turned-stripper girlfriend, Sandy, and her secret lover. When Binion turns up dead of an overdose, all fingers point to Sandy, the beneficiary of his millions. A shockingly true tale of love gone sour and greed gone wild on the dark side of Las Vegas.

Scarface

After getting a green card in exchange for assassinating a Cuban government official, Tony Montana stakes a claim on the drug trade in Miami. Viciously murdering anyone who stands in his way, Tony eventually becomes the biggest drug lord in the state, controlling nearly all the cocaine that comes through Miami. But increased pressure from the police, wars with Colombian drug cartels and his own drug-fueled paranoia serve to fuel the flames of his eventual downfall.

Light Sleeper

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.

New Orleans Uncensored

William Castle directed this Sam Katzman production, a gritty crime thriller about a newly-discharged sailor who gets a job as a longshoreman in The Big Easy. He swiftly discovers mob corruption throughout the docks, and when a friend is killed by the gangsters, he convinces the police to let him go undercover and take matters into his own hands. Filmed on location on the docks and in the French Quarter.

Crackers

Garvey is a San Francisco pawnshop operator. His unemployed and criminal friends Dillard, Turtle and Weslake, team up with Boardwalk, a local pimp, to burgle Garvey's shop while the owner is out of town. During the elaborate planning process, Dillard falls for a Hispanic woman, the sister of a friend. Boardwalk is assigned to case a local apartment, where he meets and falls for the maid. Amidst all these romantic hijinks, Weslake puts together a burglary plan, which is executed by the makeshift gang.

Deadfall

Cat burglar Henry Clarke and his accomplices the Moreaus attempt to steal diamonds from the chateau of millionaire Salinas.

The Many Saints of Newark

Young Anthony Soprano is growing up in one of the most tumultuous eras in Newark, N.J., history, becoming a man just as rival gangsters start to rise up and challenge the all-powerful DiMeo crime family. Caught up in the changing times is the uncle he idolizes, Dickie Moltisanti, whose influence over his nephew will help shape the impressionable teenager into the all-powerful mob boss, Tony Soprano.

Dog Pound

Three juvenile delinquents arrive at a correctional center and are put under the care of an experienced guard.

Grind

When a drag-racing, hard-luck parolee moves in with his brother in hopes of that ever-elusive fresh start in life, he's sure to be warm for the form of his brother's bored young wife. Things only get worse when he tries to turn a quick buck in a one-time insurance fraud operation.

Harsh Times

Jim Davis is an ex-Army Ranger who finds himself slipping back into his old life of petty crime after a job offer from the LAPD evaporates. His best friend is pressured by his girlfriend Sylvia to find a job, but Jim is more interested in hanging out and making cash from small heists, while trying to get a law enforcement job so he can marry his Mexican girlfriend.

Reboot Camp

After finding out that his wife has blown their life savings on self-help gurus, Seymour teams up with his brother Danny, a filmmaker, to document how easy it is to start a fake self-help group and con people into believing just about anything. But once started, the Reboot Camp takes on a life of its own, and grows into a full-blown cult.

Human Hibachi

A man documents his girlfriend's 35th birthday on his phone. What he captures throughout the night are the most disturbing human acts imaginable.

The Last Broadcast

In December 1995, a four-man team from the public-access program, "Fact or Fiction", braved the New Jersey's desolate Pine Barrens determined to deliver a live broadcast of the legendary Jersey Devil. Only one came out alive. It took the jury ninety minutes to sentence the lone survivor to life in prison. One year later, a filmmaker decides to mount his own investigation...

The Pact

A gritty, provocative true-life story of three friends from the 'hood, Rameck Hunt, Sampson Davis, and George Jenkins, who made a pact in high school to find a way to go to college and then medical school. They not only accomplished this, but they're now spreading the word to inspire other inner-city kids to stay off of drugs, out of gangs and to take the educational route to a better life. THE PACT captures the pathos of the men's individual journeys, the integrity of their voices and the power of their rare friendship. Their stories affirm the values that ultimately sustained and drove them: courage, tenacity, and faith. And they give tribute to the life of the mind and its power to turn dreams into reality.

Gang Tapes

When a brutal carjacking yields a videocamera, a teenage boy decides to document his life and the lives of his fellow gangbangers.

Whitney

Examines the life and career of singer Whitney Houston. Features never-before-seen archival footage, exclusive recordings, rare performances and interviews with the people who knew her best.

Life Is Hot in Cracktown

Various stories of how crack cocaine has infiltrated the inner-city streets. Based on Buddy Giovinazzo's novel "Life is Hot in Cracktown".

Crack House

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.

Take the Money and Run

Virgil Starkwell is intent on becoming a notorious bank robber. Unfortunately for Virgil and his not-so-budding career, he is completely incompetent.

Target Number One

Ex heroin junkie, Daniel Léger, gets involved in a drug deal with the wrong people for the wrong reasons. When the deal goes sour, Daniel gets thrown into a Thai prison and slapped with a 100-year sentence. While he tries to survive his Bangkok incarceration, the news of his conviction captures the attention of Globe and Mail journalist Victor Malarek, who decides to go after the shady undercover cops responsible for wrongly accusing Daniel.

Secrets of a Nurse

This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.

Jimmy and Judy

Two misunderstood suburban kids challenge society and run from the police while documenting all of their deeds with a digital camera.

Perfect Strangers

A hit-man tries to seduce the mother of a child who witnessed his most recent kill.

Criminal Xing

A seasoned professional killer is finally offered the big cash score that has always eluded him, but there's a catch. He and five other rival criminals must work together to complete a series of jobs dictated by a mysterious and anonymous employer. It quickly leads to numerous set-ups, double crosses and wild car chases.

Replay

The viewer becomes the eyes of two detectives who never appear on camera as they unravel a mystery on a video screen, watching tapes from twenty-one hidden cameras which have captured a crime in progress. Three gunmen break into the home of gem dealer Seth Collison to steal the Sophia Diamond, a thirty-three carat stone valued at ten million dollars. Five minutes later the gunmen are dead. The case is closed before police find out about the hidden cameras. At eleven o'clock that night, the task of watching the tapes falls to secondary detectives Blu and Scotty. Through their eyes we discover what really went down.

Sabotage Squad

A police lieutenant and a patriotic professional gambler, rivals in life and love, combine efforts to corner a gang of Nazi saboteurs operating out of a barber shop, in which their mutual girlfriend works, and unmask its secret leader.

Come Back to Me

Sarah and Josh are married suburbanites. After a car accident, Sarah suffers blackouts and ends up pregnant though Josh is sterile. As her life spirals she hides a camera in her home and unlocks a horrific secret with far-reaching consequences.

The Human Jungle

Danforth is assigned to take over the police department in a section of a large city saddled with juvenile delinquency, petty crimes, graft and also a recent unsolved murder of a strip-tease dancer. Recognizing the laxity of the department he implements many changes and soon finds himself under fire by the newspapers, the attorney of a racket leader and the denizens of this human jungle.

14 Cameras

When a family of four rent a beautiful house for their summer vacation, the price seems too good to be true. Unbeknownst to them, the lascivious owner has set up a series of spy cams throughout the house, documenting their most intimate moments and live streaming them to the dark web.

Stoker Hills

Three students filming a horror movie stumble upon something much worse, and their only hope for survival is two detectives who find the camera that was left behind.

Loan Shark

A vicious loan shark ring has been preying on factory workers. When several workers at a tire factory suffer violence at the hands of the loan sharkers, a union leader and the factory owner try to recruit ex-con Joe Gargan to infiltrate to the gang. At first Joe does not want to get involved, but changes his mind when his brother-in-law dies at the hands of a savage loan shark hood. Joe works his way into the mob, but in order to keep his cover, Joe can't tell anyone what he is up to. This results in him being disowned by his sister and girl friend.

The Death Squad

When petty criminals start turning up murdered, a detective discovers they are being killed by a group of his fellow officers who think the criminals were treated too leniently by the courts.

Christmas Catch

Detective Mackenzie Bennett is hot on the trail of Carson, a suspected diamond thief, and goes undercover to catch him in the act. While undercover, Mack not only falls for Carson, but begins to suspect that he's been framed. Are feelings clouding Mack's judgment or are they focusing on the wrong suspect?

Virgin Genocide

A serial killer that hates woman because he can't attract them goes on a killing spree.

The Devil's Camera

Feeling his life has been ruined by constant rejection from women, a 40-year-old virgin decides to kill all of the women who've scorned him.

Keep Watching

A family imprisoned by intruders is forced to play a terrifying game of "Kill, Or Be Killed". As the night unfolds, the game's mysterious rules become clear, and the family realizes their nightmare is being streamed live to riveted viewers all over the world, who are compelled to KEEP WATCHING... not knowing if what they're seeing is real, or staged.

Life of Crime 2

This follow-up to the 1989 documentary ONE YEAR IN A LIFE OF CRIME revisits three of the original subjects in New Jersey during a five-year period in the 1990s. We share in their triumphs and setbacks as they navigate lives of poverty, drug abuse, AIDS, and petty crime.

Addiction

Assembled by some of the nation's top documentary filmmakers, this centerpiece film in HBO's 'Addiction' campaign features insights from experts on trends and treatments in the ongoing battle against drug and alcohol abuse. This documentary consists of nine segments that focus on case studies and cutting-edge treatments that challenge traditional beliefs about addiction.

Dirty Driving: Thundercars Of Indiana

Auto racing is an obsession in Anderson, Indiana. Even with local auto factories closing down and jobs being lost, the town's residents continue to flock to the local speedway every Friday night--and its drivers continue to pour their dwindling resources into their Thundercars. Emmy(R)-winning filmmaker Jon Alpert presents this look at this passion for racing in rust-belt America. Since the closing of a GM plant and the loss of 33,000 jobs, the once-thriving town of Anderson now stands witness to empty factories, shuttered stores and abandoned home--but also to packed houses at Anderson Speedway where people put their troubles on hold to watch the cacophony of screeching tires and crashing metal as drivers vie for Thundercar supremacy.

The Story of Junkie Junior

Junior Rios started using heroin when he was 15. At age 29, Junior is a father of three. To support his $200-a-day heroin habit, he scours the rooftops of the South Bronx for materials he can sell. When he's finally caught, he enters an aggressive rehab program. Meanwhile, his ex has moved on, and is trying to make a better life for herself and their children.

Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market

Young armed robbers seeking money for drugs burst into a convenience store, and a simple hold-up escalates into a wholesale homicide! Assembled entirely from security camera, squad-car cam and news team footage... digitally enhanced... REAL TIME is a unique experiment in non-stop terror that takes YOU inside a hostage crisis.

Home Invasion

Terror arrives at the one place we all feel safest... When a wealthy woman, Chloe, and her stepson, Jacob, are targeted by a trio of expert thieves in their remote mansion, her only form of help comes from a call with Mike, a security systems specialist. But as the intruders become increasingly hostile and the connection wavers, will she trust him to be her eyes and navigate her to safety?

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