Best movies like Residue
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Residue Starring Obinna Nwachukwu, Dennis Lindsey, Taline Stewart, Derron "Rizo" Scott, and more. If you liked Residue then you may also like: Wolves, Neverwas, Night Has Settled, Killer of Sheep, Aaron Loves Angela 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 young filmmaker returns home after many years away, to write a script about his childhood, only to find his neighborhood unrecognizable and his childhood friends scattered to the wind.
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Neverwas
Zach Riley is a psychiatrist, who leaves a job at a prestigious university, to take up a job at the privately run mental institution, Millwood. What he doesn't reveal at the time of his appointment is that this was the very place where his novelist father, T.L. Pierson, spent many years of his life.
Night Has Settled
In 1983, Oliver Nicholas, at thirteen, is well-poised to enter the precocious teenage world of first-sex, vodka and possible-love in New York City when he is traumatized by the stroke of his housekeeper (and only true maternal figure), a sixty-five-year-old Chilean woman named Aida. What was supposed to be an exhilarating and somewhat fearful rite of passage - diving into the exciting, fast-paced world of first experiences - quickly becomes skewed by an incomprehensible depression, and a house of interior horrors. Surrounded by women - his untraditional, Spanish, photographer mother (more interested in the role of confidante than mother) his sister, a comedic, door-slamming tormentor, marked by her parent's divorce; and Aida, his silver-haired emotional focal point on the verge of death in Lenox Hill Hospital - Oliver struggles to maintain his role as "man of the house" and his sanity.
Killer of Sheep
An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.
Aaron Loves Angela
Aaron and Angela, two young adults living in the Harlem ghetto of New York City, are deeply in love with each other. The only thing standing in the way of their love is their families. Aaron is black, while Angela is Puerto Rican, and neither family wants one of their own to associate with the others. As the pair rebel against the prejudices of their families, they soon find the conflict spreading out to their friends and neighbors, until the hatred threatens to spiral out of control.
The Beaver
Suffering from a severe case of depression, toy company CEO Walter Black begins using a beaver hand puppet to help him open up to his family. With his father seemingly going insane, adolescent son Porter pushes for his parents to get a divorce.
The Canterville Ghost
When a teenaged girl moves to England, with her brothers and parents into the ancient Canterville Hall, she's not at all happy. Especially as there's a ghost and a mysterious re-appearing bloodstain on the hearth. She campaigns to go back home, and her dad, believing the ghost's pranks are Ginny's, is ready to send her back. But then Ginny actually meets the elusive 17th-century Sir Simon de Canterville (not to mention the cute teenaged duke next door), and she sets her hand to the task of freeing Sir Simon from his curse.
Dark Summer
Follows the tale of a 17-year-old on house arrest for the summer. When his mother is away on business, a horrifying incident occurs, followed by an even more terrifying presence in the house.
In the Heat of the Night
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
The Hate U Give
Raised in a poverty-stricken slum, a 16-year-old girl named Starr now attends a suburban prep school. After she witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend, she's torn between her two very different worlds as she tries to speak her truth.
The House Next Door: Meet the Blacks 2
Bestselling author Carl Black moves his family back to his childhood home, he must team up with oddball neighbors to do battle with a pimp, who may or may not be an actual vampire.
My Father, Die
Deaf and mute since having his hearing knocked out at the age of 12, Asher has been training for almost two decades to avenge himself on Ivan, the man that killed his older brother, 21 years ago. And now that his nemesis is out of prison, he gets his chance. But Asher's target also happens to be his father.
The Song of Names
A man searching for his childhood best friend — a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust — who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.
The Learning Tree
The story, set in Kansas during the 1920's, covers less than a year in the life of a black teenager, and documents the veritable deluge of events which force him into sudden manhood. The family relationships and enmities, the fears, frustrations and ambitions of the black teenager in small-town America are explored with a strong statement about human values.
King Jack
Growing up in a rural town filled with violent delinquents, Jack has learned to do what it takes to survive, despite having an oblivious mother and no father. After his aunt falls ill and a younger cousin comes to stay with him, the hardened 15-year-old discovers the importance of friendship, family, and looking for happiness even in the most desolate of circumstances.
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling
Although Jo Jo Dancer has achieved success as a stand-up comedian, he hasn't found happiness. After receiving severe burns in a narcotics-related incident, Jo Jo remains in a coma, and, while in this state, he looks back on his life. Drifting off into memories of his troubled childhood, Jo Jo revisits his youth, recalling his eventual rise to fame and the decadence that followed. As he considers his existence, he must decide if he wants to go on living or not.
Jinn
Summer is a carefree teenage girl whose world is turned upside down when her mother abruptly converts to Islam and becomes a different person. At first resistant to the faith, she begins to reevaluate her identity after becoming attracted to a Muslim classmate, crossing the thin line between physical desire and piety.
Lakeview Terrace
A young interracial couple has just moved into their California dream home when they become the target of their next-door neighbor, who disapproves of their relationship. A tightly wound LAPD officer has appointed himself the watchdog of the neighborhood. His nightly foot patrols and overly watchful eyes bring comfort to some, but he becomes increasingly aggressive to the newlyweds. These persistent intrusions into their lives cause the couple to fight back.
Prison Song
Elijah has been bounced from group home to group home throughout his turbulent young life. What has sustained him is his art. After a promised scholarship is taken away, Elijah ends up in a fight that result in the death of another boy. Now, sentenced to a minimum of fifteen years, the young man must find a way to keep his soul alive behind bars or turn into a hardened bitter criminal.
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.
Selma, Lord, Selma
In 1965 Alabama, an 11 year old girl is touched by a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and becomes a devout follower. But her resolution is tested when she joins others in the famed march from Selma to Montgomery.
Cornbread, Earl and Me
The unintentional shooting by police of a star basketball player has profound personal, political and community repercussions in this acclaimed adaptation of the novel Hog Butcher by Ronald Fair. This was one of the more thoughtful urban dramas produced at the height of the "blaxploitation" craze. Also released under the title Hit the Open Man, it features the screen debut of Laurence Fishburne, who was barely a teenager at the time.
Together Brothers
A group of ghetto kids try to find out who killed a popular police officer.
Miss Evers' Boys
The true story of the US Government's 1932 Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments, in which a group of black test subjects were allowed to die, despite a cure having been developed.
Bopha!
In this story of a black policeman during South African apartheid, Danny Glover plays the cop, who believes he's trying to help his people, even while serving as a pawn of the racist government. When his son gets involved in the anti-apartheid movement, he finds himself torn between his family and what he believes is his duty.
Blindspotting
Collin must make it through his final three days of probation for a chance at a new beginning. He and his troublemaking childhood best friend, Miles, work as movers, and when Collin witnesses a police shooting, the two men’s friendship is tested as they grapple with identity and their changed realities in the rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood they grew up in.
Badge of the Assassin
Three black revolutionaries gun down two New York City police officers. The subsequent investigation puts a white assistant DA and a black police detective on the trail of the killers that leads from New York to San Francisco and down to New Orleans.
Sleepstalker
Seventeen years after slaughtering all but one member of a family, a vicious serial killer known only as "The Sandman" awaits execution. But first, his jailers allow a minister to visit the killer to give him last rites, unaware that the minister is a voodoo priest and an ally of the condemned prisoner. The priest places a hex on the Sandman so that when he is executed, his soul migrates into a new body made of sand. To sever his ties with his former life and achieve absolute power, the sandman must find and kill a man named Griffin, the sole survivor of the last family murdered by the killer
The Tracey Fragments
Tracey Berkowitz, 15, a self-described normal girl, loses her 9-year old brother, Sonny. In flashbacks and fragments, we meet her overbearing parents and the sweet, clueless Sonny. We watch Tracey navigate high school, friendless, picked on and teased. She develops a thing for Billy Zero, a new student, imagining he's her boyfriend. We see the day she loses Sonny and we watch her try to find him.
Just Charlie
Football star Charlie has the world at her feet. With a top club desperate to sign her, her future is seemingly mapped out. But the teenager sees only a nightmare. Raised as a boy, Charlie is torn between wanting to live up to her father's expectations and shedding this ill fitting skin.
Little Men
Jake is a quiet, sensitive middle schooler with dreams of being an artist. He meets the affably brash Tony at his grandfather's funeral, and the unlikely pair soon hit it off. The budding friendship is put at risk, however, when a rent dispute between Jake's father, Brian, and Tony's mother, Leonor, threatens to become contentious.
The Return
After the death of his father, a brilliant college student returns to his family home where he learns that the horrors from his childhood aren't as dead and gone as he once thought.
Weirdos
It's July 1976, and two Nova Scotian teens, Kit and Alice, are hitting the road with their sights on Sydney and their minds on the future. With them is Kit's new imaginary friend, who looks conspicuously like Andy Warhol, but who assures Kit that he is a spirit animal. Kit and Alice have big dreams, but do they really want the same things?
Last Night in Rozzie
When a New York lawyer returns to his Boston hometown to reunite his dying friend with his young son, he is forced to finally confront a childhood trauma.
Ashes and Embers
Ashes and Embers is an original screenplay by Haile Gerima, about a Vietnam veteran, who, several years after the war, is struggling to come to terms with his role in the war, and his role as a Black person in America. He survives by working odd jobs in Washington, D.C. and living with his girlfriend and her son. When criticism of his alienated behavior come from her and a father figure too often, he runs to the streets or to his grandmother's rural house in Virginia. Her criticism and his memories of the past both send him fleeing again to Los Angeles, where he is surrounded by superficial people who have forgotten how to be compassionate human beings. It is here that the advice of his friends and grandmother combine to transform him from an embittered ex-soldier to a strong and confident man.
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.
Losing Chase
An intimate and turbulent relationship develops between Chase, a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown and Elizabeth, the caretaker employed to look after her.
Cardboard Boxer
Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.
Low Tide
A 12-year-old boy and his single mother live separate lives. The boy spends his days alone while his mother works and goes out with her friends. The boy’s solitude is both a source of freedom and a cause for grief. His explorations slowly bring to light the dark contrast between the rules of society and the laws of nature. And before long, the delicate balance of his inner world becomes shattered by unforeseen events.
Dreams of Glass
Ann is from a prominent Japanese-American family, owners of a famous nursery and greenhouse. Tom is from a blue-collar family of self-employed fishermen. Tom and Ann develop a playful, loving relationship, despite obstacles their families throw in their way.
Wolves
Anthony Keller, star of his NYC high school basketball team, is riding his way to Cornell on a sports scholarship. But he can only maintain his popular jock facade for so long, as his troubled father Lee has a gambling addiction that threatens to derail his dreams both on and off the court.