Best movies like Sunshine Cleaning

life's a messy business.

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Sunshine Cleaning Starring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Steve Zahn, Alan Arkin, and more. If you liked Sunshine Cleaning then you may also like: 28 Days, Unstrung Heroes, The Upside of Anger, The Vicious Kind, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself 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 single mother and her slacker sister find an unexpected way to turn their lives around in the off-beat dramatic comedy. In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school the mom starts an unusual business – a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service.

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28 Days

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.

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 Upside of Anger

After her husband runs off with his secretary, Terry Wolfmeyer is left to fend for herself -- and her four daughters. As she hits rock bottom, Terry finds a friend and drinking buddy in next-door neighbor Denny, a former baseball player. As the two grow closer, and her daughters increasingly rely on Denny, Terry starts to have reservations about where their relationship is headed.

The Vicious Kind

A man tries to warn his brother away from the new girlfriend he brings home during Thanksgiving, but ends up becoming infatuated with her in the process.

Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

The strange comedy film of two close brothers; one, Wilbur, who wants to kill himself, and the other, Harbour, who tries to prevent this. When their father dies leaving them his bookstore they meet a woman who makes their lives a bit better yet with a bit more trouble as well.

The Women

The story centers on a group of gossipy, high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily-wedded Mary Haines finds her marriage in trouble when shop girl Crystal Allen gets her hooks into Mary's man.

Riding in Cars with Boys

In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.

Just Buried

A young man inherits a nearly bankrupt funeral home from his estranged father. He falls in love with the alluring young mortician, only to find out she's offing people to keep the place in business!

American Girl

A pregnant teenager is determined to leave her trailer park home with the hope of living a happy family life.

The Anniversary

Mrs Taggart always celebrates her anniversary with her grown sons. It’s a tradition practised since the death of her husband and she is determined for it to continue. None of her three sons have dared to cross their ruthless domineering mother but this anniversary they intend to try. With cruel and brutal twists, the family get-together becomes a social nightmare beyond endurance.

August: Osage County

A look at the lives of the strong-willed women of the Weston family, whose paths have diverged until a family crisis brings them back to the Midwest house they grew up in, and to the dysfunctional woman who raised them.

Betsy's Wedding

Offbeat fashion student Betsy Hopper and her straight-laced investment-banker fiancé Jake Lovell just want an intimate little wedding reception, but Betsy's father Eddie, a Long Island construction contractor, feels so threatened by Jake's rich WASP parents that he blows the ceremony up into a bank-breaking showpiece, sending his wife Lola into a financial panic.

Meet Bill

A mild-mannered bank executive mentors a teenage con artist and tries to make a career change as a doughnut merchant.

Marvin's Room

A leukemia patient attempts to end a 20-year feud with her sister to get her bone marrow.

Men Don't Leave

After her husband John dies unexpectedly, Beth Macauley is unprepared for life without him. She is unemployed with no job skills and $60,000 in debt from on-going renovations to their house located in suburban Bingham. She doesn't know what to do but sell what material possessions she has, such as the family pick-up truck and the house, and move into an apartment in the city, namely Baltimore. Beth just wants to survive by finding a job she doesn't dislike, and keep her family together while trying to maintain her sanity and sense of self-worth

Crimes of the Heart

Three sisters try to come to grips with the meaning of their mother's suicide.

Meet the Browns

A single mother living in inner city Chicago, Brenda has been struggling for years to make ends meet and keep her three kids off the street. When she's laid off with no warning, she starts losing hope for the first time - until a letter arrives announcing the death of a father she's never met. Desperate for any kind of help, Brenda takes her family to Georgia for the funeral, but nothing could have prepared her for the Browns, her father's fun-loving, crass Southern clan. In a small-town world full of long afternoons and country fairs, Brenda struggles to get to know the family she never knew existed...and finds a brand new romance that just might change her life.

This Is Where I Leave You

When their father passes away, four grown, world-weary siblings return to their childhood home and are requested -- with an admonition -- to stay there together for a week, along with their free-speaking mother and a collection of spouses, exes and might-have-beens. As the brothers and sisters re-examine their shared history and the status of each tattered relationship among those who know and love them best, they reconnect in hysterically funny and emotionally significant ways.

Dumplin'

To prove a point about measuring up and fitting in, Texas teen Willowdean “Dumplin’” Dickson enters a local pageant run by her ex-beauty queen mom.

Margot at the Wedding

Margot Zeller is a short story writer with a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue. On the eve of her estranged sister Pauline's wedding to unemployed musician/artist/depressive Malcolm at the family seaside home, Margot shows up unexpectedly to rekindle the sisterly bond and offer her own brand of support. What ensues is a nakedly honest and subversively funny look at family dynamics.

Little Miss Sunshine

A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

After her much older husband forces a move to a suburban retirement community, Pippa Lee engages in a period of reflection and finds herself heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown.

Slums of Beverly Hills

In 1976, a lower-middle-class teenager struggles to cope living with her neurotic family of nomads on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.

Interiors

When Eve, an interior designer, is deserted by her husband of many years, Arthur, the emotionally glacial relationships of the three grown-up daughters are laid bare. Twisted by jealousy, insecurity and resentment, Renata, a successful writer; Joey, a woman crippled by indecision; and Flyn, a budding actress; struggle to communicate for the sake of their shattered mother. But when their father unexpectedly falls for another woman, his decision to remarry sets in motion a terrible twist of fate…

Girl in Progress

As single mom Grace juggles work, bills, and her affair with a married doctor, her daughter, Ansiedad, plots a shortcut to adulthood after finding inspiration in the coming-of-age stories she's reading for school.

Middle of Nowhere

The film follows Grace, a young woman whose irresponsible mother blows her college fund on her younger sister's beauty pageant campaign.

Hanging Up

A trio of sisters bond over their ambivalence toward the approaching death of their curmudgeonly father, to whom none of them was particularly close.

Home for the Holidays

After losing her job, making out with her soon-to-be former boss, and finding out that her daughter plans to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend, Claudia Larson faces spending the holiday with her unhinged family.

Life During Wartime

Friends, family, and lovers struggle to find love, forgiveness, and meaning in an almost war-torn world riddled with comedy and pathos. Follows Solondz's film Happiness (1998).

Miami Rhapsody

Gwyn Marcus has always wanted a marriage like her parents. She has just accepted the proposal of her boyfriend Matt, but she has misgivings about their future together. Her fear of commitment grows as she learns of the various affairs that her family is having. With her sister getting married and her brother already married, her mother is growing concerned about Gwyn's being the last single person in the family. But the more she thinks about marriage, the more she must search for the balance between career, marriage and family.

The Prince of Tides

A troubled man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her in the process.

Things We Lost in the Fire

A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.

The Skeleton Twins

Estranged twins Maggie and Milo coincidentally cheat death on the same day, prompting them to reunite and confront the reasons their lives went so wrong. As the twins' reunion reinvigorates them, they realize the key to fixing their lives may just lie in repairing their relationship.

Spanglish

Mexican immigrant and single mother Flor Moreno finds housekeeping work with Deborah and John Clasky, a well-off couple with two children of their own. When Flor admits she can't handle the schedule because of her daughter, Cristina, Deborah decides they should move into the Clasky home. Cultures clash and tensions run high as Flor and the Claskys struggle to share space while raising their children on their own, and very different, terms.

Sparkle

Liverpool chancer Sam moves to London with his aspiring chanteuse mum and begins an affair with a PR boss. But problems arise when he falls for her estranged daughter, too.

Tiny Furniture

After graduating from film school, Aura returns to New York to live with her photographer mother, Siri, and her sister, Nadine, who has just finished high school. Aura is directionless and wonders where to go next in her career and her life. She takes a job in a restaurant and tries unsuccessfully to develop relationships with men, including Keith, a chef where she works, and cult Internet star Jed.

Trust

After being thrown away from home, pregnant high school dropout Maria meets Matthew, a highly educated and extremely moody electronics repairman. The two begin an unusual romance built on their sense of mutual admiration and trust.

Passed Away

Thrown for a loop by the unexpected news that Dad has suddenly gone to his reward, the grieving eccentric Scanian clan are drawn together in a test of familial endurance that soon has them at each other's throats.

Soft Fruit

For the first time in 15 years, all four siblings in a family show up to care for their dying mother, who is only given a couple of weeks to live. One comes from America with her two children. A divorced sister also comes with her child and sneaks off regularly to meet a mystery man who may be her ex-husband. The third & youngest daughter is an unmarried nurse aware of her ticking biological clock. The only son chases after his grumpy father who seems to not care a whit about his wife's circumstances. The four are also faced my their mother's dreams to accomplish a few things before she dies - to visit a beach she had visited in the past, to see her youngest married, and to visit Paris. She also wants to be embalmed and be honored with a 21 gun salute. Thus the whole group has to set off in the quest to fulfill their mother's wishes.

Donkeys

Alfred is 64. He's lost touch with his family and a threat to his health makes him realise he wants to make amends. The more he tries to do right, the more he does wrong, and as his past comes back to haunt him, he is forced to face up to what his life means to him. Rounding Up Donkeys is the second film in Sigma and Zentropa's three feature film concept 'Advance Party'.

The Suicide Shop

In a cold French city where suicide is a common urge, there is a colorful shop, managed for many years by the Tuvache family, where it is very easy to obtain the necessary tools to satisfy the sinister desires of so many depressed citizens.

The Darjeeling Limited

Three American brothers who have not spoken to each other in a year set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and bond with each other -- to become brothers again like they used to be. Their "spiritual quest", however, veers rapidly off-course (due to events involving over-the-counter pain killers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray).

Birds of America

A regular guy struggles with a repressive home and professional life, as well as making amends for the trouble his free-spirited brother and sister cause about town.

Roseanna's Grave

Roseanna is dying of a heart condition, and all she wants is to be buried next to her daughter, in a cemetery that is getting full fast. The cemetery can't expand because Capestro, the man who owns the land next to the cemetery, won't sell. While Marcello is doing good deeds to make sure no one dies, Roseanna thinks of Marcello's future.

Sister, Sister

Heated confrontations and revelations result when a divorcee returns with her young son to the home of her two sisters.

Trading Mom

The Martin kids learn of a magic spell that will take them to the 'mommy market' so they can get a more user friendly model. After giving a few other moms a try, they want their own back. But that is not so easy.

Free Ride

A single mom in the 1970s raises her two daughters and becomes involved in illegal drug trade to make a better life.

Because Why

After five years of travelling abroad, Alex arrives back in Montreal. All he has with him are a back-pack and a slip of paper with an ex-girlfriend's address scrawled on it.

The Medicine Show

A cynical young man, diagnosed with cancer, meets a brash young leukemia patient in the hospital who more than matches his distaste for IV drips and weepy sentimentality.

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