Best movies like The Beat

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A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Beat Starring David Jacobson, William McNamara, Kara Glover, Stuart Alexander, and more. If you liked The Beat then you may also like: Up the Down Staircase, Rebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault, Kids in America, Knights of the South Bronx, She Fought Alone 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.

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Up the Down Staircase

Sylvia, a novice schoolteacher, is hired to teach English in a high school, but she’s met with an apathetic faculty, a delinquent student body and an administration that drowns its staff in paperwork. The following days go from bad to worse as Sylvia struggles to reach her most troubled students.

Rebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault

A dramatization of the life of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (Don Cheadle), with a lot of factual based occurrences. A reformed junkie returns from prison to clean up his act and devote the rest of his life to the young kids of Harlem. 1996 was the 25th anniversary of the first tournament named after him.

Kids in America

Inspired by real events, this ribald comedy pits an unlikely gang of students against their principal after she bars safe-sex activities on campus. Protesting Principal Weller's muzzling of free speech, the teens stage a bold and hilarious rebellion.

Knights of the South Bronx

A business man decides that he wants to teach school in the inner city and chooses a tough school in the South Bronx. He teaches the children how to play the game of chess, and along the way they learn a lot about life.

She Fought Alone

All, including school administration and a friend, turn their backs on a girl who accused a classmate of rape.

6.2 / 10 2000 Drama TV Movie
suggested by: user580qk8t0psl

Cheaters

In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.

Stand and Deliver

Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students.

Permanent Record

David Sinclair seems to have everything going for him: he's smart, musically talented, and very successful. To top off his senior year in high school, his band is trying to get a recording session. Therefore, David's suicide leaves everyone, especially his best friend and bandmate, Chris, with a lot of questions.

Hunky Dory

Musical film about the trials and tribulations of an idealistic drama teacher as she tries to put on the end of year show.

4.0 / 10 1968 Drama
suggested by: user44293348lj5

Maryjane

A teacher trying to break up a local drug ring is framed and arrested for possession of marijuana.

Light It Up

On a winter day in a southside Queens high school, events collide and six students are suddenly in an armed standoff with the NYPD. At the school, classrooms freeze, teachers come and go, resources are scant.

The Principal

Burglary. Drugs. Assault. Rape. The students at Brandel High are more than new Principal Rick Latimer bargained for. Gangs fight to control the school using knives - even guns - when they have to. When Latimer and the head of security try to clean up the school and stop the narcotics trade, they run up against a teenage mafia. A violent confrontation on the campus leads to a deadly showdown with the drug dealer's gang, and one last chance for Latimer to save his career... and his life.

Prom Queen: The Marc Hall Story

Marc Hall, a young man living in Quebec, registers his prom date as per his Catholic school's rules. He is denied his request, because his prom date is a boy. Marc Hall is an openly gay teenager in a very conservative Catholic school. This film documents his struggles (legal, emotional, ethical and personal) to be himself and to live his life the way he deems best. With the help of friends, family and supporters, "Cinderfella" makes it to the ball, With his Prince Charming.

Class Act

Duncan is a genius straight A student, Blade is juvenile delinquent. But because of a mix up with their school records, everyone thinks each is the other one. Now, Duncan kind of likes the attention from being thought of as a real bad dude, if only the school bully would stop trying to rough him up. And Blade definitely likes being thought of as important instead of as trouble.

Who Shot Patakango?

A coming-of-age tale set in Brooklyn during the late '50s which centers around the high school life of a group of teens that have to deal with racial tensions at their interracial vocational high school.

6.4 / 10 1996 Drama TV Movie
suggested by: SparklingStarfish

To Sir, with Love II

After thirty years teaching in London, Mark Thackeray retires and returns to Chicago. There, however, the challenge of teaching kids in an inner city school proves to be too much to resist.

Life of a King

The true story of one man's mission to give inner city kids of Washington DC something he never had - a future. After being incarcerated for eighteen years, Eugene Brown established the Big Chair Chess Club to get kids off the streets and working towards lives they never believed they were capable of. This is his inspirational story.

Hangin' with the Homeboys

Two African-Americans and two Puerto-Ricans (though one pretends to be Italian) go out on the town on a Friday night. They will be forced to get to know each other — and even worse, learn to like each other as friends.

Phat Beach

A hefty homeboy borrows his dad's Mercedes and goes to the beach with his friends for wild sun & fun.

Lower Learning

Barry Goldwater Elementary is on the brink of collapse: the lowest test scores in the state, teachers who are either drunk or having sex on school grounds, and a principal who extorts money from parents. It's up to Tom, the down-on-his-luck vice-principal, to rally the lazy teachers, expose the principal's corruption, and turn the school around before an end of the day board decision.

Manito

Fifteen years ago, their Washington Heights neighborhood was dubbed the crack-cocaine capital of the world, but today it is transforming into one of the most vibrant, Spanish-speaking communities in the United States. While the drug dealers continue to disappear, their violent legacy still casts a shadow over the neighborhood and its residents. Junior, an ex-convict struggling to get his life back on track, is a product of this legacy. His younger brother Manny, the salutatorian of his high school class, embodies the hope of the future. On the night of his graduation party, Manny finds himself faced with an ill-fated decision that could change his life forever

Bringing Rain

Stuck together for the last month of school, a group of boarding school students are faced with either dealing with the reality of the damage done, or drifting off into isolated fantasies and denials.

Whatever

A New Jersey teen faces her impending adulthood, dreaming of a life as a successful New York artist. But when she gets caught up in the carefree sport of pre-AIDS sex and drugs, her future becomes less certain.

The Explosive Generation

Peter Gifford is a likable, dedicated schoolteacher that teaches a senior life skills class. When student Janet Sommers brings up the topic of sex and dating, he asks students to write questions on the topic, and will cover them in the next class. The parents get wind of what Gifford is about to do, notify the principal, and he warns Peter not to read the questions in class. Gifford decides to go against this and is suspended. The whole student body protests, and the administration gets worried on what to do.

Reggie's Prayer

Reggie White stars as Reggie Knox, a pro football player who retires, frustrated because he hasn't won a championship. Knox begins coaching a Portland, Ore., high school football program, where he befriends a troubled student. Reggie fights local ruffians with Christian values. And punches.

Beyond the Blackboard

Inspired by a true story, “Beyond the Blackboard” is about a 24-year-old first-time teacher who makes a difference in the lives of the homeless children she teaches in a shelter’s makeshift classroom. Set in 1987 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this movie tells the story a brand-new teacher and Mom who is given a tougher than expected teaching job and winds up teaching homeless children in a school that is housed in a room and called, literally, The School with No Name. She has some personal prejudicial hurdles to cross before she is able to be a true teacher for these children and of course there are hurdles like the lack of books and supplies.

5.4 / 10 1988 Drama
suggested by: user37838o3m9vf

Tiger Warsaw

Chuck brought sorrow to his family when he shot his father who is now a semi-invalid. After 15 years of self destruction, he returns home to seek forgiveness.

The Cross and the Switchblade

A film adaptation of a book written in 1963. It tells the true story of Wilkerson's first five years in New York City, where he ministered to disillusioned youth, encouraging them to turn away from the drugs and gang violence they were involved with.

Love Is the Drug

Jonah Brand (John Patrick Amedori) isn't necessarily the type of guy who would interest ultra-hot Sara Weller (Lizzy Caplan). But when she and her friends find out he works at a pharmacy, they charm him into their circle and gain his trust with manipulative fawning. Jonah knows he's playing with danger, but it's tough to resist the game. Daryl Hannah and D.J. Cotrona co-star in this grizzly tale of addiction and obsession.

Corrupt

After decades of terror, two deadly street gangs reach a delicate truce and young MJ (Silkk the Shocker) sees a way out of the hood once and for all. Only Corrupt (Ice-T) stands in MJ's way, resulting into a violent and brutal roller coaster ride of action!

The Best Thief in the World

Izzy, the youngest son of a troubled New York family, takes a shine to breaking into people's apartments as a way to get attention.

The Ron Clark Story

A passionate and innovative teacher leaves his small hometown to teach in one of Harlem's toughest schools. But to break through to this students, Ron Clark must use unconventional methods, including his ground-breaking classroom rules, to drive them toward their potential.

Crash Course

Some students taking driver's ed during the summer. Among the students is Riko, a cocky guy; Chad, a guy from a privileged background, who's terrified to get behind the wheel; Vanessa, who's over protective mom who wouldn't allow her to take the course, who went behind her back; and Maria, a spoiled foreign student. Now the principal wants the students to pass so he tells the instructor, who's still not over his wife leaving and is not exactly up to the task, that it's important for the students to pass so he brought in a special instructor, who's very tough. And the principal also tells one of his teachers to let, one of the students Maslanski who's the school football star, pass the test he failed so that he can concentrate on driver's ed. But the teacher, seeing this as an opportunity to expose the principal as not doing his job and thus paving the way for him to be the new principal, makes Maslanski take a make up test

Toe to Toe

Out on the lacrosse pitch, wealthy but troubled Jesse and poor but driven Tosha form an easy and deep bond, but their relationship is threatened once they enter the hallways of an elite prep school they attend in Washington, D.C. There, they must work to overcome racial and other tensions in their classmates, and in themselves, if they hope to keep their friendship alive.

5.3 / 10 2014 Drama
suggested by: user18932vt9yan

Five Star

After John’s absent father is struck by a stray bullet, Primo takes it upon himself to verse the young boy in the code of the streets—one founded on respect and upheld by fear. A member of the Bloods since the age of twelve—both in the film and in reality—the streets of Brooklyn are all Primo has ever known. While John questions whether or not to enter into this life, Primo must decide whether to leave it all behind as he vows to become a better husband and father. Set during those New York summer weeks where the stifling heat seems to encase everything, Five Star plunges into gang culture with searing intensity. Director Keith Miller observes the lives of these two men with a quiet yet pointed distance, carefully eschewing worn clichés through its unflinching focus. Distinctions between fiction and real life remain intentionally ambiguous, allowing the story of these two men to resonate beyond the streets, as they face the question of what it means to be a man.

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