Best movies like The Jack-Knife Man

Twelve-year-old Nick lives with his Uncle Murray, a Mr.Micawber-like Dickensian character who keeps hoping something won't turn up. What turns up is a social worker, who falls in love with Murray and a bit in love with Nick. As the child welfare people try to force Murray to become a conventional man (as the price they demand for allowing him to keep Nick), the nephew, who until now has gloried in his Uncle's iconoclastic approach to life, tries to play mediator. But when he succeeds, he is alarmed by the uncle's willingness to cave in to society in order to save the relationship.

A young field administrator for the TVA comes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam on the Tennessee River. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of an elderly woman from her home on an island in the River, and the young man's love affair with that woman's widowed granddaughter.

Young Pud is orphaned and left in the care of his aged grandparents. The boy and his grandfather are inseparable. Gramps is concerned for Pud's future and wary of a scheming relative who seeks custody of the child. One day Mr. Brink, an agent of Death, arrives to take Gramps "to the land where the woodbine twineth." Through a bit of trickery, Gramps confines Mr. Brink, and thus Death, to the branches of a large apple tree, giving Gramps extra time to resolve issues about Pud's future.

A guard (William Bendix) befriends a wayward youth (Allen Martin Jr.) sent to the Indiana Boys School.

From chicken thief to cabin boy, riverboat pilot to circus performer, Huck Finn outsmarts everyone on his way down the muddy Mississippi.

Two British children travel to Italy in an attempt to break up their runaway mother's affair with an Italian concert pianist.

A girl from the wrong side of the tracks is torn between true love and a life of sin.

Amish wife and mother Annie faces a crisis when her husband leaves the word of the Amish to live among “normal Americans,” or the “English” as the Amish dub them. But things turn even more dire when her husband returns, seeking custody of their son, and is willing to kill to achieve his goal…

A mother and daughter move to a small French town where they open a chocolate shop. The town, religious and morally strict, is against them, as they represent free-thinking and indulgence. When a group of Boat Gypsies float down the river, the prejudice of the Mayor leads to a crisis.

In 2008, New York mother Tiffany Rubin faced every parent's worst nightmare when her six year old son Kobe vanished into thin air. Upon learning that Kobe had been kidnapped by his biological father and taken to South Korea, Tiffany seeks the assistance of American Association for Lost Children representative Mark Miller, who guides her through the arduous process of traveling to Korea, and getting Kobe back.

Erik, a loner, finds a friend in Dexter, an eleven-year-old boy with AIDS. They vow to find a cure for AIDS together and save Dexter's life in an eventful summer.

Aaron, a young misfit living in a remote Scottish fishing community, is the lone survivor of a strange fishing accident that claimed the lives of five men including his older brother. Spurred on by sea-going folklore and local superstition, the village blames Aaron for this tragedy, making him an outcast amongst his own people. Steadfastly refusing to believe that his brother has died, he sets out to recover him and the rest of men.

A shy boy is unable to make friends in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1942, until his parents give him a terrier puppy for his ninth birthday. The dog, which he names Skip, becomes well known and loved throughout the community and enriches the life of the boy, Willie, as he grows into manhood. Based on the best-selling Mississippi memoir by the late Willie Morris.

An old man and a young boy who live in the southeastern Mississippi swamps are brought together by the love of a dog.

A blind man's master told him that after he has broken 1000 strings on his Banjo, he can open the Banjo to get a script for his eyes. After 60 years he broke the 1000th string.

Gwen's family is rich, but her parents ignore her and most of the servants push her around, so she is lonely and unhappy. Her father is concerned only with making money, and her mother cares only about her social position. But one day a servant's irresponsibility creates a crisis that causes everyone to rethink what is important to them.

In Puritan Boston, seamstress Hester Prynne and kindly Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale fall in love. After Dimmesdale must go away for a time to England, he returns to discover that Hester has given birth to their child and is the focus of local censure.

A police officer faces a personal meltdown following a divorce and the death of his mother.

Reporter Judith Wilkes leaves her husband and two sons in Sydney and goes to Malaysia to cover the story of the Vietnamese boat people. She becomes romantically involved with Kanan, and strikes up a friendship with Lady Minou Hobday, who keeps a regular vigil at "Turtle Beach" where the refugees try to land secretly in the hope that one day her own children will arrive. Accompanying Minou one night, Judith witnesses a brutal massacre by the Malaysians which spurs her on to expose the horrors of the internment camps at Bidong.

Frank, a single man raising his child prodigy niece Mary, is drawn into a custody battle with his mother.

With his landlord breathing down his neck and his writing career stagnant, the last thing Harrison Tyler (Dean Winters) needs is a kid hanging around. But he's in for a surprise when his ex-girlfriend (Lorraine Ansell) leaves her precocious 6-year-old (Emily Mae Young) in his care for a few weeks. It turns out the girl possesses remarkable matchmaking skills, and soon Tyler's professional and romantic fortunes begin to turn around.

Almost 19-year-old Marius feels himself in a rut in Marseille, his life planned for him by his cafe'-owning father, and he longs for the sea. The night before he is to leave on a 5-year voyage, Fanny, a girl he grew up with, reveals that she is in love with him, and he discovers that he is in love with her. He must choose between an exciting life at sea, and a boring life with the woman he loves. And Fanny must choose between keeping the man she loves, and letting him live the life he seems to want.

A plane is forced to land at sea just off the Japanese coast. A young American boy is later befriended by a fisherman's son, with the two setting off on an unintended journey across the country.

A harsh if ultimately optimistic depiction of life in the unforgiving Hebrides, that includes documentary footage to add to the sense of realism. A woman weathers the conscription of her husband, destructive storms, a son who yearns to leave the family home and an outbreak of cholera before winning the man she truly loves.

Living up to a reputation for disregarding rules, author Sebastian Maure, having fallen in love with Ghirlaine Bellamy, kidnaps her to get her away from her fiancé, Vincent Pamfort. Sebastian takes Ghirlaine to a small island where, because of the force of his personality, he is treated almost as a god by the natives. During her captivity, Ghirlaine exerts a strong influence on Sebastian, and he vows to make himself into a better man.

A sweet little country girl has issues with school. Her mother is ill. The school threatens to send her to an orphanage.

Elena is a single mother dependant on Social Services. Her son Tom has behaviour issues and is stigmatised at school as a "problem child". An absent father further complicates their difficult relationship. Tom is diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and given psychiatric medication, but a strange accident alerts his mother as to their side effects. When she refuses to continue administering the drugs to him, Social Services threaten to take Tom from her.

A single mother and her embattled son struggle to subsist in a small Mississippi Delta township. An act of violence thrusts them into the world of an emotionally devastated highway store owner, awakening the fury of a bitter and longstanding conflict.

A pregnant American nurse living in London during WWI, believing her soldier-fiance has been killed in France, marries a wealthy aristocrat so her child will have a father.

Missie three years later: being a single mother after her husband Willie was shot during a poker scuffle. She and Maddy move back in with her parents Clark and Marty. She finds a new home, and finds a new teaching position that she settles right into, but Missie has lost all faith in herself, until a chance encounter at her father's church where she adopts homeless orphan Belinda Marshall.

A lesbian mother fights to keep her son when a custody suit is brought by her ex-husband.

Sadie Thompson winds up stranded on an island and while her boat is being quarantined, she manages to stir up the blood of every marine on the base.

Two mothers, one biological, one stepmother, fight for the custody and love of 13-year-old Andrea.

In the 1850s, in a logging town on the Mississippi River, a conflict between the people of a mill town and the lumberjacks who work downriver. Romance and deceit are catalyzed by the arrival of the gambling river boat, River Lady, owned by the beautiful Sequin. Bauvais, a representative of the local lumber syndicate and Sequin's business partner, is trying to convince H.L. Morrison, the mill owner, to sell his business.

A young boy finds out that the man he thought was his father actually killed his real father, then adopted him.