Best movies like The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker

A former street thug returns to his Philadelphia home after a stint in the military. Back on his home turf, he once again finds himself tangling with the mob boss who was instrumental in his going off to be a soldier.

During an ever-growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, two Philadelphia SWAT team members, a traffic reporter, and his television-executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall.

Larry, a publisher, wants Kate to write a book about the 'Office Wife'. An executive stenographer's duties creates a relationship approaching that of his wife. Little does Larry know that sometimes literature mirrors life.

Sixteen-year-old Dylan is dying of cancer. When a charitable organization offers to grant Dylan his final wish, the teen has a surprising request: to meet supermodel Nikki Sinclair. Much to his mother's dismay, Dylan, with the help of his best friends, goes to New York to fulfill his dream.

Brothers Treat (Matthew Modine) and Philip (Kevin Anderson) have lived alone since they were kids, when a small time criminal enters their lives.

Change comes slowly to a small New Hampshire town in the early 20th century. We see birth, life and death in this small community.

For over a decade, this portrait of a North Philadelphia family and the creative sanctuary offered by their home music studio was filmed with vérité intimacy. The family's 10-year journey is an illumination of race and class in America, and it's a testament to love, healing and hope.

Finding her relationship at a standstill, single mother Mel breaks up with her boyfriend. After he moves out, strange things start happening in her house that threaten her safety and well-being.

In 1950s Pittsburgh, a frustrated African-American father struggles with the constraints of poverty, racism, and his own inner demons as he tries to raise a family.

An intimate journey through the formative years of David Lynch's life. From his idyllic upbringing in small town America to the dark streets of Philadelphia, we follow Lynch as he traces the events that have helped to shape one of cinema's most enigmatic directors.

Two competing lawyers join forces to sue a prestigious law firm for AIDS discrimination. As their unlikely friendship develops their courage overcomes the prejudice and corruption of their powerful adversaries.

Billy Wyatt (Harmon), a former high school and minor-league baseball baseball player receives a telephone call from his mother revealing that his former child-sitter, and later in his teens, his first love, Katie Chandler (Foster), has died. Wyatt returns home to deal with this tragedy reminescing over his childhood growing up with his father, Katie and best friend Alan Appleby.

Gil and Hank are two independent truckers who run into problems when they are forced to pay off traffic managers to get loads. They also have to pay off highway cops when their rigs are overweight and bank loans but consider themselves lucky just to be able to keep up the interest payments. Add to that a small, frizzy-wigged highway hooker named Janice, who tempts them with her lurid charms.

West Philadelphia basketball star Sergio Taylor deals with the pressures of fame while his brother and sister have their own issues with ambition.

The film follows four inter-connecting stories revolving around love, drugs and poverty in Philadelphia

Opera singer Prudence Budell, overhears truck driver Johnny Donnetti singing opera, and persuades her opera company to give him a chance in her new opera. They fall in love, but on meeting his colleague Mary while visiting Johnny's work, Prudence becomes convinced Johnny is in love with her.

A young boy thinks he's got a lookalike around him, but nobody believes him. Then, he meets Thomas and they switch homes.

Whitney, a spoiled pre-teen from Philadelphia, is forced to move to the country when her parents feel the squeeze of economic hard times. A fish out of water, far from her comfort zone, she befriends an amazing horse, and undertakes a misguided journey back to her old life, only to discover that her family is her home.

After doing 13 years in prison for the murder of his wife, mechanic Harry Graham is out on parole and looking to rebuild his life in a small seaside community. He settles into a trailer park and finds both a job and a girlfriend. But things get difficult for Harry when his estranged son, Jimmy, shows up. He witnessed his mother's murder as a child and, after years spent in foster homes, has come looking for revenge.

In the early 1900's Tennessee, a loving family undergoes the shock of the father's sudden, accidental death. The widow and her young son must endure the heartache of life following the tragedy, but slowly rise up from the ashes to face the hope of renewed life.

In a Yorkshire mining town, three educated brothers return to their blue-collar home to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary of their parents, but dark secrets come to the fore.

Questions of race, identity and heritage are explored through the lives of young American women growing up as adoptees from China. These four distinct individuals reflect on their experiences as members of transracial families.

Miriam and Dave Lapp are a charming young couple with a brood of adorable children. Dave works in and part owns a construction company. They are also members of the 'Old Order' Amish community in Pennsylvania,whose church forbids all technology - though Dave gets lifts to work in a car and the couple,by allowing themselves to be filmed,risk the wrath of church elders. Having outlined their traditional life-style to camera Miriam persuades several friends to be happily filmed and it becomes clear that the Lapps and other,younger Amish,believe that,having been rebaptized to allow a more open evangelical approach - risking excommunication thereby - they feel the need for a change in the community. The film ends as the family consolidates its dream to own their own farm.

It's Christmas Eve, early 1930s on Walton's Mountain. As the family prepares for the holiday, they anxiously await Pa's return home from his job in the city some 50 miles away. He is late, and Ma and the grandparents hear on the radio a report of a bus accident that worries them. Oldest son John-Boy must step up to help grandfather cut down a Christmas tree, and upon learning the concern about Daddy sets out to find him.

In a hopeful effort to evade gangster Legs Caffey, chorus girl Letty Morris hops a bus in New York bound for Los Angeles--with Legs close on her heels. Along the way the bus picks up escaped convict Paul Porter, who quickly allies himself with Letty. With the police in hot pursuit and Legs monitoring his every move with Letty, Paul is running out of both time and ideas.

A blowhard who poses as a railroad executive (but is really just a $30-a-week clerk) catches a young bride and then drives her family's finances to the brink of ruin.

On the hottest day of the year, an unknown virus spreads throughout inner-city Philadelphia. The infected victims, crazed by dehydration, begin attacking other residents of the neighborhood in gruesome ways. When the military is brought in to contain the situation, but realize they can't come up with a vaccine quickly enough, they fence off the area and let everyone die. A group of locals, stuck in the basement of their building, behind the fences, and separated from their family members, band together to try to survive.

Irene, a feisty Irish girl in Philadelphia, clashes with her family and walks out, heading to New York City to seek fame and fortune. She gets a job as a dressmaker's model and becomes involved with Donald, the scion of a wealthy family. Donald's mother doesn't approve of Irene and sets out to discredit her in Donald's eyes.

Jenny Cole lives with her husband and son in middle America. She is pregnant and starts to have very vivid dreams about a small city that has a big church. She then starts talking to her mother about it and her mother shows her some drawings she made when she was a child. To her amazement they are identical to the drawings from her dreams that she is now having. Jenny and her mother do research and find that the dreams are about a small town in Ireland in the 1930s. The mother gives Jenny, her son and her husband tickets to go to Ireland, so that she can find out about her dreams. Had Jenny lived in the past after all as Mary Sutton?

A family reunion goes awry when the oldest son makes the accusation that his dying father, a famed psychiatrist who also did work for the CIA, adopted his children for the purposes of psychological experimentation.

Henry Fonda stars as Col. J. C. Kincaid, crusty patriarch of a Texas family. Kincaid's weak-willed son Floyd (George Grizzard) wants to get into the old man's good graces so that he can develop the Colonel's vast land ownings. Floyd arranges a city-wide celebration lauding Kincaid as the oldest living graduate of a nearby military academy. The festivities serve only to make the already sour Kincaid even more truculent and miserable. Adapted from Preston Jones' 1974 play and originally telecast live from Dallas' Southern Methodist University on April 7, 1980.

Will, a charming 35-year-old Philadelphia ad man, heads to Lebanon, Pa. to bury his recently deceased father. He forms an unexpected friendship with CJ, his bright, newly pregnant 17-year-old cousin. As Will becomes interested in CJ's married teacher and CJ confronts her conflicted father, both struggle with formidable decisions about the path their lives will take. Can we vault our differences and meet in the middle? This bittersweet comic drama tenderly explores the cultural divide in America through the lives of one extended family.

A loud-mouthed lout alienates everyone except his patient wife.

Consequences introduces us to Max, Jimmy, Norm, Nick and Jason at the age of eighteen. Friends since early childhood, they have bonded deeper than natural brothers. We, once again, meet them at age forty and learn how their lives have unfolded as we experience their marriages, strengths and disappointments. Together they are capable of celebrating with each other their emotions in an open and honest fashion. The group is together now on their annual football weekend, this year in Philadelphia. While bonding and enjoying the vibrant nightlife, they become separated only to find a darkness they have never known. It becomes a struggle of life or death. The friends find themselves disconnected from each other but ultimately gain a stronger respect for one another than they ever thought possible. Realizing that everyone must pay the price, they all have to deal with Consequences.

An unflinching verité portrait of the children of Stanton Elementary School in North Philadelphia, an inner-city neighborhood where 90% of the students live below the poverty line. Seen through the viewpoint of devoted principal Deanna Burney, the film shows Stanton as grossly underfunded, understaffed, and filled with children struggling to overcome their difficulties. But for these at-risk kids, however, the hope for their future survives only in the success of their education. A captivating series of vignettes concerning children growing up outside the American dream, echoing current “hot-button” issues in our country’s ongoing political discussion.