Best movies like The Watsons Go to Birmingham

Felix Funicello is a Catholic school fifth-grader in 1964, whose claim to fame is his cousin Annette Funicello, the famous Mouseketeer and teen movie queen. But grammar and arithmetic move to the back burner this holiday season with the sudden arrivals of substitute teacher Madame Frechette and feisty Russian student Zhenya Kabakova. While Felix learns the meaning of French kissing, cultural misunderstanding, and tableaux vivants, Wishin' and Hopin' barrels toward one outrageous Christmas!

Dreams can make a life worth living, but they can also be dashed by bad decisions. This is the crossroads whare the Younger family find themselves when their father passes away and leaves them with $10,000 in life insurance money. Should they buy a new home for the family? Perhaps a liquor store? While no choice is easy, life on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s is even harder.

A comedy filled with tenderness as a baby raccoon snuggles his way into the life of a lonely boy. He becomes the boy's only companion during his father's frequent absences. Because of Rascal, both father and son realize their responsibility to each other

In turn-of-the-century Mississippi, an 11-year-old boy comes of age as two mischievous adult friends talk him into sneaking the family car out for a trip to Memphis and a series of adventures.

In a village in eastern Turkey, tales of the economic success of Turks in Switzerland inspire Haydar to convince his wife Meryem that they must go. He sells their livestock and small plot of land in exchange for passage for two. He wants to leave their seven children in the care of the eldest and his parents; his father advises him to take one son to be educated in Europe, as economic insurance. The three set off for Istanbul, Milan, and Switzerland, stowing away on a ship. At Lake Como, they pay the rest of their money to unprincipled men who abandon them at an Alpine pass before a blizzard. Father and son are separated from Meryem. Will anyone reach the land of promise?

Two very different families converge on Martha's Vineyard one weekend for a wedding.

A middle-aged married wealthy white corporate executive is surprised to discover that he has a working-class black teen-age son who wants to be adopted into the almost-exclusively-white upper-middle-class community of San Marino, California.

A young, white school teacher is assigned to Yamacraw Island, an isolated fishing community off the coast of South Carolina, populated mostly by poor black families. He finds that the basically illiterate, neglected children there know so little of the world outside their island.

An abused wife heads to California to become a movie star while her nephew back in Alabama has to deal with a racially-motivated murder involving a corrupt sheriff.

Havoc is created in a small Southern community when a 12-year-old shows up, causing a couple 13-year-old friends to fall in love with her, thus possibly jeopardizing their friendship.

A Mississippi district attorney and the widow of Medgar Evers struggle to bring a white supremacist to justice for the 1963 murder of the civil rights leader.

Based on one of the most beloved Young Adult novels of all time: Two kids are stripped naked and left together on an island in a lake - victims of a vicious summer camp prank; But rather than have to return to camp and face the humiliation, they decide to take off, on the run together. What follows is a three day odyssey of discovery and self-discovery.

Madea dispenses her unique form of holiday spirit on rural town when she's coaxed into helping a friend pay her daughter a surprise visit in the country for Christmas.

A decade has passed in the small town where the original Sandlot gang banded together during the summer of ’62 to play baseball and battle the Beast. Now comes the sequel, a campy romp back to the dugout where nine new kids descend on the diamond only to discover that a descendant of the Beast lives in Mr. Mertle’s backyard--a monster of mythical proportions known as "The Great Fear."

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Robert Townsend stars as the patriarch of a family devastated when his wife is killed in a senseless auto accident. Reeling with grief, each family member must find courage and vision to carry on, ultimately eager to do the mother proud.

A seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.

Freedom Song (2000) is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan. In the midst of the Freedom Summer, a group of high school students in the small town are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community. The young activists meet resistance not only from white southerners, but from their parents, who have experienced firsthand the violence that can result from speaking out.[1] As high school students band together with the support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they make strides in registering African-American voters and gaining awareness for their cause.

Set in 1969, Abel Shaddick, a crotchety deli owner, has a grudge against virtually everyone in his upstate New York town of Fairview, particularly against his slacker nephew Stanley who lives behind the shop. Without telling his uncle, Stanley agrees to put up a needy city kid for the summer as part of a charity program run by rich debutante Gloria. Abel immediately vetoes the plan, but it is too late. The kid, young Herman Washington, is already on his way...

Oscar-winner Colin Firth stars in this heart-warming cross-cultural romantic comedy set in the idyllic South of France. Nimi, a beautiful Nigerian single mother to son Sammy, is under pressure from her family to find a suitable husband and who better than the local Reverend? After making friends with Matthew, a British comic-book writer and one of his heros, Sammy has other ideas. He successfully plots to get them together but they've still a few obsticles to overcome. (from Amazon)

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.

In 1935, 99-year-old former slave Shadrach asks to be buried on the soil where he was born to slavery, and that land is owned by the large Dabney family, consisting of Vernon, Trixie and their seven children, and to bury a black man on that land is a violation of strict Virginia law.

When six-year-old Ruby Bridges is chosen to be the first African-American to integrate her local elementary school, she is subjected to the true ugliness of racism for the first time.

Earl Pilcher Jr., runs an equipment rental outfit in Arkansas, lives with his wife and kids and parents, and rarely takes off his gimme cap. His mother dies, leaving a letter explaining he's not her natural son, but the son of a Black woman who died in childbirth; plus, he has a half brother Ray, in Chicago, she wants him to visit. Earl makes the trip, initially receiving a cold welcome from Ray and Ray's son, Virgil. His birth mother's sister, Aunt T., an aged and blind matriarch, takes Earl in tow and insists that the family open up to him.

In 1964, members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered three Civil Rights workers who had traveled to the South to encourage African-American voter registration. Examines the last three weeks in the lives of the slain activists.

Mississippi in the early '60s is the setting for this story of a 12-year-old African-American girl who, along with her white friends, tries to ease increasing racial tensions.

In the aftermath of the terrible Civil War which has devastated the South, Amanda America Dixon returns home to find she has become the sole heir to a vast cotton plantation. But the dreadful secret which has blighted her life threatens to deprive her of the birthright which her beloved father David had struggled for so long to create. Raised by her father and grandmother to be the perfect white Southern Belle, Amanda's true mother was a black slave Julia. Confronted with the forces of greed and bigotry, Amanda has to face not only the hatred of a racist world, but the complex truth of a family whose lives have been built on a lie.

On one of his bratty son Eric's annual visits, the plutocrat U.S. Bates takes him to his department store and offers him anything in it as a gift. Eric chooses a black janitor who has made him laugh with his antics. At first the man suffers many indignities as Eric's "toy", but gradually teaches the lonely boy what it is like to have and to be a friend.

Set in the 1970s, Tom Spader is an attorney who is determined to end what he has dubbed "the colored man's losing streak." When his winning of a high-profile case thrusts him into the limelight, he decides to moves his wife and their two kids out of their mixed lower-middle-class town and into the posh enclave of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.

Interracial love story set in Detroit.

Kathy Morrison (Harris), mother of three, who helps run a "color-blind" adoption program, wants to have another biological child. Her husband, Pete (Bologna), the head coach of the Phoenix Suns, finds out he can't produce another child. Kathy thinks about adopting a boy, Frederic "Freddie" Wilcox, and Pete does not want to adopt a boy who happens to be black. When he relents, Freddie's arrival causes an upheaval in the Morrison's neighborhood, their school, and family. Kathy's answer is to adopt another child, in this case two, a war-traumatized half-Vietnamese girl, Quan Tran, and a Hopi boy, Joe. The new extended family must now learn to live together.

The Thomsons - parents Thomas and Francie, and children Willa, Arthur, Beatrice (nicknamed Booky) and Jakey - are a loving working class family living in the Depression era in Toronto. Arthur is showing aptitude in drawing, and although his parents want to support his skill, Thomas in particular wants him to take up a vocation that is a little more stable. Willa, the part time librarian, is attracted to Russell, the medical student she meets at the library. And 11-year old Booky is happy that she has been asked to tutor the new older sixth grade student, Georgie Dunlop, in spelling, since she has a crush on him, her first ever. She just can't wait for him to ask her to the school dance. But she begins to have mixed feelings about Georgie based on a gift he gives to her. Digging a little deeper, Booky begins to understand both the good and bad of Georgie.

A former pro-wrestler is hired to be the bodyguard/nanny for a couple of bratty kids whose inventor father is being stalked by a rival.

Two neighboring families in Florida, one black and one white, struggle with the problems of race, poverty, prejudice, and absent fathers, as their children become friends over the course of one summer and fall.

Lily Covington, a Manhattan housekeeper, embarks on a trip to the rural Alabama town of her youth. To Lily's surprise, her employer's nine-year-old son Michael stows away for the ride. Together, Lily and Michael realize just how alike and how different their worlds really are. Michael explores a way of life he never knew existed, while Lily discovers some tender truths about the family she left behind.

Booky does everything she can to make an enjoyable Christmas, for her family, during the depression as her father is out of work.

A new version of Truman Capote's 1956 tale based on his own bittersweet upbringing in Alabama. The story deals with a seven-year-old who forms a special friendship with his simple, older cousin whose two sisters and bachelor brother feel he needs better influences and role models and decide to send him to military school after the Christmas holidays.

Two young brothers talk their strict father Lloyd Clauswell into allowing them to babysit themselves for the first time while their parents attend a corporate barbecue...

Just like every other summer, the children of two camp-sites play "war". But, this summer it takes an interesting turn.

Taking place in the 1990's, Huck and his card shark friend, Jim, travel from California to Nevada searching for Huck's long-lost grandpa. Along the way, a deceived card player chases the two across the states with his two, less intelligent, sidekicks.

A lonely boy wins over his distant father and strict grandmother with help from a brave velveteen rabbit whose one wish is to become a real rabbit someday

A hard-working cupcake maker is inadvertently elected mayor of a small town burdened with debt. With no formal experience or education to speak of, she must rely on her street smarts to clean up the town.

Set in a sleepy Southern Louisiana town in 1959, a lawyer, searches for justice as he volunteers to help a black woman whose property is being threatened by the Holts, the first family of the town, after she refuses to sell her valuable land.

This made-for-TV movie dramatizes the historic boycott of public buses in the 1950s, led by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A young girl named Addie, living in Nebraska in 1946 wants nothing more for the holidays than a Christmas tree, but her widowed father, is bitter and refuses due to events from the family's past.

The Christmas Bunny tells the story of a lonely foster child (Sophie Bolen) who finds a lost, injured rabbit in the woods on Christmas Eve. The rabbit is nursed back to health by The Bunny Lady (Florence Henderson), who runs a rabbit rescue in an old barn behind her Michigan farmhouse.

A young orphan who lives with her grandmother in a large Virginian home infatuates herself with the voices of Joan d'Arc. Her French nanny seeks out the help of a rich suitor to take her and the orphan away when she realizes that the grandmother cannot offer the orphan the love that she needs.

A little girl leaves home with her pet dog and rabbit to escape abuse and find the ocean in the hopes of feeling closer to her father who has passed away.

Film crew arrives in a small town in Nevada desert. Ends up changing the life of a 12-year-old kid and a friend of his, a movie lover.