20 best movies like A Cool, Dry Place (1998)

Summer, 1984: 30 years after Duane captained the high school football team and Jacy was homecoming queen, this Texas town near Wichita Falls prepares for its centennial. Oil prices are down, banks are failing, and Duane's $12 million in debt. His wife Karla drinks too much, his children are always in trouble, and he tom-cats around with the wives of friends. Jacy's back in town, after a mildly successful acting career, life in Italy, and the death of her son. Folks assume Duane and Jacy will resume their high school romance. And Sonny is "tired in his mind," causing worries for his safety. Can these friends find equilibrium in middle age?

Emma is a divorced woman with a teen aged boy who moves into a small town and tries to make a go of a horse ranch. Murphy is the town druggist who steers business her way. Things are going along predictably until her ex husband shows up, needing a place to stay. The three of them form an intricate circle, Emma's son liking Murphy, but desperately wanting his father back.

A pair of childhood friends reunite during their summer break from college and deal with a traumatizing experience from their past.

In the Australian Outback, the Carmody family--Paddy, Ida and their teenage son Sean--are sheep drovers, always on the move. Ida and Sean want to settle down and buy a farm. Paddy wants to keep moving. A sheep-shearing contest, the birth of a child, drinking, gambling and a race horse will all have a part in the final decision.

Mitch became caught up with his career as a sport commentator and journalist. He ignored his girlfriend and did not make time to do things in life that are of the most value to a human being. Morrie was one of Mitch's professors in college and a famous scholar. One day Mitch was watching television and saw Morrie giving an interview stating that he is dying of Lou Gehrig disease or ALS.

When Johnny is released from prison following a forgery charge, he quickly lands a job as a short-order cook at a New York diner. Following a brief fling with waitress Cora, Frankie develops an attraction for Cora's friend and fellow waitress Frankie. While Frankie resists Johnny's charms initially, she eventually relents when her best friend, Tim, persuades her to give Johnny a chance.

A frontiersman and his son fight to build a new home in Texas.

Soon after the rising young singer-songwriter Beau Williams gets involved with a fallen, emotionally unstable country star Kelly Canter, the pair embark on a career resurrection tour helmed by her husband/manager James and featuring a beauty queen-turned-singer Chiles Stanton. Between concerts, romantic entanglements and old demons threaten to derail them all.

In 1930s Texas, a widow and her family fight to save their home by harvesting cotton.

A working girl from New Jersey looks for love with a fast-lane Manhattan salesman from Queens.

Sequel to "Three Steps Above Heaven". The sexy Gin (Clara Lago) is the new love of Hache (Mario Casas), but this can not forget his former girlfriend (Maria Valverde), so the love triangle is inevitable.

A young woman with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her.

Three fanatical bird-watchers spend an entire year competing to spot the highest number of species as El Nino sends an extraordinary variety of rare breeds flying up into the U.S., but they quickly discover that there are more important things than coming out on top of the competition

Welcome to Fuller Junction, Wisconsin, a friendly small town settled by Norwegian farmers. Here we see the exploits of two young cousins, Selma and Arnold, who learn about their world and experience the ups and downs of life as the season pass.

A family dog—with a near-human soul and a philosopher's mind—evaluates his life through the lessons learned by his human owner, a race-car driver.

A young widow discovers that her late husband has left her 10 messages intended to help ease her pain and start a new life.

The film centres on a retired, widowed professor living in Paris who develops a special relationship with a younger French woman.

A boy meets a girl named Riya and falls in love. After struggling to convince her to be his girlfriend, she half-heartedly agrees to be his `half-girlfriend'.

Author P.L. Travers travels from London to Hollywood as Walt Disney Pictures adapts her novel Mary Poppins for the big screen.

A young Arab is caught between cultures as he is sent to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Israel in the 1980s.

In this film, we see the world through the eyes of main character Justice, a young African-American poet. A mail carrier invites a few friends along for a long overnight delivery run.

After an accident leaves her a paraplegic, a former soap opera star struggles to recover both emotionally and mentally, until she meets her newest nurse, who has struggles of her own.

The Whole Wide World tells the story of Novalyne Price, an attractive feisty West Texas schoolteacher and her bittersweet, romantic and turbulent relationship with Robert E. Howard, the great pulp fiction writer of the 1930's.

Set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the tale of Lily Owens a 14 year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother. To escape her lonely life and troubled relationship with her father, Lily flees with Rosaleen, her caregiver and only friend, to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother's past.

A convict is released from prison in a small town in New Mexico. 18 years ago he killed a deputy. The then-and-now sheriff seeks revenge.

He had everything and wanted nothing. He learned that he had nothing and wanted everything. He saved the world and then it shattered. The path to enlightenment is as sharp and narrow as a razor's edge.

Willard Young is a 10-year-old boy who is sent by his mother to stay with her best friend Lily Reed, who lives in the Delta shrimp-fishing country in a town called Paradise. Lily and her husband Ben have been living in an unmentioned emotional vacuum since the death of their own three year old boy. Willie makes friends with the local 9-year-old tomboy Billie Pike, who teaches him to be comfortable with himself. When Willard gains a handle on his own emotions, he can now help Lily and Ben to connect, overcome grief and rediscover themselves.

Clarissa Dalloway looks back on her youth as she readies for a gathering at her house. The wife of a legislator and a doyenne of London's upper-crust party scene, Clarissa finds that the plight of ailing war veteran Septimus Warren Smith reminds her of a past romance with Peter Walsh. In flashbacks, young Clarissa explores her possibilities with Peter.

A comedy-drama about best friends - one a straight woman, Abbie, the other a gay man, Robert - who decide to have a child together. Five years later, Abbie falls in love with a straight man and wants to move away with her and Robert's little boy Sam, and a nasty custody battle ensues.

Simon Birch and Joe Wenteworth are boys who have a reputation for being oddballs. Joe never knew his father, and his mother, Rebecca, is keeping her lips sealed no matter how much he protests. Simon, meanwhile, is an 11-year-old dwarf whose outsize personality belies his small stature. Indeed, he often assails the local reverend with thorny theological questions and joins Joe on his quest to find his biological father.

Jackie is a divorced mother of two. Isabel is the career minded girlfriend of Jackie’s ex-husband Luke, forced into the role of unwelcome stepmother to their children. But when Jackie discovers she is ill, both women realise they must put aside their differences to find a common ground and celebrate life to the fullest, while they have the chance.

A baseball legend almost finished with his distinguished career at the age of forty has one last chance to prove who he is, what he is capable of, and win the heart of the woman he has loved for the past four years.

Bill Dancer and his young companion Curly Sue are the classic homeless folks with hearts of gold. Their scams are aimed not at turning a profit, but at getting enough to eat. When they scam the rich and beautiful Grey Ellison into believing she backed her Mercedes into Bill, they're only hoping for a free meal. But Grey is touched, and over the objections of her snotty fiancé.

An uptight English writer traveling to Crete on a matter of business finds his life changed forever when he meets the gregarious Alexis Zorba.

Benjamin has lost his wife and, in a bid to start his life over, purchases a large house that has a zoo – welcome news for his daughter, but his son is not happy about it. The zoo is in need of renovation and Benjamin sets about the work with the head keeper and the rest of the staff, but, the zoo soon runs into financial trouble.

A young coach turns a losing high school football program around to go undefeated for 12 consecutive seasons.

An elderly, yet young-at-heart man, moves in with his grandson, and both their lives turn upside-down.

When Michael McCann is thrown over by the woman he loves, he becomes something of a misanthrope and a miser, spending all of his spare money on collectible gold coins. Living in the same town is an affluent family with two sons: John and Tanny. Tanny's a wild boy, whom John cannot control, and one night he breaks into McCann's house, and steals the gold and disappears, which nearly confirms McCann's distrust of mankind. But then, a mysterious young woman dies in the snow outside McCann's house, and her small daughter makes her way to McCann's house and into McCann's life and heart.

A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter. The two women start a successful business but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.

A romantic comedy centered on Dexter and Emma, who first meet during their graduation in 1988 and proceed to keep in touch regularly. The film follows what they do on July 15 annually, usually doing something together.

A young girl comes to an embittered town and confronts its attitude with her determination to see the best in life.

Three friends form a bond over the year, Johnathan is gay, Clare is straight and Bobby is neither, instead he loves the people he loves. As their lives go on there is tension and tears which culminate in a strong yet fragile friendship between the three.

An ordinary man sees a bright light descend from the sky, and discovers he now has super-intelligence and telekinesis.

A pregnant New York social worker begins to develop romantic feelings for her gay best friend, and decides she'd rather raise her child with him, much to the dismay of her overbearing boyfriend.

Set in suburban New Jersey in the 1960s, a group of friends form a rock band and try to make it big.

A young kid from Kansas moves to New York to work on a magazine. He gets caught up in the world of drink and drugs, and starts a steady decline. The only hope is the cousin of one of his drinking partners, can she pull him through it ?

Celeste and Jesse met in high school and got married young. They laugh at the same jokes and finish each other’s sentences. They are forever linked in their friends’ minds as the perfect couple – she, a high-powered businesswoman and budding novelist; he, a free spirit who keeps things from getting boring. Their only problem is that they have decided to get divorced. Can their perfect relationship withstand this minor setback?

A blind man has an operation to regain his sight at the urging of his girlfriend and must deal with the changes to his life.

Travis and Gabby first meet as neighbors in a small coastal town and wind up in a relationship that is tested by life's most defining events.

The story about the relationship between a manic depressive man, Mr Jones, and the female doctor who takes more than a professional interest in his treatment.