20 best movies like Dark Night (2016)

Lachlan MacAldonich is a self-described “lazy Scotsman” and former guitar player for a once-popular 1990s rock band. No longer famous, he now lives a comfortably numb existence working on an organic farm outside Los Angeles. He drinks himself into a stupor every night and retires to his shabby apartment to record his podcast, recounting the tragic deaths of great musicians. After a particularly heavy night of drowning his sorrows at a local watering hole, he is arrested for driving under the influence. This snag, coupled with a long-ago conviction for a drug offense, means Lachlan faces possible deportation. His only hope of remaining stateside is proving that his absence would cause extreme hardship for a spouse or relative – forcing him to confront relationships he thought were buried forever.

Over the course of one day, a shy 13-year-old forms a bond with his troubled uncle.

A 21-year-old reformed gangster's devotion to his family and his future is put to the test when he is released from prison and returns to his old stomping grounds in Watts, Los Angeles.

When their drug abusing mother is released from prison determined to rebuild their family, Rey kidnaps his younger brother Oliver and escapes their desert home for the California coast.

Teenager Homer Macauley stays at home in small-town Ithaca to support his family while his older brother Marcus prepares to go to war.

A young refugee of the Sudanese Civil War who wins a lottery for relocation to the United States with three other lost boys. Encountering the modern world for the first time, they develop an unlikely friendship with a brash American woman assigned to help them, but the young man struggles to adjust to this new life and his feelings of guilt about the brother he left behind.

Quickie-mart employee Melissa and paraplegic Richie are very much in love. Supported only by Melissa’s small hourly wage, they are nevertheless thrilled to learn that Melissa is pregnant. Then their situation deteriorates, and their tenuous financial situation threatens to bring their happy life crashing down.

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

A young Texan mother who loses her child to foster care begins smuggling Mexicans across the border.

A love triangle involving a photographer, a director and an actress.

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.

Chronicles Whitney Houston's rise to fame and turbulent relationship with husband Bobby Brown.

A teenage girl, distraught from her vain attempt to connect with her estranged mother, resorts to cutting herself. When she develops an online relationship with an older woman, she learns to accept her sexuality and the endless solitude of sprawling suburbia.

Gary, a musician, is trapped in an unhappy relationship with his live-in lover, Dora. He becomes enthralled with a beautiful seductress who enters his dreams, and tries to control his dream-state so he can spend more and more time with her. When Gary sees his mystery woman's face on a bus billboard, he discovers she is real, and fate brings him an opportunity to meet her.

A biography of the civil-rights activist and labor organizer Cesar Chavez. Chronicling the birth of a modern American labour movement, Cesar Chavez tells the story of the famed civil rights leader and labour organiser torn between his duties as a husband and father and his commitment to securing a living wage for farm workers. Passionate but soft-spoken, Chavez embraced non-violence as he battled greed and prejudice in his struggle to bring dignity to working people.

An act of civil disobedience turns into a standoff with police when homeless people in Cincinnati take over the public library to seek shelter from the bitter cold.

A wild teenage girl orchestrates a romance between her nanny and her father, who is a recovering addict.

Evicted from his squat and suddenly alone on the streets, George is a man without a home. Struggling with his demons and desperately trying to connect with the daughter he abandoned, he navigates the system, hustling for change and somewhere safe and quiet to gather his thoughts. But the streets are relentless and soon, George finds himself teetering on the edge, alone and abandoned.

Does time exist when nothing changes? That is the question for the picturesque Village of Rockwell, where time has frozen. Nobody gets sick; nobody ages, and nobody dies due to a tragic bus crash that took the lives of the 1977 undefeated Rockwell High School Basketball Team.

After the bizarre death of her brother, Johana Burwood must return home after four years, to face her strange siblings, her out of touch father and her very touchy past.

Recovering from an ill-fated affair with a married man, Gabe finds solace in the relationship he maintains with his ex-wife and daughter. On the other side of town, Ernesto evades life at home with his current live-in ex-boyfriend by spending much of his spare time in the hospital with an ailing past love. Impervious to the monotony of their blue-collar world, they maintain an unwavering yearning for romance. The emotional isolation the two men have grown accustomed to is captured in a subtle, optimistic, poetic fashion while avoiding melodrama.

Two women get on the highway heading to Santa Fe. Marilyn dreams of winning a contest held by a famous belly dancing company, while her friend, Mona, has a secret: she's a fugitive from justice - accused of her mother-in-law's death.

A successful "house tuner" in New York City, who calibrates the sound in people's homes in order to adjust their moods, meets a client with a problem he can't solve.

The We and the I is the heartfelt and comical story of the final bus ride home for a group of young high school students and graduates.

In a remote village in South India, three generations of sons react to the death of Century Gowda, their grandfather, a 101-year-old man. The three story lines intertwine before converging at Century Gowda's "Thithi", the final funeral celebration eleven days after a death.

A boozy lowlife tries to bury the truth about his crazy stepson's suspicious death, but a nosy newspaper columnist and the young man's mother complicate matters.

A man struggles with the tragic memories of his past to make sense of his present, but soon realizes that time isn't the enemy he thinks it is.

After his family is evicted from their home, proud and desperate construction worker Dennis Nash tries to win his home back by striking a deal with the devil and working for Rick Carver, the corrupt real estate broker who evicted him.

Spurred by a white woman's lie, vigilantes destroy a black Florida town and slay inhabitants in 1923.

An aspiring actress makes a pact with her fiancé to take a job as an exotic dancer to care for her cancer stricken father. Once the pact the couple made is broken, their lives are changed forever.

Coming of age story about two inner city youths, who are left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities.

After crossing the border illegally for work, Miguel, a hard-working father and devoted husband, finds himself wrongfully accused of murdering a former sheriff’s wife. After learning of his imprisonment, Miguel’s pregnant wife tries to come to his aid and lands in the hands of corrupt coyotes who hold her for ransom. Dissatisfied with the police department’s investigation, the former sheriff tries to uncover the truth about his wife’s death and discovers disturbing evidence that will destroy one family’s future, or tear another’s apart.

4 Teenagers. 4 different cities. Living large online through social networks, texting, and live streaming. More open, more immediate, more friends, more danger, more control. They project what they want others to see. Say anything, do anything; to get a response from online friends who understand. Faster, sexier, meaner. Real life doesn't cut it. Too many expectations. Too many disappointments. Too boring. 4 teens whose worlds collide one night on a live streaming site. One of them loses control. Shot entirely with the tools of modern communication; 5D Cannon, Laptop webcam, cell phones. Laptop 3D after FX integrate live action and graphics to create their online existence.

A young couple bound by a seemingly ideal love, begins to unravel as unexpected opportunities spin them down a volatile and violent path and threaten the future they had always imagined.

Single mom Laura, along with her awkward 14 year-old son Henry is forced to drive Jack, her estranged, care-free pot dealing father across country after he's kicked out of yet another nursing home.

When the beloved cellist of a world-renowned string quartet is diagnosed with a life threatening illness, the group’s future suddenly hangs in the balance as suppressed emotions, competing egos and uncontrollable passions threaten to derail years of friendship and collaboration. As they are about to play their 25th anniversary concert — quite possibly their last — only their intimate bond and the power of music can preserve their legacy.

After running away from her abusive mother, a streetwise teen seeks refuge with her father, but he rejects her when he learns that she's pregnant.

A drama centered on a classical pianist who has been diagnosed with ALS and the brash college student who becomes her caregiver.

An eighteen year old high school drop out and his twenty-seven year old friend start trafficking marijuana across the border of Canada in order to make money and their lives are changed forever.

Detectives and best friends Andreas and Simon lead vastly different lives; Andreas has settled down with his beautiful wife and son; while Simon, recently divorced, spends most of his waking hours getting drunk at the local strip club. But all that changes when the two of them are called out to a domestic dispute between a junkie couple, caught in a vicious cycle of violence and drugs. It all looks very routine – until Andreas finds the couple's infant son, crying in a closet. The usually collected policeman finds himself confronted with his own powerlessness and is shaken to his core. As Andreas slowly loses his grip on justice, it suddenly becomes up to the unruly Simon to restore the balance between right and wrong.

When his mom deposits him at the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn to spend the summer with the grandfather he’s never met, young Flik may as well have landed on Mars. Fresh from his cushy life in Atlanta, he’s bored and friendless, and his strict grandfather, Enoch, a firebrand preacher, is bent on getting him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Only Chazz, the feisty girl from church, provides a diversion from the drudgery. As hot summer simmers and Sunday mornings brim with Enoch’s operatic sermons, things turn anything but dull as people’s conflicting agendas collide.

A romantic drama set in 1961 that follows a young studio extra's ambitious efforts to reunite with the French girl he loves after being separated by the construction of the Berlin Wall.

A woman named Kit moves back to her parent's house, where she receives a mysterious invitation that would fulfill her childhood dreams.

Kate and Charlie like to have a good time. Their marriage thrives on a shared fondness for music, laughter… and getting smashed. When Kate’s partying spirals into hard-core asocial behavior, compromising her job as an elementary schoolteacher, something’s got to give. But change isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Sobriety means she will have to confront the lies she’s been spinning at work, her troubling relationship with her mother, and the nature of her bond with Charlie.

A gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.

Jess, age 18, and Moss, age 12 are second cousins in the dark-fire tobacco fields of rural Western Kentucky. Without immediate families that they can relate to, and lacking friends their own age, they only have each other. Over the course of a summer they venture on a journey exploring deep secrets and hopes of a future while being confronted with fears of isolation, abandonment and an unknown tomorrow.

Maurice, a reticent young homeless man, somehow manages to get by in Brooklyn; he spends his nights in parked cars until he finds himself at Bizarre, an underground club renowned for its burlesque shows. Maurice is fascinated by the club’s playful revues celebrating self-determined sexuality and creative otherness, and the two female club owners both adore him. He soon becomes a part of their self-selected family, and begins to bond with introverted Luka. But Maurice turns his back on Luka’s growing affection. Running away from his true emotions he drifts aimlessly through the city. He tries to find his feet at a boxing club, where he meets Charlie. Unable to withstand the pressure of his repressed feelings, Maurice unleashes a mounting foment of emotions, pervaded by tenderness and menace.

Two suicidal paraplegic junkies hustle their way through the city streets trying to find a reason to live.

The aardvark has evolved to be one of a kind. You could say the same of Josh Norman.

The controversial true story of a gay activist who rejects his homosexuality and becomes a Christian pastor.