20 best movies like EastSiders (2012)

A sweeping multigenerational story set against the backdrop of the raw, roaring New York City of the late 1980s; adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, hardcore punk rock, the unbridled optimism and reckless stupidity of the young—and old—are all major elements in this heart-aching tale of the son of diehard hippies and his strange odyssey through the extremes of late 20th century youth culture.

A husband and wife try to reinvigorate their relationship but their lives are threatened by a "friend" from the husband's past who holds a horrifying secret about him, sending their world into a tailspin.

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.

Morgan is the inspiring story of Morgan Oliver, a gay young athlete determined that a bicycle accident that left him paralyzed will not change him. He takes a chance on love when he meets Dean Kagen on a basketball court. Dean helps Morgan train for the same race in which he had his accident. But when he sees that Morgan will risk everything to win, Dean walks out. Left alone to face the race and demons that caused his accident, Morgan teeters between what he needs and what he wants. Can he find the strength to pull himself back up again?

When Danielle is banished to special education because of her misbehavior, she joins Clarke on a road trip to discover themselves.

An aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online.

Patrick returns to San Francisco for the first time in almost a year to celebrate a momentous event with his old friends. In the process, he must face the unresolved relationships he left behind and make difficult choices about what’s important to him.

Henry Gamble's Birthday Party takes place over 24 hours at the birthday pool party of 17-year-old preacher's kid Henry Gamble. The party guests include adults and teenagers from his church, as well as Henry's "secular" friends, including the closeted young Logan, who has eyes for Henry.

Self-described misanthrope Elle Reid has her protective bubble burst when her 18-year-old granddaughter, Sage, shows up needing help. The two of them go on a day-long journey that causes Elle to come to terms with her past and Sage to confront her future.

Over a series of video chats, a teenage outcast reaches out to his childhood friend, but finds that behind the veneer of popularity and a seemingly perfect life, she hides a disturbing secret.

A young man returns to his family farm, after a long stay in ex-gay conversion therapy, and is torn between the expectations of his emotionally distant father, and the memories of a past, loving relationship he has tried to bury.

When college friends reunite after 15 years over the Christmas holidays, they discover just how easy it is for long-forgotten rivalries and romances to be reignited.

In Havana, Raul dreams of escaping to Miami. Accused of assault, he appeals to Elio to help him reach the forbidden world 90 miles across the ocean. One night, full of hope, they face the biggest challenge of their lives.

Punk-rocker turned suburban mom, Kelly, is nostalgic for a life she can no longer have and uncertain of a future she doesn’t yet fit in. Seventeen-year-old Cal is frustrated at his lack of control over the hand he's been dealt. When the two strike up an unlikely friendship, it's the perfect spark needed to thrust them both back to life.

Set in the beautiful high Pyrenees in south-west France, Damien lives with his mother Marianne, a doctor, while his father, a pilot, is on a tour of duty abroad with the French military. At school, Damien is bullied by Thomas, who lives in the farming community up in the mountains, nut learns to fight back. The boys find themselves living together when Marianne invites Thomas to come and stay with them while his mother is ill in hospital. Damien must learn to live with the boy who terrorised him.

A successful gay male escort describes in a series of confessions his tangled romantic relationships with his two roommates and an older, enigmatic male client.

High school athlete Cyd Loughlin lives alone with her depressive father in South Carolina, perpetually longing to get away from it all. When her aunt, famous novelist Miranda Ruth, agrees to host her for a few weeks during the summer, Cyd jumps at the opportunity. While there, she falls for a girl in the neighborhood, even as she and her aunt gently challenge each other in the realms of sex and spirit.

New Jersey car mechanic Stacie Andree and her police detective girlfriend Laurel Hester both battle to secure Hester's pension benefits after she was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Follow the 10-year reunion of the Deadwood camp to celebrate South Dakota's statehood. Former rivalries are reignited, alliances are tested and old wounds are reopened, as all are left to navigate the inevitable changes that modernity and time have wrought.

An inner-city high school teacher discovers she is pregnant at the same time as one of her most promising students and the two develop an unlikely friendship while struggling to navigate their unexpected pregnancies.

San Francisco, 1985. Two opposites attract at a modern dance company. Together, their courage and resilience are tested as they navigate a world full of risks and promise, against the backdrop of a disease no one seems to know anything about.

A young girl named Juno gets herself pregnant and tries to stand on her own, but soon learns a few lessons about being grown up.

Savannah is the true story of Ward Allen, a romantic and bombastic character who rejects his plantation heritage for the freedom of life on a river. Ward navigates the change of early 20th century America on the wrong side of the law and society, his long-time friend, a freed slave named Christmas Moultrie, at his side. Master of Shakespeare, and the shotgun that provides Savannah's markets with fowl, Ward fights for his rights as a hunter. His charisma and eloquent rhetoric win the heart of a society woman who defies her father to marry him. An elderly Moultrie tells the story of life on the river with his friend to a little boy, who passes the legendary Ward Allen down to the next generation.

A circle of twenty-something friends reunite for a weekend away to console a suicidal member of their group. Yet, despite their best efforts to enjoy themselves, a tinderbox of old jealousies, unrequited love, and widening political differences leads to an explosion of drama that, coupled with the flammable combination of drugs, wine, and risotto, cannot be contained. A Big Chill for our current social media moment, About Alex is a lighthearted look at the struggles of a generation that has it all—and wants more.

Although Brad has a satisfying career, a sweet wife and a comfortable life in suburban Sacramento, things aren't quite what he imagined during his college glory days. When he accompanies his musical prodigy son on a university tour, he can't help comparing his life with those of his four best college friends who seemingly have more wealthy and glamorous lives. But when circumstances force him to reconnect with his former friends, Brad begins to question whether he has really failed or if their lives are actually more flawed than they appear.

After a decade of living in San Francisco, Jesse is forced to move back to his Midwestern roots because he can no longer afford the city. On his final night in the city, friends and ex-lovers gather for a going away party that promises to heighten Jesse's already bittersweet feelings about leaving.

The deranged military and former CIA agent Dean Cage is in a rehab program, trying to forget the traumatic loss of his best friend Scott in Bosnia. When he dates with his girl-friend and Scott's sister, Detective Amy Knight, in a dinning restaurant, he is mistakenly taken as being the CIA agent that is investigating the robbery of the military experiment EX by a man called Sullivan. He is injected with the drug and abducted by the thieves. Amy has six hours to find the also stolen antidote and save Dean's life.

Teenage Mary Cummings, who has "been Born Again her whole life," is about to enter her senior year at American Eagle Christian High School near Baltimore with her Fundamentalist Christian friends Hilary Faye and Veronica, the three of whom have formed a girl group called the Christian Jewels. Everything seems perfect—until Mary’s "perfect Christian boyfriend" Dean tells her, as they’re swimming underwater, that he thinks he's gay.

Two Navy fighter pilots find themselves in the midst of a forbidden relationship throwing their lives and careers into disarray.

Megan is an all-American girl. A cheerleader. She has a boyfriend. But Megan doesn't like kissing her boyfriend very much. And she's pretty touchy with her cheerleader friends. Her conservative parents worry that she must be a lesbian and send her off to "sexual redirection" school, where she must, with other lesbians and gays learn how to be straight.

Newly appointed sheriff Pat Garrett is pleased when his old friend Doc Holliday arrives in Lincoln, New Mexico on the stage. Doc is trailing his stolen horse, and it is discovered in the possession of Billy the Kid. In a surprising turnaround, Billy and Doc become friends. This causes the friendship between Doc and Pat to cool. The odd relationship between Doc and Billy grows stranger when Doc hides Billy at his girl Rio's place after Billy is shot.

The story of teenager Billy Bloom who, despite attending an ultra conservative high school, makes the decision to run for homecoming queen.

Michael and Robert, two gay men living in Brooklyn, spend their last day together before Robert leaves for Africa on work assignment. Michael still has feelings for his friend Nick, who has AIDS.

An emotionally and sexually charged journey through the love, addiction, and friendship of two men. Documentary filmmaker Erik and closeted lawyer Paul meet through a casual encounter, but they find a deeper connection and become a couple. Individually and together, they are risk takers—compulsive, and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity and to be true to himself.

An improv group deals with several crises, including the loss of their lease and one member hitting the big time.

Four years into his first stable relationship, a man finds out that he is pregnant with his partner's baby.

Verona and Burt have moved to Colorado to be close to Burt's parents but, with Veronica expecting their first child, Burt's parents decide to move to Belgium, now leaving them in a place they hate and without a support structure in place. They set off on a whirlwind tour of of disparate locations where they have friends or relatives, sampling not only different cities and climates but also different families. Along the way they realize that the journey is less about discovering where they want to live and more about figuring out what type of parents they want to be.

Nolan Mack, a soft-spoken bank employee, undoubtedly loves his wife Joy, though their cavernous empty house only underscores how disconnected they’ve always been from each other. Nolan finds himself drifting from his familiar present-day life in pursuit of lost time after meeting a troubled young man named Leo on his drive home. What begins as an aimless drive down an unfamiliar street turns into a life-altering series of events.

A young boy whose parents just divorced finds an unlikely friend and mentor in the misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic, war veteran who lives next door.

Jennifer's thirtieth birthday party is supposed to be a special day. But what starts out as a day of celebration quickly spirals into a most ill-fated day Jennifer wishes she could forget, in this ensemble comedy set entirely in a kitchen.

Based on the true story of two young men, David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who won a $300 million contract from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Afghanistan.

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

Anthony Keller, star of his NYC high school basketball team, is riding his way to Cornell on a sports scholarship. But he can only maintain his popular jock facade for so long, as his troubled father Lee has a gambling addiction that threatens to derail his dreams both on and off the court.

Three years after Mike bowed out of the stripper life at the top of his game, he and the remaining Kings of Tampa hit the road to Myrtle Beach to put on one last blow-out performance.

A New York couple and their Midwestern friends find that drastic changes have occurred in their respective lives since they last met.

In 1955, young photographer Dennis Stock develops a close bond with actor James Dean while shooting pictures of the rising Hollywood star.

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.

A woman on the brink of a marriage proposal is told by a friend that she should date other men before spending the rest of her life with her boyfriend.

The unconventional life of Dr. William Marston, the Harvard psychologist and inventor who helped invent the modern lie detector test and created Wonder Woman in 1941.

A gay cocky young man travels to Oregon to work on an apple farm. Out of his element, he finds his lifestyle and notions being picked apart by everyone who crosses his path.