20 best movies like Extraordinary Measures (2010)

Jack McKee is a doctor with it all: he's successful, he's rich, and he has no problems.... until he is diagnosed with throat cancer. Now that he has seen medicine, hospitals, and doctors from a patient's perspective, he realises that there is more to being a doctor than surgery and prescriptions.

50 Cent stars as gifted college running back Deon in this touching drama. Deon's world turns upside down when an unexpected crisis jeopardizes his professional ambitions -- and causes him to look at himself and his life in a new way.

Lorenzo Odone was a normal child until the age of 7, until he started experiencing blackouts, memory lapses and other strange mental phenomena. Eventually diagnosed as suffering from ALD—an extremely rare and incurable degenerative brain disorders—his parents, frustrated at the failings of conventional medicine, start their quest for an unothadox treatment.

Inspired by a true story, a comedy centered on a 27-year-old guy who learns of his cancer diagnosis, and his subsequent struggle to beat the disease.

A coming of age drama following the life of Matt Hamill, the first deaf wrestler to win a National Collegiate Wrestling Championship.

At the lowest point of his life, Richie gets a call from his estranged sister, asking him to look after his nine-year old niece, Sophia, for a few hours.

A young boy fighting cancer writes letters to God, touching lives in his neighborhood and inspiring hope among everyone he comes in contact. An unsuspecting substitute postman, with a troubled life of his own, becomes entangled in the boy's journey and his family by reading the letters. They inspire him to seek a better life for himself and his own son he's lost through his alcohol addiction.

Desmond Doyle is devastated when his wife abandons their family on the day after Christmas. His unemployment, and the fact that there is no woman in the house to care for the children—Evelyn, Dermot and Maurice—make it clear to the authorities this is an untenable situation. The Catholic Church and the Irish courts decide to put the Doyle children into Church-run orphanages.

A young man is rocked by two announcements from his elderly father: that he has terminal cancer, and that he has a young male lover.

The Theory of Everything is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde.

A Chicago weather man, separated from his wife and children, debates whether professional and personal success are mutually exclusive.

An airline pilot and his wife are forced to face the consequences of her alcoholism when her addictions threaten her life and their daughter's safety. While the woman enters detox, her husband must face the truth of his enabling behavior.

While Jane Holman is driving with her two sons, she accidentally runs into a drifter, Jack McCloud, who breaks his leg. Being responsible, Jane invites Jack, and his dog, to stay at her home until his leg has healed. Jack struggles to adapt their lifestyle, and finds himself loved by the family.

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.

Based on a true story. Liz Murray is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted parents. Liz becomes homeless at 15 and after a tragedy comes upon her, she begins her work to finish high school.

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

A high school student falls asleep while sitting in class. When he wakes up, all time is frozen, except for him.

A busy executive learns during a meeting that his mother may be dying and rushes home to her side. He ends up being his father's caretaker and becomes closer to him than ever before. Estranged from his own son, the executive comes to realize what has been missing in his own life.

Focuses on the lives of residents in the fictional London suburb of Charnham.

Maddie is a teenage girl dealing with addiction who has a reputation as a party girl who doesn’t think she has a problem, until she’s confronted one day by her school guidance counselor and is forced to choose between expulsion and rehab. Maddie makes the difficult decision to live with other recovering addicts at a sober living facility while facing the daily pressures of her teenage life. Based on the popular young adult novel by Blake Nelson.

A coming of age story set in 1975 working-class Brooklyn, in which two teenage brothers living with their abusive father and their well-meaning but ineffective mother are caught up in a life of petty crime. Older brother Danny concocts a daring scheme to steal enough money for the two to escape, timed around the chaos of an upcoming Rolling Stones concert. The sensitive younger brother, Brian, ultimately has a choice: remain loyal to the brother with whom he shares a powerful love-hate bond, or use his hidden talent as an artist as his own ticket out of their dead-end existence.

A poor New York resident, who is of Indian origin, dreams of becoming a fast car race driver. He endeavors, and his efforts are rewarded when he selected by a little-known group called 'RACING SADDLES'. He joins them and soon becomes their ace race driver. This man, whose name is Rajveer, then meets with a rich American woman, also of Indian origin, whose name is Radhika. Both fall in love with each other. They cannot get married, because Radhika's family hates Rajveer mainly because he is very poor. But Radhika is very stubborn, so she marries him. She loses all her rights to her family's wealth. They get married and become parents of two children. They also become very rich. Then Rajveer has an accident which changes their lives forever. They get into debt and stand to lose everything. Will Radhika be forced to return back to her family?

The true story of the frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness of 7-year-old Helen Keller who, since infancy, has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. Then Annie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touch, the only tool they have in common, and leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation to happiness and light.

Molly McKay is a profoundly autistic twenty-something woman who has lived in an institution from a young age following her parents' death in a car accident. When the institution must close due budget cuts, Molly is left in the charge of her neurotypical, older brother, Buck McKay, an advertising executive and perennial bachelor. Buck allows her to undergo an experimental medical treatment, with unexpectedly drastic results.

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story is a movie based on the life story of world-renowned neurosurgeon Ben Carson from 1961 to 1987.

Genie, a Chinese-American teenager, develops feelings for a charming African-American DJ, but her grandmother forbids their romance forcing Genie to choose between family and love.

When a plane crash claims the lives of members of the Marshall University football team and some of its fans, the team's new coach and his surviving players try to keep the football program alive.

Danny, dying of Aids, returns home for his last months. Always close to his mother, they share moments of openness that tend to shut out Danny's father and his sister.

A teenager overcomes odds to run a 4-minute mile race.

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

In 1957, a son and mother flee the East and an abusive boyfriend to find a new life, and end up in Seattle, where the mother meets a polite garage mechanic. The boy continually gets into trouble by hanging out with the wrong crowd. The mom marries the mechanic, but they soon find out that he's an abusive and unreasoning alcoholic, and they struggle to maintain hope in an impossible situation as the boy grows up with plans to escape the small town by any means possible. Based on a true story by Tobias Wolff.

Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.

Housewife and mother Penny Chenery agrees to take over her ailing father's Virginia-based Meadow Stables, despite her lack of horse-racing knowledge. Against all odds, Chenery - with the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin - manages to navigate the male-dominated business, ultimately fostering the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.

Christmas Eve in New York, and the lonely divorced publisher, Rose Collins, needs a miracle to improve the health of her mother, interned in a hospital with Alzheimers. She feels sorry for another patient and meets his visitor. Meanwhile, Nina Vasquez breaks her engagement with her beloved fiancé Mike due to his suffocating jealousy, but misses him. Mike is stalked by a stranger, bartender Artie Venzuela. The poor Jules arranges to spend Christmas Eve in the hospital, where he spent the best Christmas of his life when he was a teenager. The lives of some of these characters cross with others along the night.

Biographical story of the rise from nowhere of singer Ritchie Valens whose life was cut short by a plane crash.

Thousands of activists arrive in Seattle, Washington in masses to protest the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 (World Trade Organization). Although it began as a peaceful protest with a goal of stopping the WTO talks, it escalated into a full-scale riot and eventually, a State of Emergency that pitted protesters against the Seattle Police Department and the National Guard.

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.

A biopic of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has become one of top scientists in humane livestock handling.

Ben and Katie Jordan are a married couple who go through hard times in fifteen years of marriage.

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.

The coach of a women's swim team parlays her success into an opportunity to build her school's men's golf team.

Beyond Borders is an epic tale of the turbulent romance between two star-crossed lovers set against the backdrop of the world's most dangerous hot spots. Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie stars as Sarah Jordan, an American living in London in 1984. She is married to Henry Bauford son of a wealthy British industrialist, when she encounters Nick Callahan a renegade doctor, whose impassioned plea for help to support his relief efforts in war-torn Africa moves her deeply. As a result, Sarah embarks upon a journey of discovery that leads to danger, heartbreak and romance in the far corners of the world.

A childless couple bury a box in their backyard, containing all of their wishes for an infant. Soon, a child is born, though Timothy Green is not all that he appears.

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.

Based on the incredible true story, The Express follows the inspirational life of college football hero Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy.

Jean Valjean, a Frenchman imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a police officer named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.

Unable to cope with a recent personal tragedy, LA's top celebrity shrink turns into a pothead with no concern for his appearance and a creeping sense of his inability to help his patients.

Fishing for direction in life, Elizabeth gets the opportunity of showing her dog in a fancy New York dog show. The judge, Donovan Darcy, comes across as aristocratic and rude, and a chain of misunderstandings unfold during the competition, complicating their attraction to one another.

Marty, a butcher who lives in the Bronx with his mother is unmarried at 34. Good-natured but socially awkward he faces constant badgering from family and friends to get married but has reluctantly resigned himself to bachelorhood. Marty meets Clara, an unattractive school teacher, realising their emotional connection, he promises to call but family and friends try to convince him not to.

A thriller in which a battle of philosophies between a fundamentalist Christian and an atheist escalates into a lethal battle of wills.