20 best movies like Running with Scissors (2006)

In 1987, during the austere days of Thatcher’s Britain, a teenager learns to live life, understand his family, and find his own voice through the music of Bruce Springsteen.

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.

Steven Lidz, unhappy with his home life since his mother became sick, moves in with his two eccentric uncles. As Steven grows closer to his uncles, he learns how to cope with his emotions and to value his own uniqueness.

A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.

A sex therapist goes through puberty after the successful removal of a benign tumor resting against his pituitary gland. He experiences all the changes and effects of puberty over a three-week period.

During the summer of 1999, a group of teenagers, through interconnected narratives, live through their last day of high school and prepare for the future. Holly, once the new girl in school, does whatever it takes to remain popular. Dawn, who is secretly a lesbian, battles drugs. Tori is the valedictorian of her class, but, on the eve of graduation, she decides to experiment with drugs for the first time.

A vulnerable teenager with a deep perception of the world and no idea how to live in it.

Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia.

A woman searches for her adult son, who was taken away from her decades ago when she was forced to live in a convent.

A charismatic, crazy hothead transforms a family's life when she becomes the nanny of five girls.

Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend.

Intersecting stories with different moms collide on Mother's Day.

After declaring that he's going to film himself committing suicide for a school project, Archie videotapes his surprising interactions with worried family members, interested classmates, unreliable medical experts and the hottest girl in school.

An acclaimed writer, his ex-wife, and their teenaged children come to terms with the complexities of love in all its forms over the course of one tumultuous year.

A memoir of the lives of a family growing up on a post World War I British estate headed up by a strong disciplinarian, her daughter, her inventor husband, their ten year old son and his older sister. Through the household comes a number of suitors hoping to impress the young woman, including an aviator. When the elder woman's son shows up at the estate with his French fiancé, everything gets thrown into turmoil. The young boy takes a sudden interest in her sexual allure and his father is disturbed by his own non-Victorian feelings.

The Chumscrubber is a dark comedy about the lives of people who live in upper-class suburbia. It all begins when Dean Stiffle finds the body of his friend, Troy. He doesn't bother telling any of the adults because he knows they won't care. Everyone in town is too self consumed to worry about anything else than themselves. And everybody is on some form of drug just to get through their days.

Young mattress salesman Brian decides to adopt a baby from China but is distracted when he forms a relationship with quirky, wealthy Harriet whom he meets at his mattress store. As their relationship flourishes, unbeknownst to them, a hitman is trying to kill Brian.

The story of a lone father's relationship with his daughter, of the destructive power of alcohol, of a child's vulnerability, but also of love, betrayal and socialist politics in 1970s Sweden. A unique and moving story freely based on Åsa Linderborg's best-selling novel.

After his wife died a man refuses to go out and doesn't want to talk to his only son. Life has no meaning for him. One day his son finds a baby pelican and decides to leave the bird at home. Pelican helps the boy find his father again and revive him back to life ...

Based on the novel by Truman Capote, this often-witty coming-of-age drama looks at a young man growing up with an unusual family in the Deep South in the 1940s.

When their father passes away, four grown, world-weary siblings return to their childhood home and are requested -- with an admonition -- to stay there together for a week, along with their free-speaking mother and a collection of spouses, exes and might-have-beens. As the brothers and sisters re-examine their shared history and the status of each tattered relationship among those who know and love them best, they reconnect in hysterically funny and emotionally significant ways.

Dylan Schoenfield is the pink princess of the upscale Los Angeles Woodlands Academy. She has the coolest boyfriend, the most popular friends, and a brand-new it bag that everyone covets. But when she accidentally tosses her Serge Sanchez bag into a fountain, this princess comes face-to-face with her own personal frog, self-professed film geek Josh Rosen. In return for rescuing Dylan's bag, Josh convinces Dylan to let him film her for his documentary on high school popularity. Reluctantly, Dylan lets F-list Josh into her A-list world, and is shocked to realize that sometimes nerds can be pretty cool. But when Dylan's so-called prince charming of a boyfriend dumps her flat, her life and her social status comes to a crashing halt. Can Dylan win the Woodlands Academy Fall Formal Blossom Queen crown? Can Josh win the Woodlands Academy 10th Annual Film Festival? Can Dylan, with Josh's help, pull the pieces together to create her own happily-ever-after?

An American hypochondriac who is working as a baggage handler is forced to confront his fears when a British teenager with a terminal illness enlists him to help her carry out her eccentric bucket list.

Terri, a pajama-clad, disaffected high school student learns how to engage the world with the help of Mr. Fitzgerald, his assistant principal.

Comedy sequel to "East Is East". Manchester, North of England, 1975. The now much diminished, but still claustrophobic and dysfunctional, Khan family continues to struggle for survival. Sajid, the youngest Khan, the runt of the litter, is deep in pubescent crisis under heavy assault both from his father's tyrannical insistence on Pakistani tradition, and from the fierce bullies in the schoolyard. So, in a last, desperate attempt to 'sort him out', his father decides to pack him off to Mrs Khan No 1 and family in the Punjab, the wife and daughters he had abandoned 35 years earlier. It is not long before Ella Khan (Mrs Khan No2) with a small entourage from Salford, England, swiftly follows to sort out the mess, past and present.

A man forced to confront his past when he and his girlfriend end up entangled in a web of lies.

Four young people navigate the suburban wonderland of metro-Detroit looking for love and adventure on the last weekend of summer.

Over the course of his summer break, a teenager comes into his own thanks in part to the friendship he strikes up with one of the park's managers.

Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.

When Pete and Ellie decide to start a family, they stumble into the world of foster care adoption. They hope to take in one small child but when they meet three siblings, including a rebellious 15 year old girl, they find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight.

When new kid in town Ed Wallis is given an assignment to interview an older person, he turns to his mysterious neighbor, Ashby Holt for help. That new connection leads to unexpected journeys for both of them, as Ashby – who turns out to be a retired CIA assassin – deals with a terminal prognosis, and Ed deals with adjusting to life with his newly single mom and developing relationship with a brainy classmate, Eloise.

Stevie is a sweet 13-year-old about to explode. His mom is loving and attentive, but a little too forthcoming about her romantic life. His big brother is a taciturn and violent bully. So Stevie searches his working-class Los Angeles suburb for somewhere to belong. He finds it at the Motor Avenue skate shop.

In 1979 Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbour – to help with Jamie's upbringing.

Continuing the story of Aurora Greenway in her latter years. After the death of her daughter, Aurora struggled to keep her family together, but has one grandson in jail, a rebellious granddaughter, and another grandson living just above the poverty line.

Fall into puppy love with “the world’s worst dog”, who now has a frisky voice and an attitude to match. Join Marley for his mischievous puppy years, as he and his summer pal, Bodie Grogan, wreak havoc on a neighborhood dog contest. Marley outwits Dobermans, Shepherds and Collies, while stealing hearts in his own unique and lovable way. Get your paws on MARLEY & ME: THE PUPPY YEARS and fetch big laughs for the whole family!

When down-on-his-luck part-time high school wrestling coach Mike agrees to become legal guardian to an elderly man, his ward's troubled grandson turns out to be a star grappler, sparking dreams of a big win -- until the boy's mother retrieves him.

It's Hollywood, 1958. Small town beauty queen and devout Baptist virgin Marla Mabrey, under contract to the infamous Howard Hughes, arrives in Los Angeles. At the airport, she meets her driver Frank Forbes, who is engaged to be married to his seventh grade sweetheart and is a deeply religious Methodist. Their instant attraction not only puts their religious convictions to the test, but also defies Hughes' number one rule: No employee is allowed to have any relationship whatsoever with a contract actress. Hughes' behavior intersects with Marla and Frank in very separate and unexpected ways, and as they are drawn deeper into his bizarre world, their values are challenged and their lives are changed.

Local Pennsylvania polka legend Jan Lewan develops a plan to get rich that shocks his fans and lands him in jail.

Set in the 1970's, MIGHTY FINE is the story of Joe Fine (Chazz Palminteri) a charismatic, high-spirited man, who relocates his family--wife Stella (Andie MacDowell), a Holocaust survivor, daughters Nathalie (Jodelle Ferland) and Maddie (Rainey Qualley)--from Brooklyn to New Orleans, in search of a better life. Unfortunately, Joe's spending spree is wildly out of touch with reality, as his apparel business is teetering on the brink of collapse, a fact he refuses to accept. Written and directed by Debbie Goodstein, MIGHTY FINE is told from the perspective of an adult Nathalie remembering the events of her youth, and is inspired by Goodstein's memories of her own father. MIGHTY FINE ultimately shows how coming to terms with the past without judgment is the most fruitful way to move toward the future.

Matt falls for Casey, the new girl in school. She's fun-loving and eccentric, but there's a darkness to her whimsy that Matt can't begin to comprehend. When Casey attempts to commit suicide, her parents place her in a mental institution. Matt springs her out, and together the young lovers head on a road trip. They believe their love can "cure" Casey's problems. Matt starts to wonder, though, if are they inspired or misguided.

Awkward teenager Charlie Bartlett has trouble fitting in at a new high school. Charlie needs some friends fast, and decides that the best way to find them is to appoint himself the resident psychiatrist. He becomes one of the most popular guys in school by doling out advice and, occasionally, medication, to the student body.

Movie star Roxy Carmichael is abandoning the bright lights of Hollywood, Calif. and returning to her small Ohio hometown -- at least long enough to dedicate a city building. And now the whole town of Clyde is bracing for Carmichael's return, most of all her now-married old flame Denton Webb and troubled teen Dinky Bossetti. An orphan with few friends, Dinky is convinced that Carmichael is her birth mother, and that the actress will reclaim her when she returns.

Hal, a 15-year-old high-school student with a minor yet socially alienating (and painful) disability: he stutters uncontrollably. Determined to work through the problem, Hal opts for an extreme route he joins the school debating team, which sends him on a headfirst plunge into breakneck speech competitions and offers a much-needed boost toward correcting the problem.

From Spike Lee comes this vibrant semi-autobiographical portrait of a school-teacher, her stubborn jazz-musician husband and their five kids living in '70s Brooklyn.

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.

A wedding at her parents' Annapolis estate hurls high-strung Lynn into the center of touchy family dynamics.

In the 1980s a group of foreign-born Korean teenagers who meet at a Seoul summer camp to learn what it means to be Korean. The three boys, from the U.S., Mexico, and Germany, then meet three girls who rock their world.

A broken family finds their relationships to one another changed by a new arrival in the household.

When Juli meets Bryce in the second grade, she knows it's true love. After spending six years trying to convince Bryce the same, she's ready to give up - until he starts to reconsider.

Set in New York City in the sweltering summer, The Wackness tells the story of a troubled teenage drug dealer, who trades pot for therapy sessions with a drug-addled psychiatrist. Things get more complicated when he falls for one of his classmates, who just happens to be the doctors daughter. This is a coming-of-age story about sex, drugs, music and what it takes to be a man.