20 best movies like The Spitfire Grill (1996)

After serving time for murder, Josh Hutton returns to his home town where he meets Audry Hugo. No one can remember exactly what Josh did...

An All-American football player's dreams to play in the NFL are halted when he is falsely accused of rape and sent to prison.

A washed up Vegas lounge singer, Jack Satin (Hamilton von Watts), has no money, no job, and delusional aspirations of fame. When Jack is forced to leave Vegas, he packs up his old Cadillac and hits the road for Atlantic City. But his car dies in the desert and Jack is left stranded in the small town of Lost Springs. There, Jack meets jazz legend turned mechanic, Doc Bishop (Robert Guillaume), who helps him with his car trouble. Although Jack is far from the stage, he begins to find himself feeling at home in the small town. When he meets local bar owner, Lauren Wells (Melissa Joan Hart), Jack starts to see there is more to life than chasing fame and fortune. Doc encourages Jack to explore his true love of music, while Lauren provides the audience he has always wanted. But as Jack realizes this town has more to offer him than the bright lights of the big city, his Vegas past catches up with him -- what unfolds is comedy at the crossroads of life.

The story of August Pullman – a boy with facial differences – who enters fifth grade, attending a mainstream elementary school for the first time.

The tragic and controversial story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas for killing his three children after scientific evidence and expert testimony that bolstered his claims of innocence were suppressed.

Set in the landscape of a rural southern town, "George Washington" is a stunning portrait of how a group of young kids come to grips with a hard world of choices and consequences. During an innocent game in an abandoned amusement park, a member of the group dies. Narrated by one of the children, the film follows the kids as they struggle to balance their own ambitions and relationships against a tragic lie.

A woman who leaves an abusive relationship to begin a new life in a new city, where she forms an unlikely and ironic relationship with a suicidal hit man (unbeknownst to her). Enter a worn, alcoholic detective to form the third party in a very unusual triangle as this story begins to unfold.

School nurse Alice Goodwin lives with her husband and two daughters on a dairy farm in a small Wisconsin community. After an accident on her property involving a friend's child, the town turns against her and Alice finds herself fighting charges of child abuse.

When Colin Warner was wrongfully convicted of murder, his best friend Carl King devoted his life to proving his innocence.

Tells the incredible true story of Amberley Snyder, a nationally ranked rodeo barrel racer who defies the odds after barely surviving a car accident that leaves her paralyzed from the waist down.

After spending 12 years in prison for keeping his mouth shut, notorious safe-cracker Dom Hemingway is back on the streets of London looking to collect what he's owed.

Hours after his release from prison, Jesus Quintana pairs up with fellow misfits Petey and Marie for a freewheeling joyride of petty crime and romance.

A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.

A dysfunctional family gathers together for their first Christmas since their mom died.

After her fiance is falsely imprisoned, a pregnant African-American woman sets out to clear his name and prove his innocence.

Calvin Campbell is a former professional baseball player sent to an early retirement due to his panic attacks at the plate. Even though he had all the talent for the big leagues, he struggles with the curveballs life has thrown him. Today, he mindlessly sleepwalks through his days and the challenge of raising his teenager daughter. His life is in a slow downward spiral when it is suddenly awakened and invigorated by the most unlikely person – Produce, a young-man with Down syndrome who works at the local grocery store.

A teenage con artist tricks a desperate mother into hiring her as a live-in companion for her autistic daughter.

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

When a young woman learns her parents' killer has been released from jail, she is forced to revisit old wounds while discovering the destructive power of hate and the true cost of family secrets fully revealing themselves.

Set in the rustic Midwestern town of One Fall, the film tells the story of a man, James (Marcus Dean Fuller), who miraculously survived a horrific fall from a spectacular 200 foot-high cliff and was never heard from again. However, three years after vanishing James chooses to return to his hometown of One Fall -- but he returns a changed man. For an incomprehensible reason James has developed supernatural healing abilities since the fall. He must decide whether to use his abilities to help the ones he once turned his back on, or to continue running from his mysterious past.

An unforgiving sun, a parched earth, and a failed economy have left a small Texas town desolate. For ten years Promise, Texas has known nothing but one curse after another. It's barren, broken, and dying, leaving a town full of despair. When a couple finds a boy walking along a dusty road, alone in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but a mat tucked under his arm, they pick him up in hopes of helping him. What they don't realize is that he has come to help them and the residents of Promise. No one knows who he is or where he came from. Some think he's an answer to prayer. Others think he's a runaway or a false prophet. And the only thing this boy will say about himself is that he's here to help. The town's sheriff, Brody, is determined to uncover the truth. But Brody has his own problems trying to hold a dying town together. Miracle after miracle takes place and the residents of Promise embrace the boy... Written by Mike Norris

Leroy Lowe, grand dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan confronts everything he's been taught to hate when he's sentenced to three years of hard labor on a prison work farm, where Warden Merville, dead set on rehabilitating Leroy, chooses Emilio, a Hispanic field worker imprisoned for fighting for labor rights, to be his cell-mate. Leroy, confined in a small cell with the enemy, far from the KKK comrades who deserted him, finds the chatty Emilio slowly chipping away at his anger and prejudice. His weekly rehabilitation meetings with the warden, barely tolerable as the man drones on about farm labor and field crops, take on a different meaning when Madalena, a beautiful Mexican maid is hired to clean the warden's office. An unconventional love story develops that opens Leroy's eyes to the possibility of a different life. And a man who was a born and bred racist finds himself heading down a completely different path to salvation.

A vivid, dynamic Southern coming-of-age drama, takes place in the transitional space between high school and college, when life seems to be all questions and no answers, and the future is scarily wide open. Set in and around a Charleston, SC Baptist church, weaving through this ensemble piece are three main characters - Brea, an introspective pastor's daughter experiencing debilitating doubt, the hyperactive Laura, Brea's best friend and a devout believer, and Tim, the open-hearted son of a single father, confronting his homosexuality for the first time. Tensions and buried feelings abound, as colleges are chosen and adults behave badly, as Brea, Laura and Tim attempt to hang onto what they have, all the while yearning to break free.

A Texan traveling across the wild West bringing the news of the world to local townspeople, agrees to help rescue a young girl who was kidnapped.

A group of English, American, Dutch and Australian women creates a vocal orchestra while being imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp on Sumatra during World War II.

A Vietnam vet returns home from a prisoner of war camp and is greeted as a hero, but is quickly forgotten and soon discovers how tough survival is in his own country.

Two families, related by friendship and love, face up to the consequences of greed and avarice in the post-war years.

In this adaptation of the Mona Simpson novel, single mother Adele August is bad with money, and even worse when it comes to making decisions. Her straight-laced daughter, Ann, is a successful high school student with Ivy League aspirations. When Adele decides to pack up and move the two of them from the Midwest to Beverly Hills, Calif., to pursue her dreams of Hollywood success, Ann grows frustrated with her mother's irresponsible and impulsive ways.

A small-town doctor helps a deaf-mute farm girl learn to communicate.

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.

A divorced writer from the Midwest returns to her hometown to reconnect with an old flame, who's now married with a family.

As punishment for drunken, rebellious behavior, a young white soldier is thrown into a stockade populated entirely by black inmates. But instead of falling victim to racial hatred, the soldier joins forces with his fellow prisoners and rises up against the insanely tyrannical and bigoted prison warden.

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

Set during the period of growing influence of the Indian independence movement in the British Raj, the story begins with the arrival in India of a British woman, Miss Adela Quested, who is joining her fiancé, a city magistrate named Ronny Heaslop. She and Ronny's mother, Mrs. Moore, befriend an Indian doctor, Aziz H. Ahmed.

Best friends Alice and Darlene take a trip to Thailand after graduating high school. In Thailand, they meet a captivating Australian man, who calls himself Nick Parks. Darlene is particularly smitten with Nick and convinces Alice to take Nick up on his offer to treat the two of them to what amounts to a day trip to Hong Kong. In the airport, the girls are seized by the police and shocked to discover that one of their bags contains heroin.

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.

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

A romantic-drama, OLD FASHIONED centers on Clay Walsh, a former frat boy who gives up his carousing and now runs an antique shop in a small Midwestern college town. There, he has become notorious for his lofty and outdated theories on love and romance. When Amber Hewson, a free-spirited young woman with a restless soul, drifts into the area and rents the apartment above his shop, she finds herself surprisingly drawn to his noble ideas, which are new and intriguing to her. And Clay, though he tries to fight and deny it, simply cannot resist being attracted to her spontaneous and passionate embrace of life. Ultimately, Clay must step out from behind his relational theories, and Amber must overcome her own fears and deep wounds, as the two of them, together, attempt the impossible: an “old-fashioned” courtship in contemporary America.

An idealistic, modern-day cowboy struggles to keep his Wild West show afloat in the face of hard luck and waning interest.

A fiercely independent cowboy arranges to have himself locked up in jail in order to then escape with an old friend who has been sentenced to the penitentiary.

Howard Spence has seen better days. Once a big Western movie star, he now drowns his disgust for his selfish and failed life with alcohol, drugs and young women. If he were to die now, nobody would shed a tear over him, that's the sad truth. Until one day Howard learns that he might have a child somewhere out there...

Avalon is the third in Levinson's semi-autobiographical series of four "Baltimore Films": Diner (1982), Tin Men (1987), Avalon (1990), and Liberty Heights (1999). The film is set in Baltimore in the early 1950s and explores the themes of Jewish assimilation into American life.

In seeking her own redemption from the one man of whom she is most afraid, 10-year-old Cadi Forbes discovers a secret sin haunting her community of Welsh immigrants in 1850s Appalachia.

After his happy life spins out of control, a preacher from Texas changes his name, goes to Louisiana and starts preaching on the radio.

Sylvester Stallone stars as hard-luck big-rig trucker Lincoln Hawk and takes us under the glaring Las Vegas lights for all the boisterous action of the World Armwrestling Championship. Relying on wits and willpower, Hawk tries to rebuild his life by capturing the first-place prize money, and the love of the son he abandoned years earlier into the keeping of his rich, ruthless father-in-law.

After a friend overdoses, Spoon and Stretch decide to kick their drug habits and attempt to enroll in a government detox program. Their efforts are hampered by seemingly endless red tape, as they are shuffled from one office to another while being chased by drug dealers and the police.

Just days before Rhett (Chris Pine) is leaving for Nashville to pursue a lifelong dream of being a singer/songwriter, his girlfriend Samantha (Bre Blair) realizes that "his" future may not be "their" future. This news comes as a shock to Rhett, and he is faced with having to choose between following his dream and staying in his hometown in order to be with the woman he loves.

Louis Menkins is five weeks away from being released after 26 years in prison. He is faced with the decision to put his own release at risk in order to protect a young man named Beecher from growing gang controversies.

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 ?

The tale of a ten-year-old boy in a Catholic school who, following the death of his beloved grandfather, embarks on a quest to discover the meaning of life.