20 best movies like Turn the River (2008)

Literature professor Jim Bennett leads a secret life as a high-stakes gambler. Always a risk-taker, Bennett bets it all when he borrows from a gangster and offers his own life as collateral. Staying one step ahead, he pits his creditor against the operator of an illicit gambling ring while garnering the attention of Frank, a paternalistic loan shark. As his relationship with a student deepens, Bennett must risk everything for a second chance.

Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.

Two corrupt cops have a successful, seemingly perfect money making scheme- they sell drugs that they seize from dealers, kill the dealers, and blame the crimes on street gangs. Their scheme is going along smoothly until they kill an undercover DEA agent posing as a dealer, and then try to cover-up their crime.

Barbara Graham is a woman with dubious moral standards, often a guest in seedy bars. She has been sentenced for some petty crimes. Two men she knows murder an older woman. When they get caught they start to think that Barbara has helped the police arresting them. As a revenge they tell the police that Barbara is the murderer.

The true story of Chong Kim who, as a young teen, was abducted into the sex trade, and the complicated moral choices she had to make in order to survive as her situation grew more desperate.

A young girl is raised in a dysfunctional family constantly on the run from the FBI. Living in poverty, she comes of age guided by her drunkard, ingenious father who distracts her with magical stories to keep her mind off the family's dire state, and her selfish, nonconformist mother who has no intention of raising a family, along with her younger brother and sister, and her other older sister. Together, they fend for each other as they mature in an unorthodox journey that is their family life.

Jackie Cogan is an enforcer hired to restore order after three dumb guys rob a Mob protected card game, causing the local criminal economy to collapse.

When a 12-year-old boy goes missing, lead investigator Greg Harper struggles to balance the pressure of the investigation and troubles with his wife, Jackie. Facing a recent affair, great strain is put on the family that slowly gnaws away at Jackie's grip on reality. But after a malicious presence manifests itself in their home and puts their son, Connor, in mortal danger, the cold, hard truth about evil in the Harper household is finally uncovered.

A man is out for justice after a group of corrupt police officers are unable to catch his wife's killer.

A junkie must face his true self to kick his drug addiction.

Disturbing and mysterious things begin to happen to a bartender in New Orleans after he picks up a phone left behind at his bar.

Vinnie's a bookie, happily married, running his operation for 30 years out of his bar in Brooklyn. Times change, the boys up the chain want a bigger profit, so Vinnie's expendable He's assigned a hotheaded kid, Tony, the nephew of a local mobster. Vinnie's told to school the lad, use him for collections, and teach him some sense. What Vinnie doesn't know is that once Tony learns the ropes, Vinnie will be out. Tensions mount when Tony goes around Vinnie's paternalistic ways, takes a bet from an unemployed alcoholic, and demands that the loser's wife pay the vig in trade. Is there any way out for Vinnie - with or without his good name?

Private investigator Matthew Scudder is hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife.

After serving time in prison, former drug addict Sherry Swanson returns home to reclaim her young daughter from family members who have been raising the child. Sherry's family, especially her sister-in-law, doubt Sherry's ability to be a good mother, and Sherry finds her resolve to stay clean slowly weakening.

Fiction inspired from the story of the rise and the fall of french politician and former head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Sexually abused as a young girl, Kate "Ma" Barker grows into a violently powerful woman by the 1930s. She lovingly dominates her grown sons, and grooms them into a pack of tough crooks. The boys include the cruel Herman, who still shares a bed with Ma; Fred, an ex-con who fell in love with a fellow prisoner; and Lloyd, who gets high on whatever's handy. Together they form a deadly, bizarre family of Depression-era bandits.

A television producer with a penchant for drinking and gambling is sent to Las Vegas to convince his troubled niece to enter rehab.

Three stranded 1890s whalers (Warren Oates, Timothy Bottoms, Louis Gossett Jr.) corrupt the culture of their Eskimo saviors.

Jim Davis is an ex-Army Ranger who finds himself slipping back into his old life of petty crime after a job offer from the LAPD evaporates. His best friend is pressured by his girlfriend Sylvia to find a job, but Jim is more interested in hanging out and making cash from small heists, while trying to get a law enforcement job so he can marry his Mexican girlfriend.

A struggling, single mom with a precocious young daughter also has an unpaid mortgage. She falls back on her pool-playing skills to pay off her debts. But just as she plays her way into a big money tournament, a globe-trotting ladies' man threatens to disrupt her life with her daughter and her peace of mind. Suddenly, everything's riding on a single shot.

Don Birnam, a long-time alcoholic, has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst... but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last - one way or another.

When a cunning murderer vanishes into the rugged mountains of the Pacific Northwest, pursuing FBI agent Warren Stantin must exchange familiar city streets for unknown wilderness trails. Completely out of his element, Stantin is forced to enlist the aid of expert tracker Jonathan Knox. It's a turbulent yet vital relationship they must maintain in order to survive... and one that becomes increasingly desperate when Knox's girlfriend Sarah becomes the killer's latest hostage!

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

A young woman goes in search of her father, a professional gambler who abandoned her years before. Along the way, she finds herself at odds with her boyfriend who wants nothing but a carefree lifestyle.

Based on a play by David Rabe, Hurlyburly is about the intersecting lives of several Hollywood players and wannabes, whose dysfunctional personal lives are more interesting than anything they're peddling to the studios.

Billy is released after five years in prison. In the next moment, he kidnaps teenage student Layla and visits his parents with her, pretending she is his girlfriend and they will soon marry.

Shotgun Stories tracks a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their father. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers discover the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.

Over the course of one night, a woman drives across LA with her heroin addict brother in search of a detox center, with his two year old daughter in tow.

A confident young cop is shown the ropes by a veteran partner in the dangerous gang-controlled barrios of Los Angeles, where the gang culture is enforced by the colors the members wear.

A single mother becomes Ariel Castro's first kidnapping victim, and finds herself trapped in his home with two other women for 11 years.

A Michigan farmer and a prospector form a partnership in the California gold country. Their adventures include buying and sharing a wife, hijacking a stage, kidnapping six prostitutes, and turning their mining camp into a boom town. Along the way there is plenty of drinking, gambling, and singing. They even find time to do some creative gold mining.

Following the unexplained suicide of his wife Liza, website designer Wilson Joel turns to huffing gasoline fumes and remote control gaming while avoiding an inevitable conflict with his mother-in-law.

Alfred Eaton, an ambitious young executive, climbs to the top of New York's financial world as his marriage crumbles. At the brink of attaining his career goals, he is forced to choose between business success, married to the beautiful, but unfaithful Mary and starting over with his true love, the much younger Natalie.

A woman stuck in a stale marriage struggles to raise her children and manage her secret drug habit. But when winter comes to her small town, her balancing act begins to come crashing down.

The dysfunctional twenty-three years old Sarah takes her six year old natural son Jeremiah from the home of his beloved foster parents with the support of the social service to live with her. Along the years, the boy shares her insane and lowlife style and is introduced to booze and drugs and mentally, physically and sexually abused by Sarah, her lovers and her religiously fanatic family.

Molly Bloom, a young skier and former Olympic hopeful becomes a successful entrepreneur (and a target of an FBI investigation) when she establishes a high-stakes, international poker game.

When Keller Dover's daughter and her friend go missing, he takes matters into his own hands as the police pursue multiple leads and the pressure mounts. But just how far will this desperate father go to protect his family?

Rootless Hungarian émigré Willie, his pal Eddie, and visiting sixteen-year-old cousin Eva always manage to make the least of any situation, whether aimlessly traversing the drab interiors and environs of New York City, Cleveland, or an anonymous Florida suburb.

An alcoholic falls in love with and gets married to a young woman, whom he systematically addicts to booze so they can share his "passion" together.

Joe, who owns a gas station along with his brothers and is about to marry Katherine, travels to the small town where she lives to visit her, but is wrongly mistaken for a wanted kidnapper and arrested.

A struggling painter is possessed by satanic forces after he and his young family move into their dream home in rural Texas.

A kidnapped boy strikes up a friendship with his captor: an escaped convict on the run from the law, headed by an honorable U.S. Marshal.

Commercial airline pilot Whip Whitaker has a problem with drugs and alcohol, though so far he's managed to complete his flights safely. His luck runs out when a disastrous mechanical malfunction sends his plane hurtling toward the ground. Whip pulls off a miraculous crash-landing that results in only six lives lost. Shaken to the core, Whip vows to get sober -- but when the crash investigation exposes his addiction, he finds himself in an even worse situation.

On the afternoon of July 1, 1981, Los Angeles police responded to a distress call on Wonderland Avenue and discovered a grisly quadruple homicide. The police investigation that followed uncovered two versions of the events leading up to the brutal murders - both involving legendary porn actor John Holmes. You're about to experience both versions.

Set in a world with memory implants, Alan Hakman is a 'cutter'—someone with the power of final edit over people's recorded histories—but his latest assignment puts him in great danger.

When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt, Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons - they're not cops and they know the tough neighborhood in which they all live. As the case progresses, Kenzie and Gennaro face drug dealers, gangs and pedophiles. When they are about to solve the case, they are faced with a moral dilemma that tears them apart.

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.

After moving to a vineyard with her family, a pregnant woman experiences horrifying visions.

A young woman dealing with anorexia meets an unconventional doctor who challenges her to face her condition and embrace life.

A former stripper's talent with numbers lands her a job with a professional gambler who runs a sports book in Las Vegas.