Tags: movies similar to Up the Down Staircase (1967) - full list
Mark | imdb: 6.9 |
Genre | drama |
Country | USA |
Life of a King is the true story of one man's mission to give inner city kids of Washington DC something he never had - a future. After being incarcerated for eighteen years, Eugene Brown established the Big Chair Chess Club to get kids off the streets and working towards lives they never believed they were capable of. This is his inspirational story.
Mark | imdb: 6.3 |
Genre | action, thriller, drama, crime |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:49 |
Burglary. Drugs. Assault. Rape. The students at Brandel High are more than new Principal Rick Latimer bargained for. Gangs fight to control the school using knives - even guns - when they have to. When Latimer and the head of security try to clean up the school and stop the narcotics trade, they run up against a teenage mafia. A violent confrontation on the campus leads to a deadly showdown with the drug dealer's gang, and one last chance for Latimer to save his career... and his life.
Mark | imdb: 7.2 |
Genre | drama |
Country | USA |
Alejandro, a tough and ambitious Latino street orphan on the verge of adolescence, lives and works in an auto-body repair shop in a sprawling junkyard on the outskirts of Queens, New York. In this chaotic world of adults, young Alejandro struggles to make a better life for himself and his 16-year-old sister, Isamar.
Mark | imdb: 6.1 |
Genre | drama, crime |
Country | France |
Duration | 01:30 |
Redheaded teen Remy is bullied by his soccer teammates and drawn into fights with his younger sister and mother in their cramped apartment. After a flare-up of domestic violence, he flees home and is tracked down by a bitter guidance counselor, Patrick, also a redhead. Patrick looks upon Remy’s sullen insolence with both sympathy and disdain and decides to toughen him up...
Mark | imdb: 5.5 |
Genre | drama, crime |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:45 |
Rick (Diesel) is frustrated by the repetitious grind of one-night stands and aimless hustling. Whilst looking for more to his life he meets Heather (Lanza), a neighbour. Rick takes the opportunity to escape his boring life style with her, but soon finds that his volatile behaviour threatens to finish their relationship before it even really begins.
Mark | imdb: 7.7 |
Genre | drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:38 |
A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.
Mark | imdb: 7.2 |
Genre | drama |
Country | USA |
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.
Mark | imdb: 6.8 |
Genre | drama |
Country | United Kingdom, West Germany, USA |
Duration | 01:42 |
A gritty Brooklyn story about union corruption, violence, taboos and social norms. The stories told are of the sailors, the prostitute, the union bosses, the hooligans and the gay community set in the early 50s.
Mark | imdb: 6.6 |
Genre | thriller, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:54 |
After surviving a stabbing by a student, teacher Trevor Garfield moves from New York to Los Angeles. There, he resumes teaching as a substitute teacher. The education system, where violent bullies control the classrooms and the administration is afraid of lawsuits, slowly drives Garfield mad.
Mark | imdb: 7.4 |
Genre | drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:48 |
When principal Joe Clark takes over decaying Eastside High School, he's faced with students wearing gang colors and graffiti-covered walls. Determined to do anything he must to turn the school around, he expels suspected drug dealers, padlocks doors and demands effort and results from students, staff and parents. Autocratic to a fault, this real-life educator put it all on the lin
Mark | imdb: 6.8 |
Genre | thriller, drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:47 |
Ad executive Bill Compton confronts and murders his daughter's drug-dealing boyfriend. Wandering into a local bar, Bill encounters a drunken, bigoted factory worker with a bloodlust, Joe Curran. When Bill confesses the murder to Joe, the two strike up an uneasy alliance, leading to a wild adventure.
Mark | imdb: 6.4 |
Genre | drama |
Country | Russia |
Duration | 01:20 |
One Monday morning Katya, Vika and Zhanna learn that there will be a school disco, their first disco, on the coming Saturday night. The girls feverishly start preparing for the event, which rapidly becomes the most important moment ever in their universe, and looks like the ideal way to escape their daily lives...
Mark | imdb: 6.5 |
Genre | thriller, drama, crime |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:41 |
A vending machine robbery by small time thief and drug addict Bobbie (Vincent Kartheiser) goes badly awry, and his friends contact street-wise thief and part-time druggie Mel (James Woods) to patch him up.Recognizing a kindred spirit, Mel befriends Bobbie and his girlfriend Rosie (Natasha Gregson Wagner), inviting them to join him and his long-suffering girlfriend Sid (Melanie Griffith) on a drug robbery which should set them up for life. The seemingly simple robbery is a great success, but the sale of the drugs afterward fails badly, and Mel and Bobbie are shot.The four take refuge with the Reverend, who charges them half of their haul from the robbery to care for them. In a desperate attempt to recover their losses, Mel involves the crew in a disastrous, ill-advised jewellery robbery, and they become caught up in a web of violence that rapidly spirals out of control.
Mark | imdb: 7.3 |
Genre | drama, biography |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:55 |
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.
Mark | imdb: 5.1 |
Genre | thriller, melodrama, drama, crime |
Country | USA, Germany |
Duration | 01:33 |
High school student Wendy has an odd relationship with her five friends: They're openly sexual with each other, swapping partners every week. But this is all thrown into turmoil when she meets Sean, a new student in school who has a crush on her. Wendy wants to be with Sean, but doesn't want to disappoint her friends, whom she has known since grade school. When she does decide to leave them, her best friend, Billie, threatens revenge.
Mark | imdb: 5.5 |
Genre | drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:33 |
A teenage girl, distraught from her vain attempt to connect with her estranged mother, resorts to cutting herself. When she develops an online relationship with an older woman, she learns to accept her sexuality and the endless solitude of sprawling suburbia.
Mark | imdb: 5.1 |
Genre | thriller, drama, crime |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:36 |
Forced to work under slave-like conditions in a "prison for profit" program, the inmates of a mostly-African-American female prison, Whitehead Correctional, try to take over the institution. At the core of the story is Frances, who finds herself in prison after being falsely convicted of murder, and who is told that her baby has been murdered, sparking her to lead her fellow inmates in the protest
Mark | imdb: 7.2 |
Genre | drama |
Country | South Korea |
After transferring to a new school, a teenage girl finds her troubled past exposed when she innocently signs up for a singing club.
Mark | imdb: 6.7 |
Genre | drama |
Country | USA |
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.
Mark | imdb: 5.5 |
Genre | fantasy, drama, detective |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:40 |
No one seemed to care about Jamie Marks until after his death. Hoping to find the love and friendship he never had in life, Jamie’s ghost visits former classmate Adam McCormick, drawing him into the bleak world between the living and the dead.
Mark | imdb: 7.4 |
Genre | drama, crime |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:41 |
Richard Dadier is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupils frequently engage in anti-social behavior. Dadier makes various attempts to engage the students' interest in education, challenging both the school staff and the pupils. He is subjected to violence as well as duplicitous schemes.
Mark | imdb: 5.8 |
Genre | drama, crime |
Country | United Kingdom |
Duration | 01:45 |
On the Wirral in the grim early years of Margaret Thatcher's premiership, the opportunities for thrill seeking young men looking to escape 9 to 5 drudgery are what they've always been: sex, drugs, rock n' roll, fashion, football and fighting.
Mark | imdb: 6.3 |
Genre | drama, crime |
Country | Italy |
Duration | 01:43 |
The story of a gang of children growing up in a community of banished criminals, in a forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union. This community rejects the world outside. The only law it obeys… is its own. Against this backdrop two best friends, Kolyma and Gagarin, gradually become fierce enemies as they find themselves on opposite sides of the strict code of honour of the ‘honest criminal’ brotherhood.
Mark | imdb: 6.9 |
Genre | drama, crime |
Country | United Kingdom, France, Italy |
Duration | 01:59 |
NEDs (Non Educated Delinquents) is the story of a young man’s journey from prize-winning schoolboy to knife-carrying teenager. Struggling against the low expectations of those around him, John McGill changes from victim to avenger, scholar to NED, altar boy to glue sniffer. When he attempts to change back again, his new reality and recent past make conformity near impossible and violent self determination near inevitable.
Mark | imdb: 6.7 |
Genre | drama, music |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:52 |
The story of a close-knit group of young kids in Nazi Germany who listen to banned swing music from the US. Soon dancing and fun leads to more difficult choices as the Nazi's begin tightening the grip on Germany. Each member of the group is forced to face some tough choices about right, wrong, and survival.
Mark | imdb: 7.3 |
Genre | drama, biography |
Country | USA, Republic of Ireland |
Duration | 02:14 |
Based on the best selling autobiography by Irish expat Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes follows the experiences of young Frankie and his family as they try against all odds to escape the poverty endemic in the slums of pre-war Limerick. The film opens with the family in Brooklyn, but following the death of one of Frankie's siblings, they return home, only to find the situation there even worse. Prejudice against Frankie's Northern Irish father makes his search for employment in the Republic difficult despite his having fought for the IRA, and when he does find money, he spends the money on drink.
Mark | imdb: 7.3 |
Genre | drama, crime |
Country | Morocco, Tunisia, France, Belgium, USA |
Ali, Kwita, Omar and Boubker are street kids. The daily dose of glue sniffing represents their only escape from reality. Since they left Dib and his gang, they have been living on the portside of Casablanca. They live in constant fear of Dib's revenge. Ali wants to become a sailor - when he was living with his mother, a prostitute, he used to listen to a fairy tale about the sailor who discovered the miracle island with two suns. Instead of finding his island in the dream, Ali and his friends are confronted with Dib's gang. Matters are getting serious.
Mark | imdb: 7.2 |
Genre | comedy, drama, music |
Country | Canada, USA |
Duration | 01:42 |
Mark Hunter is an intelligent but shy teenager who has just moved to suburban Arizona from New York. Unbeknownst to his parents and peers, at 10pm each school night Mark takes to the shortwave radio in his basement and transforms into pirate DJ "Hard Harry". Mark's show, at once thoughtful and profane, becomes an underground hit with students at his high school, inspiring the wrath of his principal and the Federal Communications Commission [FCC].
Mark | imdb: 6.3 |
Genre | melodrama, drama, music |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:31 |
David Sinclair seems to have everything going for him: he's smart, musically talented, and very successful. To top off his senior year in high school, his band is trying to get a recording session. Therefore, David's suicide leaves everyone, especially his best friend and band-mate, Chris, with a lot of questions.
Mark | imdb: 7.3 |
Genre | drama, biography |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:43 |
Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students.
Mark | imdb: 4.3 |
Genre | thriller, melodrama, drama, crime |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:30 |
A gritty coming of age thriller about a young girl sent to juvenile prison for the murder of her abusive step father. The film follows Anna Nix's journey into the dark world of an all girls jail where she discovers complex relationships, drugs, mental illness and her eventual search for redemption.
Mark | imdb: 6.1 |
Genre | drama |
Country | Belgium |
Duration | 01:40 |
Fifteen year old Deborah meets Jennifer who steers her into a career as an escort. Under the alias Bo she begins a new life that she cannot handle and starts a downward spiral that only she can end.
Mark | imdb: 6.9 |
Genre | drama |
Country | USA |
Duration | 01:46 |
When David Greene receives a football scholarship to a prestigious prep school in the 1950s, he feels pressure to hide the fact that he is Jewish from his classmates and teachers, fearing that they may be anti-Semitic. He quickly becomes the big man on campus thanks to his football skills, but when his Jewish background is discovered, his worst fears are realized and his friends turn on him with violent threats and public ridicule.
Mark | imdb: 5.8 |
Genre | drama |
Country | USA |
A gauzy summer in South Brooklyn. Lila, an awkward adolescent girl, passes her time breaking into beach homes and tagging along on dates between her pretty friend Chiara and Chiara's new boyfriend, Patrick. Lila decides this will be the summer she loses her virginity, too—her interest is piqued when she meets Sammy, an older boy reputed to sleep with just about anyone. Yet Lila's attempts at sexual conquest risk taking her beyond her limits, and into dangerous uncharted territory.