Best movies like John A.: Birth of a Country
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A riveting political thriller starring Shawn Doyle (John A. Macdonald), Peter Outerbridge (George Brown) and David LaHaye (George-Etienne Cartier) and set during the struggles that take Canada from colony to country.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 136
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like John A.: Birth of a Country (2011):
Similar in 83%
Fools Die Fast (1995)
Plot Summary:
A story set in the 1950s about two people who find a way out of their respective problems through the love they develop for one another.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 26
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
Is Harry on the Boat? (2001)
Plot Summary:
On Ibiza, tour rep Brad is determined to win the informal competition among the male reps to sleep with as many female clients as possible, while his friend Mikey is looking for true love.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 630
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
Termini Station (1989)
Plot Summary:
Termini Station is a Canadian made drama, released in 1989 and directed by Allan King. The film stars Colleen Dewhurst and Megan Follows as Molly and Micheline Dushane, a mother and daughter living in a small Northern Ontario town. Molly is an alcoholic, which creates tension between her and Micheline and inspires Micheline's fantasies of escaping her stifling small-town life. The cast also includes Gordon Clapp and Debra McGrath as Molly's son and daughter-in-law. Termini Station was the only film besides the Anne of Green Gables movies in which Follows and Dewhurst worked together. The film was nominated for six awards at the 11th Genie Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress nods for both Dewhurst and Follows. Filmed on location in Kirkland Lake Ontario.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 99
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 82%
The Right Hand Man (1987)
Plot Summary:
Drama directed by Di Drew.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 98
Genere: Drama
Country: Australia
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 89%
Something About Love (1988)
Plot Summary:
Wally Olynyk (Stefan Wodoslawsky) returns home to the Cape Breton region of Nova Scotia in this somber drama. After years of living in Los Angeles, he hopes to attend his high-school reunion and visit with his father Stan (Jan Rubes). Stan is the local mortician who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, but the 63-year-old father is too stubborn to admit anything is wrong. The contrast between Los Angeles and the grim Canadian steel town clashes like the father and son.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 72
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: surprise ending, independent film
Similar in 81%
Black Mud (2017)
Plot Summary:
A coming of age story about two orphaned brothers who travel cross country to the Alberta oil sands in search of a new life. Along the way, they learn to depend on one another, but tensions grow as money gets tight. On the brink of giving up, Alex, the older brother, meets Flora, a young drifter, who insists on coming with them in exchange for a place to stay in Alberta.
IMDB Rating: 9.0
IMDB Votes: 7
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
A (1998)
Plot Summary:
"A" is a 1998 Indian Kannada language blockbuster psychological love story film written and directed by Upendra. It starred Upendra and Chandni as the lead couple. It was about an unusual love story between a film director and an actress which was narrated through multiple flashbacks within flashbacks and reverse screenplay. The film dealt with various dark truths of film world like the casting couch. Due to the reverse screenplay, the audience were forced to watch it multiple times to understand the story. The movie generated a lot of attention, which began with its rather unusual name. Then there was the subject matter, which dealt with the love affair between a director and his heroine and the dreaded casting couch. The movie discovered human emotions through a different dimension and showed how emotions change with circumstances.
IMDB Rating: 8.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: India
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: kannada, psychological thriller, cult classic, cult film
Similar in 78%
Grown Up Movie Star (2009)
Plot Summary:
The story of Ruby, 13, determined to grow up fast after her mother runs away to become a movie star, leaving Ruby with her hopelessly rural father.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 429
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: sincere, realistic, serious, emotional, teen, gloomy, independent film, crying, queer cinema
Similar in 76%
The Terrorist Next Door (2008)
Plot Summary:
A dramatization inspired by the real-life events surrounding the recruitment and capture of Ahmed Ressam - aka the "Millennium Bomber". Ressam was convicted of smuggling a bomb into the United States as part of an Al Qaeda plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve, 1999.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 233
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Barschel: A Murder in Geneva (1993)
Plot Summary:
A conspiracy-theorizing filmmaker meets with a prospective producer in order to pitch a movie about the death of real-life German politician Uwe Barschel, in which the official ruling of suicide raised more questions than answers.
IMDB Rating: 1.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 74 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
Loyalties (1986)
Plot Summary:
Lily and her three youngest children join her husband David Sutton, a doctor in an isolated northern Alberta town. Their eleven-year-old son arrives later from boarding school. David conceals a dark secret which caused the family to leave England without telling anybody. They befriend a neighbor Rosanne, who throws out her boyfriend after he beats her up in a bar. Lily, who is very English and out of place in the town, hires the half-Native Rosanne as a housekeeper, and eventually the two women become good friends, until the secret emerges again.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 128
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, UK
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 79%
The Lotus Eaters (1993)
Plot Summary:
Set off the West Coast of Canada in 1965, a hip new teacher with a miniskirt and lots of ideas turns a small town upside down. The soft autumn light of Galiano Island is beautifully rendered in writer/producer Peggy Thompson's The Lotus Eaters, and that's not the only elusive element that this film has captured. In revisiting its particular time and place - the Gulf Islands of the early '60s -Thompson obviously draws on her own family experiences there. For those who share Thompson's love of Gulf Islands magic, the elements she has assembled will feel as familiar as their own childhood blanket. But there are problems at the core of this story about a family's loss of innocence.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 204
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 76%
Conquest (1998)
Plot Summary:
British-Canadian light romantic comedy film set in a dying Saskatchewan town. Bank branch manager, Pincer Bedier, dreams of reviving the town when one day a beautiful young woman's car breaks down and she becomes stranded until it can be repaired. She is convinced by the banker to take on the duties at the local hardware store to pay for the parts for her car and soon a romance between the two develops.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 176
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Canada
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 75%
Recommendation for Mercy (1975)
Plot Summary:
Inspired by true events, a 14 year-old boy is accused of raping and murdering a little girl.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 86
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 78%
Looking for Angelina (2005)
Plot Summary:
Looking for Angelina is based on one of the most important murder trials in Canada. Angelina Napolitano murdered her husband with an axe and was sentenced to be executed.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 74
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
An Old Fashioned Christmas (2010)
Plot Summary:
The story of An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving continues. Isabella and Tilly pay a visit to Ireland, hoping Isabella's long-ago suitor, the Earl of Shannon, can assist Tilly in getting her writing published.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 468
Genere: Drama
Country: Ireland, USA, Canada
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, sincere, suspenseful, disturbing, period drama
Similar in 90%
Striker's Mountain (1985)
Plot Summary:
A construction conglomerate, headed by a ruthless millionaire, wants to buy a ski resort that has been a family business for years, but the family does not want to sell. The businessman resolves to get the property, whether they want to sell it or not.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 95
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, UK, West Germany
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Sitting in Limbo (1986)
Plot Summary:
The National Film Board of Canada was one of the guiding forces behind Sitting in Limbo. Fabian Gibbs plays a black Montreal college student forced to leave school when his girlfriend Pat Dillon becomes pregnant. Gibbs resents this interruption in his plans, but he becomes a very good provider. The responsibilities of parenthood, alas, irreparably damage the boy-girl relationship. Filmed in a quasidocumentary manner, Sitting in Limbo seems predestined to win film festival awards--as indeed it has.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 32
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 77%
Turning Paige (2001)
Plot Summary:
A young would-be writer is forced to confront her past upon the return of her angry, wayward brother.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 261
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Water Child (1995)
Plot Summary:
A 12-year-old girl finds herself stranded on a lonely Caribbean island with a 20-year old retarded man in this sensitively rendered Canadian drama from Quebec. Emile and Cedrine are first seen during their rescue in which both are nearly in a coma. Their story of how they got there and survived is told via flashback. The two were the only survivors of a plane crash and at first Cedrine is terrified of Emile, thinking he might lose control and rape her. Fortunately, Emile is gentle and the two become friends, playmates, and eventually lovers in scenes that exploit neither character.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 199
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977)
Plot Summary:
Speculative Sunn Classics chestnut detailing a wide-ranging government conspiracy to murder the 16th American President and the subsequent cover up and escape of his killers.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 166
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 77%
Blood Pressure (2012)
Plot Summary:
A middle-aged woman follows letters from an unseen admirer into potential danger.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 306
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, suspense, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 88%
Ordinary Magic (1993)
Plot Summary:
When his father dies, Jeffrey is sent to live with his aunt Charlotte in Canada. Once there he leads his aunt and his friends in staging, a non-violent hunger strike to try to save his aunt's house from being demolished to make room for a ski resort.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 405
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 81%
The Plouffe Family (1981)
Plot Summary:
The lives of the average Quebecois Plouffe family during the final years of the depression and through World War II.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 476
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 227 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
On the Farm (2016)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true story, a powerful study of the dysfunction and disorder in the police and criminal justice systems that allowed a wily psychopath to murder nearly 50 marginalised women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 60
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, thought provoking, captivating, suspense, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 78%
The Bay of Love and Sorrows (2002)
Plot Summary:
The Bay of Love and Sorrows is a haunting modern tragedy set on the rural shores of New Brunswick's Bay of Miramichi. In late summer 1973, Michael Skid, the son of a well-to-do judge, returns home and rents a dilapidated farm. He begins to spread the gospel of communal ideals, which he has absorbed during his travels in India. His new worldliness and ideas go over well with impoverished siblings Madonna and Silver Brassaurd and the hopelessly naïve Carrie. They go over less well with Tom Donnerel, a young farmer and Carrie's fiancé. Wounded by Tom's derision, Michael befriends ex-convict Everette Hatch, who, recognizing opportunity, exploits Michael's ideas to his advantage. Believing himself capable of understanding people from the other side of the track, Michael fails to recognize that the ex-con is manipulating him and so sets off a catastrophic chain of events in the community.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 212
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, captivating, suspenseful
Similar in 77%
Concrete Canyons (2010)
Plot Summary:
A sheriff searches for his son, accused of murder and on the run.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 299
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: exciting, tense, serious, captivating, suspense, realistic
Similar in 81%
Captive Heart: The James Mink Story (1996)
Plot Summary:
James Mink is a black man in Canada who has built a very successful livery business, and enjoys a white wife and a beautiful daughter, Mary. An excellent match is arranged with an American businessman, but when he takes his new wife Mary across the border his true character emerges - he sells her into slavery. James and Elizabeth must go to Virginia to rescue their daughter.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 265
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: uplifting, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, christian film
Similar in 79%
Verdict in Blood (2002)
Plot Summary:
When a female judge is found murdered in her home, television reporter and amateur detective Joanne Kilbourn finds herself neck-deep in a homicide investigation. Her only two clues are twin wills left by the victim -- one donating everything to the woman's daughters, another donating everything to a boarding house for former criminals.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 104
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, captivating
Similar in 90%
The Green Chain (2007)
Plot Summary:
The battle between loggers and environmentalists is defining, dividing and destroying communities in Canada and around the world. The Green Chain is a powerful, funny and thought-provoking film about the people who love trees.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 137
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, captivating, suspenseful, independent film, exciting, fake documentary, cult film