Best movies like The Bus Is Coming
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A young black soldier returns home to Los Angeles from combat in Vietnam to find out that his brother had been killed by a gang of racist cops. Angered, he joins a black nationalist group to take his revenge.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 80
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: black cinema
Best tv shows and movies like The Bus Is Coming (1971):
Similar in 86%
The Bad Bunch (1973)
Plot Summary:
A white ex-GI goes to a black ghetto to deliver a letter from his buddy, a black soldier who died in Vietnam. When he arrives there he encounters hostility and trouble from all sides.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 234
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 90%
Badge of the Assassin (1985)
Plot Summary:
Three black revolutionaries gun down two New York City police officers. The subsequent investigation puts a white assistant DA and a black police detective on the trail of the killers that leads from New York to San Francisco and down to New Orleans.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 356
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: crime drama
Similar in 79%
Harvest: 3,000 Years (1975)
Plot Summary:
In this meditative film, the everyday lives of poor Ethiopian peasants are shown using documentary as well as storytelling techniques, and the drama arises out of the timeless but still contemporary issues of their lives.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 216
Genere: Drama
Country: Ethiopia
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 77%
Ashes and Embers (1982)
Plot Summary:
Ashes and Embers is an original screenplay by Haile Gerima, about a Vietnam veteran, who, several years after the war, is struggling to come to terms with his role in the war, and his role as a Black person in America. He survives by working odd jobs in Washington, D.C. and living with his girlfriend and her son. When criticism of his alienated behavior come from her and a father figure too often, he runs to the streets or to his grandmother's rural house in Virginia. Her criticism and his memories of the past both send him fleeing again to Los Angeles, where he is surrounded by superficial people who have forgotten how to be compassionate human beings. It is here that the advice of his friends and grandmother combine to transform him from an embittered ex-soldier to a strong and confident man.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 173
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: non-linear, independent film, black cinema
Similar in 88%
The Black Six (1973)
Plot Summary:
A black high school student is caught dating a white girl by the girl's brother. He and his biker gang beat the boy to death. The boy's brother, who is a member of a black biker gang, hears about it and comes to town to avenge his brother's death.
IMDB Rating: 4.1
IMDB Votes: 623
Genere: Action, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: absurd, psychotronic, grindhouse, independent film
Similar in 75%
Uptight (1968)
Plot Summary:
Black militants building up an arsenal of weapons in preparation for a race war are betrayed by one of their own.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 928
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: political, independent film, rough, bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, black cinema
Similar in 88%
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1987)
Plot Summary:
The life of an aging black slave, Tom, and the people he interacts with.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 588
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
Brotherhood of Death (1976)
Plot Summary:
A group of Black soldiers are home from the war and head to a small Southern town. The town is dominated by a group of Klansmen who keep the Black majority from voting or being treated like human beings. However, these newcomers convince the local population to register to vote so they can take back power and achieve justice. When hundreds show up to register, the Klan responds with violence. Eventually, though, the Black community has little choice other than fight back and the film ends with a small war between these combat vets and the Klan.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 533
Genere: Action, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: exciting, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 79%
Burning Sands (2017)
Plot Summary:
Deep into Hell Week, a favored pledgee is torn between honoring his code of silence or standing up against the intensifying violence of underground hazing.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, captivating, suspense, disturbing, hood, black cinema
Similar in 82%
Brotherly Love (2015)
Plot Summary:
West Philadelphia basketball star Sergio Taylor deals with the pressures of fame while his brother and sister have their own issues with ambition.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: serious, touching, realistic, captivating, hood, independent film, entertaining, black cinema
Similar in 76%
Dutchman (1966)
Plot Summary:
A young conservative black man, minding his own business, rides a nearly empty subway car. The only other passenger, a blonde vixen looking for trouble, sizes him up. Sexual tension, racial bigotry and righteous fury collide in a razor's edge confrontation between this unlikely pair.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 477
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 55 min
Plot tags: neo noir, allegory, independent film, tension, suspense, black cinema, cult film
Similar in 78%
White Lie (1991)
Plot Summary:
A black New York man returns to his southern hometown to investigate his father's lynching at the hands of a white mob.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 138
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: reflective, tension, suspense
Similar in 85%
American Son (2019)
Plot Summary:
Time passes and tension mounts in a Florida police station as an estranged interracial couple awaits news of their missing teenage son.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, heartbreaking, suspense, suspenseful, rough, sad, disturbing
Similar in 81%
The Black Klansman (1966)
Plot Summary:
After a black man's daughter is killed by the KKK, he seeks revenge by becoming a Klansman.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 535
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: psychotronic, political, grindhouse, black and white, entertaining, independent film, black cinema
Similar in 75%
Resting Place (1986)
Plot Summary:
A television movie set in Rockville, Georgia, in 1972. Major Kendall Laird, a Survival Assistance Officer, arrives in this sleepy little town with the body of Lieutenant Dwyte Johnson, a Vietnam war hero. It's Laird's job to help Johnson's parents bury their son. But since the dead hero was black, his parents are turned away by the white racists who maintain the town's "all-white" cemetery.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 628
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, realistic, talky
Similar in 85%
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)
Plot Summary:
Jimmie Fails dreams of reclaiming the Victorian home his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco. Joined on his quest by his best friend Mont, Jimmie searches for belonging in a rapidly changing city that seems to have left them behind.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 21000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, unusual plot structure, captivating, disturbing, thought provoking, political, poignant, cult classic, independent film
Similar in 79%
Cornbread, Earl and Me (1975)
Plot Summary:
The unintentional shooting by police of a star basketball player has profound personal, political and community repercussions in this acclaimed adaptation of the novel Hog Butcher by Ronald Fair. This was one of the more thoughtful urban dramas produced at the height of the "blaxploitation" craze. Also released under the title Hit the Open Man, it features the screen debut of Laurence Fishburne, who was barely a teenager at the time.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 975
Genere: Drama, Sport
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: independent film, sincere, uplifting, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, black cinema
Similar in 83%
Always Outnumbered (1998)
Plot Summary:
An ex-con moves to L.A. to find work and creates a disturbance by fighting for a position. More importantly he touches the lives of many of his neighbors including an older man dying of cancer, a young married couple whose husband is too proud to accept a lesser position which causes strife with his wife, and a young boy on the verge of getting in trouble with street gangs.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: hood, crime drama, rough, serious, realistic
Similar in 77%
The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1967)
Plot Summary:
A black American soldier is demoted for fraternizing with a white girl in France.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 592
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: independent film, black cinema
Similar in 82%
The Ditchdigger's Daughters (1997)
Plot Summary:
Based on the memoirs of Yvonne S. Thornton, this heartwarming, inspirational family drama centers on a poor black laborer who wanted his six daughters to grow up to be doctors.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 254
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
Native Son (2019)
Plot Summary:
A young African-American man named Bigger Thomas takes a job working for a highly influential Chicago family, a decision that will change the course of his life forever.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: bleak, suspenseful, psychological, surprise ending, disturbing
Similar in 76%
The River Niger (1976)
Plot Summary:
An intimate look at life in the ghetto: Johnny Williams is a house painter who moonlights as a poet, struggling to financially and emotionally support his cancer-ridden wife Mattie. But times are tough and the poverty-troubled streets are even tougher, and it takes every ounce of Johnny's love and courage for the couple to make it through their strife, finding redemption in the River Niger.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 291
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: crime drama, independent film, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 83%
The Learning Tree (1969)
Plot Summary:
The story, set in Kansas during the 1920's, covers less than a year in the life of a black teenager, and documents the veritable deluge of events which force him into sudden manhood. The family relationships and enmities, the fears, frustrations and ambitions of the black teenager in small-town America are explored with a strong statement about human values.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: existential, aesthetic, independent film, sentimental, sincere, thought provoking, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 88%
Killer of Sheep (1978)
Plot Summary:
Stan works in drudgery at a slaughterhouse. His personal life is drab. Dissatisfaction and ennui keep him unresponsive to the needs of his adoring wife, and he must struggle against influences which would dishonor and endanger him and his family.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: independent film, sincere, realistic, serious, emotional, black and white, political, social, contemplative, art house
Similar in 86%
Blood Done Sign My Name (2010)
Plot Summary:
A drama based on the true story in which a black Vietnam-era veteran is allegedly murdered by a local white businessman who is later exonerated. The plot focuses on the role of a local high school teacher and the civil unrest that followed the acquittal.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 635
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: disturbing, serious, captivating, realistic, thought provoking, tense, bleak, contemplative, entertaining
Similar in 87%
Drop Squad (1994)
Plot Summary:
Controversial film about an underground organization that kidnaps and 'deprograms' African Americans who sell out or deny their cultural heritage. Spike Lee is the Executive Producer.
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 651
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: independent film, psychological, serious, realistic, biting, suspense, black cinema
Similar in 89%
Jasper, Texas (2003)
Plot Summary:
In 1998, three white men in the small town of Jasper, Texas, chained a black man to the back of their pickup truck and dragged him to his death. This film relates that story and how it affected all of the residents of the town, both black and white.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 750
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, realistic, disturbing, freeze frame
Similar in 78%
Imperial Dreams (2014)
Plot Summary:
A 21-year-old reformed gangster's devotion to his family and his future is put to the test when he is released from prison and returns to his old stomping grounds in Watts, Los Angeles.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: uplifting, touching, rough, serious, hood, inspirational, feel good, social, crime drama, realistic
Similar in 86%
Halls of Anger (1970)
Plot Summary:
An all-black inner city school has to become an integrated school. Few dozen white kids are transfered there, but the black students are aggressively opposed to this. The school then approaches a tough black teacher for help.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 425
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: black and white, independent film, sincere, thought provoking, bleak, serious, realistic, black cinema
Similar in 83%
Black Like Me (1964)
Plot Summary:
Black Like Me is the true account of John Griffin's experiences when he passed as a black man.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 753
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: deep, independent film