Best movies like The Optimists of Nine Elms
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A retired entertainer makes his living as a street musician on the streets of London. Two young children befriend the old musician, brightening his otherwise colorless life.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 552
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: independent film, touching, offbeat, humorous, realistic, semi serious, entertaining, freeze frame
Best tv shows and movies like The Optimists of Nine Elms (1973):
Similar in 82%
Hoffman (1970)
Plot Summary:
A businessman blackmails his attractive young secretary into spending a weekend with him. Though he's a creep throughout, he gradually emerges as a sympathetic character.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: sex comedy, touching, realistic, semi serious, independent film
Similar in 81%
Those Glory Glory Days (1983)
Plot Summary:
Girls growing up in 1960-61 London develop a passion for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, the first British team in the 20th century to win the English league and FA Cup "double". Twenty years later, one of the girls tracks down players of the '60-'61 Spurs for a documentary.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 328
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, feel good, humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 81%
Accident (1967)
Plot Summary:
Stephen is a professor at Oxford University who is caught in a rut and feels trapped by his life in both academia and marriage. One of his students, William, is engaged to the beautiful Anna, and Stephen becomes enamored of the younger woman. These three people become linked together by a horrible car crash, with flashbacks providing details into the lives of each person and their connection to the others in this brooding English drama.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: slasher, deep, psychological, tense, thought provoking, clever, serious, realistic, contemplative, independent film
Similar in 83%
Electric Shadows (2004)
Plot Summary:
For no apparent reason, a mute young woman assaults a youth who delivers water on his bicycle, injuring him and ruining his bike. Surprisingly, she asks him to feed her fish while she is in custody. Her tiny apartment, he discovers, is a shrine to his favorite escape, the movies.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: China
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, art film, masterpiece
Similar in 89%
Ruby Blue (2007)
Plot Summary:
An elderly man's innocent friendship with an eight year old girl is tarnished by the assumptions of a community when the little girl goes missing.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 236
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Belgium
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic, touching, crying
Similar in 87%
The Go-Between (2015)
Plot Summary:
An elderly man pieces together his childhood memories after finding his diary from 1900, which he wrote when he was 13 years old.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, touching, sentimental, psychological, retro, costume drama, historical drama, serious, crying
Similar in 79%
Lamb (1985)
Plot Summary:
Michael Lamb is a Father questioning his calling, in a Reform School in Ireland. When young epileptic runaway Eoin is sent to the school, the two recognise kindred spirits and escape to London together. With the police on their tail and the money running out however, Lamb is forced to make some terrible decisions.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 655
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: independent film, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative, eighties
Similar in 87%
Marvin & Tige (1983)
Plot Summary:
Marvin, a heavy-drinking widower meets Tige, an 11-year-old orphan. With nowhere else to go, Tige moves in with Marvin and they develop a close friendship. Marvin wants to adopt Tige but knows that he is too poor to give him a good home. Then he discovers who Tige's father is a rich suburbanite who doesn't even know Tige exists. Should Marvin, and can he, give up the boy he loves, and who loves him, in favor of a stranger with the right genes and bank balance?.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 238
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: independent film, psychological, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 88%
Wonderland (1999)
Plot Summary:
There's little wonder in the working-class lives of Bill, Eileen, and their three grown daughters. They're lonely Londoners. Nadia, a cafe waitress, places personal ads, looking for love; Debbie, a single mom, entertains men at the hair salon after hours; her son spends part of the weekend with her ex, a man with a hair-trigger temper. Molly is expecting her first baby and its father acts as if the responsibility is too much for him.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: realistic, sincere, touching, talky, erotic, emotional, cult classic, psychological, clever, serious
Similar in 86%
David Copperfield (1970)
Plot Summary:
A made for TV movie of the Charles Dickens' classic novel, turns Dickens' picaresque tale into an extended flashback, with David Copperfield Robin Phillips as a young man, brooding on a deserted beach, recalling his youth. The characters are all trotted out in choppy flashbacks as David remembers his life as a young orphan, brought to London and passed around from relatives, to guardians, to boarding school.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 585
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, gloomy, period drama
Similar in 80%
Small Faces (1995)
Plot Summary:
Three teenage brothers, gang-member Bobby, troubled mama's boy Alan and self-assured prankster Lex, reside in a downtrodden section of Glasgow, Scotland, circa 1968. But while Bobby and Alan are beginning to experience the power of raging hormones, the story focuses on Lex, who begins a downward spiral after he accidentally shoots the leader of Bobby's gang. Lex's cockiness and immaturity unfortunately prevent him from understanding the effect his subsequent crimes will have on both himself, and on those around him.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: bleak, realistic, independent film, tense, rough, serious, road movie, thought provoking, clever, brutal
Similar in 86%
Jewel (2001)
Plot Summary:
In the 1940s a 40-year-old woman with five healthy children gives birth to a girl with Down's syndrome.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 387
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, UK, USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 83%
Kamchatka (2002)
Plot Summary:
The movie show us how life was in Argentina for dissident people, in the seventies, under the military government.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina, Spain, Italy
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, serious, realistic, political, touching
Similar in 83%
Bad Hair (2013)
Plot Summary:
A nine-year-old boy’s preening obsession with straightening his hair elicits a tidal wave of homophobic panic in his hard-working mother, in this tender but clear-eyed coming-of-age tale.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Germany
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, political, hispanic
Similar in 77%
The Italian (2005)
Plot Summary:
Set in 2002, an abandoned 5-year-old boy living in a rundown orphanage in a small Russian village is adopted by an Italian family.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, realistic, breathtaking, inspirational, talky, emotional, disturbing, intense, sincere
Similar in 87%
All or Nothing (2002)
Plot Summary:
Penny's love for her partner, taxi-driver Phil, has run dry. He is a gentle, philosophical guy, and she works on the checkout at a supermarket.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, France
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: depressing, emotional, bleak, serious, realistic, meditative, sentimental, sincere, talky, offbeat
Similar in 75%
The Simple-Minded Murderer (1982)
Plot Summary:
The feeble-minded Sven's mother dies and he gets work as a farm-hand at the rich, affluent Höglund's farm. He has to work without pay and sleeps together with the cows. He meets the disabled Anna who is the first one to treat him as an adult. One day he has had enough of Höglund's maltreatment and moves in with Anna's family. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: non-linear, period piece, touching, offbeat, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, disturbing, gloomy
Similar in 76%
Term of Trial (1962)
Plot Summary:
Weir, an alcoholic schoolteacher, whose criminal record for refusing to fight during the Second World War has prevented him from progressing further in his teaching career, is looked upon with disdain by his headmaster, his pupils and even his wife. The one person who appreciates his shyness and warmth is one of his pupils, Shirley Taylor. After Weir offers to give her free private tuition, the pupil slowly falls in love with her teacher leading to accusations of molestation.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 841
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: crying, detective
Similar in 77%
System Crasher (2019)
Plot Summary:
The wild and energetic journey of 9-year-old girl Benni through all possible stations of German Child Proctective Services.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, disturbing, sincere, inspirational, emotional, social, sad, intense, crying
Similar in 87%
Pure (2002)
Plot Summary:
A young boy trying to deal with his mother's heroin addiction befriends a waitress who helps him cope with the tough situation.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy, crying, independent film, iconic
Similar in 85%
Stella (2008)
Plot Summary:
1977. Stella entre en sixième, dans un grand lycée parisien. Stella entre dans le monde... Un nouveau monde, à l'opposé de celui qu'elle connaît. Presque un miracle. Elle, elle vit dans un café, un café d'ouvrier, à la frontière de Paris. Cette rentrée va changer sa vie.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: sentimental, semi serious, touching, humorous, realistic, teen
Similar in 83%
Booky's Crush (2009)
Plot Summary:
The Thomsons - parents Thomas and Francie, and children Willa, Arthur, Beatrice (nicknamed Booky) and Jakey - are a loving working class family living in the Depression era in Toronto. Arthur is showing aptitude in drawing, and although his parents want to support his skill, Thomas in particular wants him to take up a vocation that is a little more stable. Willa, the part time librarian, is attracted to Russell, the medical student she meets at the library. And 11-year old Booky is happy that she has been asked to tutor the new older sixth grade student, Georgie Dunlop, in spelling, since she has a crush on him, her first ever. She just can't wait for him to ask her to the school dance. But she begins to have mixed feelings about Georgie based on a gift he gives to her. Digging a little deeper, Booky begins to understand both the good and bad of Georgie.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 144
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, feel good, humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 76%
Cider with Rosie (2015)
Plot Summary:
A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story set in the Cotswolds during and immediately after the First World War.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 825
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, captivating, psychological, sentimental, touching, semi autobiographical
Similar in 79%
Ratcatcher (1999)
Plot Summary:
James Gillespie is 12 years old. The world he knew is changing. Haunted by a secret, he has become a stranger in his own family. He is drawn to the canal where he creates a world of his own. He finds an awkward tenderness with Margaret Anne, a vulnerable 14 year old expressing a need for love in all the wrong ways, and befriends Kenny, who possesses an unusual innocence in spite of the harsh surroundings.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 12000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: disturbing, bleak, crying, depressing, art house, atmospheric, stylized, controversial, independent film, inspirational
Similar in 88%
Is Anybody There? (2008)
Plot Summary:
A young boy who lives in an old folks' home strikes up a friendship with a retired magician.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: touching, emotional, sentimental, depressing, sincere, realistic, clever, offbeat, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 75%
Liam (2000)
Plot Summary:
A morality tale of xenophobia, religious prejudice, mob violence, poverty, and their effect on two children in Liverpool during the Depression. When a shipyard closes, Liam and Teresa's dad loses his job. Liam, who's about 8, making his first Holy Communion, gets a regular dose of fire and brimstone at church. Teresa, about 13, has a job as a maid to the Jewish family that owns the closed shipyard. The lady of that house is having an affair, and Teresa becomes an accomplice. Liam stutters terribly, especially when troubled. Dad comes under the sway of the Fascists, who blame cheap Irish labor and Jewish owners. A Molotov cocktail brings things to a head.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Germany, France, Italy
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: touching, bleak, emotional, sincere, depressing, intense, tense, serious, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 82%
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (2002)
Plot Summary:
In the later years of the nineteenth century Latin master Mr. Chipping is the mainstay of Brookfields boys boarding school, a good teacher and a kindly person but he is considered to be married to the job so that it is a surprise when, on a walking holiday, he meets and marries the vivacious Kathie,who becomes his helpmate at the school but sadly pre-deceases him. Just before World War One insensitive new headmaster Ralston tries to edge Chipping out but the boys rally and Sir John Rivers, an old pupil of Chipping's and now head of the board of governors, invites him to stay and,when the war breaks out and Ralston joins up, Chipping becomes the new head.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 898
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 81%
Pellet (2000)
Plot Summary:
El Bola, a 12 year old boy a.k.a. "Pellet" is a 12 year old boy raised in a violent and sordid environment. Embarrassed by his family life, he avoids becoming close to classmates. The arrival of a new boy at school changes his attitude towards his classmates, and friendship. The heart of the story is the change in El Bola's life, at almost all levels, after befriending this new classmate. Written by ElianaM.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, disturbing, touching, social, sincere, depressing, controversial, hispanic
Similar in 80%
Me Without You (2001)
Plot Summary:
During a long, hot summer in seventies London, young neighbors Holly and Marina make a childhood pact to be friends forever. For Marina, troubled, fiercely independent, determined to try everything, Holly stays the only constant in a life of divorcing parents, experimental drugs and fashionable self-destruction. But for Holly, a friendship that has never been equal gradually starts to feel like a trap.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Germany
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: humorous, sentimental, sincere, touching, teen, realistic, romantic, offbeat, contemplative, semi serious
Similar in 88%
Just a Dream (2002)
Plot Summary:
Film crew arrives in a small town in Nevada desert. Ends up changing the life of a 12-year-old kid and a friend of his, a movie lover.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 367
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: feel good, humorous, semi serious, sentimental, touching, realistic