You Can Count on MeMovies like You Can Count on Me
- Key Features:
- Sibling relationship, Single mother, Family drama, Small town setting, Personal responsibility, Emotional complexity, Coming-of-age, Reconciliation
- Tone:
- serious, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Indie film enthusiasts, Character-driven stories, Relationship dramas
- Emotional Arc:
- Unease → Connection
You Can Count on Me

A single mother's life is thrown into turmoil after her struggling, rarely-seen younger brother returns to town.
You Can Count on Me
After failing to find success as a writer in New York City, Jim slinks back to his family's home in the Midwest to lick his wounds. But his visit is quickly complicated when his angst spreads to his brother, Tim, who promptly decides to drive his car straight into a tree. Under the shadow of his sibling's injurious actions, Jim strikes up an unlikely friendship with Anika, whose centered small-town wisdom gradually rubs off on him.

Everybody has one—the sibling who is always just a little bit behind the curve when it comes to getting his life together. For sisters Liz, Miranda and Natalie, that person is their perennially upbeat brother, Ned. But as each of their lives begins to unravel, Ned's family comes to realise that Ned isn't such an idiot after all.

A mother takes her two sons on an unusual road trip from New York to Pittsburgh, St. Louis and eventually Hollywood in her quest to find a man to take care of them all.

Overachieving actress Rebecca must come to grips with her failing marriage to stay-at-home dad Tom. While Rebecca's slacker brother Tobey can't seem to commit to his aspiring-novelist girlfriend, Elaine. As both relationships spin out of control, the two couples embark on a quest to rediscover the magic and romance of falling in love in New York.

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.

When his helicopter goes down during his fourth tour of duty in Afghanistan, Marine Sam Cahill is presumed dead. Back home, brother Tommy steps in to look over Sam’s wife, Grace, and two children. Sam’s surprise homecoming triggers domestic mayhem.

After the bizarre death of her brother, Johana Burwood must return home after four years, to face her strange siblings, her out of touch father and her very touchy past.

A young man cares for his younger sisters after their mother is imprisoned for murdering their abusive father. When he strikes up an affair with a married woman, long-dormant family secrets bubble to the surface.

Loner Diane Ford is a truck driver with an 11-year-old son, Peter, whom she never sees, and that's fine with her. But, when Peter's father, Len, falls ill, he asks Diane to take care of their son for a while. Eventually, Diane reluctantly agrees, but she quickly realizes that caring for a child interferes with her independent lifestyle - and Peter isn't all that thrilled with the arrangement, either.

After his older brother passes away, Lee Chandler is forced to return home to care for his 16-year-old nephew. There he is compelled to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his family and the community where he was born and raised.

A reformed criminal's attempt at going straight is derailed when he reunites with his sanity-testing twin brother on a road trip for the score of a lifetime. Dodging bullets, the law, and an overbearing mother along the way, they must heal their severed family bond before they end up killing each other.

Mickey, a free-spirited New York cabbie, and Francis, a materialistic Wall Street stockbroker, are extremely competitive and confused about women as a result of their father's influence. Though they disagree about everything, they have one thing in common: Mickey's ex-fiance Heather is Francis's secret love. Though both brothers have beautiful wives, Heather triggers their longtime sibling rivalry

Irene lives in Rome. When her mother ask to, she go back to Rimini, her hometown, to take care of her autistic brother, Omar. She soon discover that Omar knows very well what to expect from the future, but in order to achieve his dreams, he need to be independent, which is why Irene begins a tender crash course to teach him adult life.

A waitress falls for a handsome customer who seduces her, her two sisters, her brother, and her brother's girlfriend.

The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

A divorced writer from the Midwest returns to her hometown to reconnect with an old flame, who's now married with a family.

This complex portrait of modern-day life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation explores the bond between a brother and his younger sister, who find themselves on separate paths to rediscovering the meaning of home.

Sandy is a stressed-out, single mom who learns that her ex-husband is marrying a younger woman. Her friend Jesse's parents don't know that she has a family or that her sister, Gabi is married to a woman. Jesse's friend, Kristin, is juggling motherhood of a toddler, a patient boyfriend who keeps proposing, and searching for her biological mother. Bradley is a widower who's trying to raise two daughters on his own, while Miranda is too busy with her career to worry about children. When their respective problems intersect and start coming to a head, the Mother's Day holiday takes on a special meaning for all.

A young, hipster entrepreneur crashes and burns on the eve of his company’s big launch. With his entire life in disarray, he leaves Manhattan to move in with his estranged pregnant sister, brother-in-law and three year-old nephew in the suburbs — only to become their manny. Faced with real responsibility, he may finally have to grow up — but not without some bad behavior first.

Aspiring New York City artist John Hollar returns to his Middle America hometown on the eve of his mother’s brain surgery. Joined by his girlfriend, eight months pregnant with their first child, John is forced to navigate the crazy world he left behind.

Two strangers are drawn together under incredible circumstances. What starts as an unforeseen encounter over a long holiday weekend soon becomes a second chance love story.

A 19-year-old searches for her twin brother after he runs away from home, following a fight with their father.

Middle-aged Jem sets out from his suburban home on a journey into the woods, where he reconnects with his estranged hermit brother Ray. Bonded by a mysterious, complicated past, the men share a fraught, if occasionally tender relationship—one that was forever altered by shattering events decades earlier.

In an effort to prevent family history from repeating itself, meddlesome mom Daphne Wilder attempts to set up her youngest daughter, Milly, with Mr. Right. Meanwhile, her other daughters try to keep their mom's good intentions under control.

Estranged from her family, Franny returns home when an accident leaves her brother comatose. Retracing his life as an aspiring musician, she tracks down his favorite musician, James Forester. Against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s music scene, Franny and James develop an unexpected relationship and face the realities of their lives.

Mother Nature loves to cause mischief, and she steps in to help two love-starved souls find happiness. She helps an aging professional woman and single mother, Rosie, who's unlucky in love find her match with Adam, a much younger man. As their relationship blossoms beyond physical attraction, matters complicate when her adolescent daughter starts to fall for a handsome local boy.

A coming of age dramedy where infidelity, real estate, and Lyme disease have two families falling apart on Long Island in the early eighties. Scott, 15, is at the point in his life when he finds out that the most important people around him, his father, his mother, and his brother, are not exactly who he thought they were. They are flawed and they are human.

A peculiar neighbor offers hope to a recent widow who is struggling to raise a teenager who is unpredictable and, sometimes, violent.

Because he's the oldest, Jake has been the man of the house, since his parents divorce. When Mom starts seeing Sam, who always seems to be trying some new way to get rich quick, and declares he's the man of the house now, Jake puts up with it. Until he discovers Sam's illegal activities.

Dispatched from his basement room on an errand for his mother, slacker Jeff might discover his destiny (finally) when he spends the day with his brother as he tracks his possibly adulterous wife.

Desperate to be rid of her toddler, a dissatisfied Beverly Hills housewife hires a stranger to babysit and ends up getting much more than she bargained for.

James White is a troubled twentysomething trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. As he retreats further into a hedonistic lifestyle, his mother's battle with a serious illness faces a series of setbacks that force him to assume more responsibility. With the pressure on him mounting, James must find new reserves of strength or risk imploding completely.

Two siblings who discover their seemingly normal mom is a former thief in witness protection. Mom is forced to pull one last job, and the kids team up to rescue her over the course of an action-packed night.

Wang Tiemei, a single mother, loses her job and moves, befriending neighbor Xiaoye who appears cheerful but is depressed. Their bond grows as Tiemei navigates relationships with her ex-husband causing trouble.

After serving five years in prison, wild child Tanya looks to her buttoned-up, by-the-book sister Danica to help her get back on her feet. The feisty ex-con becomes suspicious and concerned when Danica tells her that she's in a long-distance, online relationship with a mysterious man she's never seen. As the polar opposites start to collide, Tanya soon discovers that her sibling's picture-perfect life may not be what it seems.

Eight-year-old Cody is spending the summer in an unfamiliar setting with his mom Kathy. Though he can't relate to the neighbourhood kids, things take an unexpected turn when he develops an unusual friendship with grouchy old Del from next door.

A car magnate watches his personal and professional life hit the skids because of his business and romantic indiscretions.

At the age of 40, Leila has spent her entire life caring for her parents and four brothers. A family that is constantly arguing and under pressure from various debts in the face of sanctions against Iran. While her brothers are struggling to make ends meet, Leila makes a plan.

The buttoned-down, superstitious Kay is attempting to lead a normal existence with her new boyfriend Louis. That’s until Sweetie, her rampaging, devil-may-care sister, returns home after an absence, exposing the rotten roots of their family and placing a strain on Kay and Louis’ relationship.

The mother of a severely traumatized daughter enlists the aid of a unique horse trainer to help the girl's equally injured horse.

Emma, a divorced single mother seeking to start her life over, moves to a small town in Arizona. She befriends Murphy, the older local pharmacist, but things turn complicated when her ex-husband shows up.

An Ivy League professor returns home, where his pot-growing twin brother has concocted a plan to take down a local drug lord.

Follows a pair of siblings who love but distrust each other as they embark on a white-water rafting trip with a small group. One of their friends from childhood turns out to be more dangerous than he appears.

17-year-old Lisa feels certain that she inadvertently played a role in causing a traffic accident that claimed a woman's life. In her attempts to set things right, she meets with opposition at every step. Torn apart with frustration, she begins emotionally brutalizing her family, her friends, her teachers, and, most of all, herself. She has been confronted quite unexpectedly with a basic truth: that her youthful ideals are on a collision course with the realities and compromises of the adult world.

A married couple move back to his childhood village to start a family but a surprise visit from the husband's brother ignites sibling rivalry and exposes the lies embedded in the couple's relationship.

Two estranged brothers, Toph and Cooper, must journey to a remote family cabin in the mountains to evict a squatter. Buried resentment and bruised egos soon derail the plan and when the smoke clears they've destroyed their car and burned down the cabin, leaving them stranded in the cold Rocky Mountain winter. With their very survival at stake, they must learn to work together as brothers to get back to civilization.

An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.

The film follows Grace, a young woman whose irresponsible mother blows her college fund on her younger sister's beauty pageant campaign.

Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star.

Johnny and his young nephew forge a tenuous but transformational relationship when they embark on a cross-country trip to see life away from Los Angeles.

An introverted teenager tells his parents he is going on a ski trip, but instead spends his time alone in his mom's basement. But things didn't go as planned after his half sister joins him.

A regular guy struggles with a repressive home and professional life, as well as making amends for the trouble his free-spirited brother and sister cause about town.

A neurotic, twice-divorced sci-fi writer moves back in with his mother to solve his personal problems.

Six different writers wrote a scene each of this romantic comedy featuring the marriage and turbulent relationship of Joseph and Sarah, with Joseph's best friend Frank trying hard to cope with letting the love of his life marry his best friend.

Love for the same woman causes conflict between an over-achieving blind athlete and the brother who made him that way.

In between caring for her mother, a young woman works part time at a prison. The rookie guard gets a chance to prove her mettle when she's tasked with accompanying a hell-raising inmate on an emergency furlough to visit her dying mother. But things soon spiral out of control, sending the pair on a hilarious, surprising, and ultimately touching road trip.

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

The rough-hewn boss of a lumber crew courts trouble when he steps in to protect the youngest member of his team from an abusive father.

After returning to her childhood home, young nun Colleen finds her old room exactly how she left it: painted black and covered in goth and metal posters. Her parents are happy enough to see her, but her brother is living as a recluse in the guesthouse since returning home from the Iraq war.

Bill is an ailing larger-than-life father being taken care of by his son Sam, who has returned home to care for him. While home, Sam falls for a local woman, Kate. At the same time, Bill starts to fall for her mom, Tina.

When their father passes away, four grown, world-weary siblings return to their childhood home and are requested -- with an admonition -- to stay there together for a week, along with their free-speaking mother and a collection of spouses, exes and might-have-beens. As the brothers and sisters re-examine their shared history and the status of each tattered relationship among those who know and love them best, they reconnect in hysterically funny and emotionally significant ways.

After a breakup with her boyfriend, a young woman moves in with her older brother, his wife, and their 2-year-old son.

A pistol-packing teen meets an unstable rebel and a cocaine-snorting drifter as she hitchhikes her way out West.

After a bad breakup with his girlfriend leaves him heartbroken, Carter Webb moves to Michigan to take care of his ailing grandmother. Once there, he gets mixed up in the lives of the mother and daughters who live across the street.

When Hayley accepts an invitation to spend Christmas with her sister’s new in-laws, her seemingly perfect holiday takes a turn when Paul, Hayley's brother-in-law's brother, unexpectedly shows up. Still harboring a grudge against Paul for ending her last relationship, Hayley reluctantly spends time with Paul and slowly realizes she may have been too quick a judge on Paul

Each member of a group of people has a connection to a self-help book authored by a reclusive former football coach.

A single mother and her slacker sister find an unexpected way to turn their lives around in this off-beat dramatic comedy. In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school the mom starts an unusual business – a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service.

Three strong-willed women strive to forge their own paths amidst the wide-open plains of the American Northwest: a lawyer forced to subdue a troubled client; a wife and mother whose plans to construct her dream home reveal fissures in her marriage; and a lonely ranch hand who forms an ambiguous bond with a young law student.

Laney is an attractive, intelligent suburban wife and devoted mother of two adorable children. She has the perfect husband who plays basketball with the kids in the driveway, a pristine house, and a shiny SUV for carting the children to their next activity. However, just beneath the façade lie depression and disillusionment that send her careening into a secret world of reckless compulsion. Only very real danger will force her to face the painful root of her destructiveness and its crumbling effect on those she loves.

Two brothers, both with troubled paths, find themselves in the middle of one last bank job.

Andrew returns to his hometown for the funeral of his mother, a journey that reconnects him with past friends. The trip coincides with his decision to stop taking his powerful antidepressants. A chance meeting with Sam - a girl also suffering from various maladies - opens up the possibility of rekindling emotional attachments, confronting his psychologist father, and perhaps beginning a new life.

Marlo, a mother of three, including a newborn, is gifted a night nanny by her brother. Hesitant at first, she quickly forms a bond with the thoughtful, surprising, and sometimes challenging nanny named Tully.

An acclaimed writer, his ex-wife, and their teenaged children come to terms with the complexities of love in all its forms over the course of one tumultuous year.

When a bestselling celebrity biographer is no longer able to get published because she has fallen out of step with current tastes, she turns her art form to deception.

The Cleary brothers, Sam, Leo and Douglas took dysfunctional families to a new level: Sam and Leo have grown up hating each other and neither likes their juvenile delinquent kid brother, Douglas, to whom they've only recently been introduced. The sons share the same father, a womanizing drunk, but all have different mothers. Their father died a rich man and when they're brought together by their sister Nina to learn which of them will inherit the old man's fortune, they are handed an unpleasant surprise.

With their father away as a chaplain in the Civil War, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy grow up with their mother in somewhat reduced circumstances. They are a close family who inevitably have their squabbles and tragedies. But the bond holds even when, later, male friends start to become a part of the household.

Evelyn and her oblivious son Ziggy seek out replacements for each other. As Evelyn tries to parent an unassuming teenager at her shelter, Ziggy fumbles through his pursuit of a brilliant young woman at school.

Nora, a single mother raising two teenage daughters, Shade and Trudi, waits tables at a truck-stop diner in a small New Mexico town. The beautiful and rebellious Trudi drops out of school and gets a job alongside Nora, while the younger Shade whittles away her time at Spanish movie matinees. Their lives are turned upside down when Trudi becomes pregnant and the girls' absent father returns.

Quirky and rebellious April Burns lives with her boyfriend in a low-rent New York City apartment miles away from her emotionally distant family. But when she discovers that her mother has a fatal form of breast cancer, she invites the clan to her place for Thanksgiving. While her father struggles to drive her family into the city, April -- an inexperienced cook -- runs into kitchen trouble and must ask a neighbor for help.

Danny Muldoon, a Chicago policeman, still lives with his overbearing mother Rose. He meets and falls in love with Theresa Luna, whose father owns the local funeral parlour. Naturally, his mother objects to the relationship, and Danny and Theresa must either overcome her objections or give up the romance.

Two high school girls are best friends until one dates the other's older brother, who is totally his sister's nemesis.

Just as Mike is on the heels of closing the biggest deal of his career, he's pulled away from his bachelor life in the big city to a farm in rural Ohio in order to help his recently orphaned nephews find a new home.

Cooper is an actor who sees life as one big party, while Ed is in advertising and takes life too seriously. When Ed gets stressed over a deadline he has to meet, his brother Cooper works hard in trying to get his brother hooked up with a girl, thus a long weekend of stress and beautiful women, culminating in Ed meeting, and making love to, the woman of his dreams.

A woman and her son must leave a small South Carolina town because of her wild behavior.

For as long as she can remember, 16 year-old Gracie has been raising her four siblings, each of whom has a different, absent father and their mother is on the fast track to self-destruction. When these children's lives are about to be pulled apart, Gracie will have to do the impossible and make the ultimate sacrifices to keep her family together.

In California, a group of women struggle with personal problems as their paths intertwine in unexpected ways. Dr. Elaine Keener, the sole caretaker for her aging mother, turns to tarot card reader Christine for spiritual aid. Christine grapples with her own angst due to her lover's debilitating illness. Meanwhile, a bank manager deals with an unwanted pregnancy, two sisters pursue romantic interests and a housewife gets back into the dating game.

The tale of two brothers with serious financial woes. When a third party proposes they turn to crime, things go bad and the two become enemies.

Having thought that monogamy was never possible, a commitment-phobic career woman may have to face her fears when she meets a good guy.

A brother and sister return to their family home in search of their world famous parents who have disappeared.

Homer is an orphan who was never adopted, becoming the favorite of orphanage director Dr. Larch. Dr. Larch imparts his full medical knowledge on Homer, who becomes a skilled, albeit unlicensed, physician. But Homer yearns for a self-chosen life outside the orphanage. What will Homer learn about life and love in the cider house? What of the destiny that Dr. Larch has planned for him?

A sudden loss disrupts Carol’s orderly life, propelling her into the dating world for the first time in 20 years. Finally living in the present tense, she finds herself swept up in not one, but two unexpected relationships that challenge her assumptions about what it means to grow old.

Single mom Flora is at a loss about what to do with her rebellious teenage son, Max. Her efforts to keep him out of trouble lead to a beat-up acoustic guitar, a washed-up LA musician, and harmony for this frayed Dublin family.

A psychotic young man returns to his old neighborhood after release from prison. He seeks out the woman he previously tried to rape and the man who protected her, with twisted ideas of love for her and hate for him.

Love, loss and hope are tumultuously explored amidst a tranquil backdrop and asks us all the question: What is your dream? After an unexpected phone call, Laura and her brother Elliot rush to their family’s country estate to find Lilly their mother gravely ill and living with a handsome young stranger named Ted. Estranged for some time, their mother’s condition sets Laura and Elliot on a path to realizing where their own lives have gone wrong. Lilly, on the other hand, has mellowed from the controlling woman she was and is hoping to pass on some wisdom to her children. Now her kids find themselves dealing with their own feelings of resentment and broken dreams while trying to figure out how Ted fits into their mother’s life. Elliot even sleeps with Ted to break some barriers. But Ted has a secret of his own.

Cal Weaver is living the American dream. He has a good job, a beautiful house, great children and a beautiful wife, named Emily. Cal's seemingly perfect life unravels, however, when he learns that Emily has been unfaithful and wants a divorce. Over 40 and suddenly single, Cal is adrift in the fickle world of dating. Enter, Jacob Palmer, a self-styled player who takes Cal under his wing and teaches him how to be a hit with the ladies.

After some years of tension, Richard begins a sexual relationship with his sister Natalie. Now married, the relationship proves dangerously obsessional.

Joe and Lucy are roommates and best friends. Lucy, whose love life is embarrassingly dull, convinces Joe, who is infatuated with a neighbor he's never met, that if they don't have stable romances within a month, they must jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

37-year-old Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini believes she is unlucky in love, and so accepts a marriage proposal from her boyfriend Johnny, even though she doesn't love him. When she meets his estranged younger brother Ronny, an emotional and passionate man, she finds herself drawn to him. She tries to resist, but Ronny, who blames his brother for the loss of his hand, has no scruples about aggressively pursuing her while Johnny is out of the country. As Loretta falls for Ronny, she learns that she's not the only one in her family with a secret romance.

