Highest-Rated Movies about 'Counterculture', Sort by Popularity

The Weather Underground (2003), Source: The Story of the Beats and the Beat Generation (1999), Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth (1998), Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (2003), Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground (2018), Medium Cool (1969), Slacker (1990), Howl (2010) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Counterculture movies.

#1. The Weather Underground (2003)

Storyline: When the Beatles land in America in the early 1960s, young men wearing their hair long strike the nation as an abomination. But within a few years, youthful rebellion grows more severe: Witness the Weathermen, the radical antiwar activists who mobilize (unsuccessfully) to overthrow the U.S. government. With contemporary interviews and archival footage, this documentary elucidates the Weather Underground's controversial history and continuing significance.

Plot Keywords: radical, activist, lyndon baines johnson, richard nixon, martin luther king jr., intense, shocking ...

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#3. Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth (1998)

Storyline: Comedian Lenny Bruce struck a subversive chord in an era of change in America. After getting his start as a conventional stand-up comic, Bruce's increasingly iconoclastic act transformed him into a leading figure of the 1960s counterculture. This is his story.

Plot Keywords: robert de niro, comedian, friend, mother, drug addict, tv personality, rousing ...

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#4. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (2003)

Storyline: Based upon Peter Biskind's book of the same name, this BBC-produced documentary traces the rise of a generation of Hollywood filmmakers who briefly changed the face of movies with a more personal approach that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable on-screen. Influential directors who appear include Arthur Penn ("Bonnie and Clyde"), Dennis Hopper ("Easy Rider"), Francis Ford Coppola ("The Godfather"), John Schlesinger ("Midnight Cowboy"), Bob Rafelson ("Five Easy Pieces") Martin Scorsese ("Taxi Driver"), Peter Bogdanovich ("The Last Picture Show"), and Jonathan Demme ("Crazy Mama"). Narrated by William H. Macy, the documentary features vintage clips of Coppola, Scorsese, Beatty, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, and Pauline Kael. It also includes original interview material with Penn; Roger Corman; Bogdanovich; Hopper; David Picker; writer/directors John Milius and Paul Schrader; actresses Karen Black, Cybill Shepherd, Margot Kidder, and Jennifer Salt; actors Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, and Richard Dreyfuss; producers Jerome Hellman, Michael Phillips, and Jonathan Taplin; editor Dede Allen; production designer Polly Platt; writers David Newman, Joan Tewksbury, Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck; cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond; agent Mike Medavoy; and former production executive Peter Bart. Among the films discussed are "Rosemary's Baby," "The Wild Bunch," "Mean Streets," "American Graffiti," "The Rain People," "Midnight Cowboy," "M*A*S*H," "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," "The Last Picture Show," "Shampoo," and "Taxi Driver."—alfiehitchie

Plot Keywords: filmmaker, film critic, film studio executive, film editor, actor, actress, confident ...

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#5. Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground (2018)

Storyline: Barbara Rubin's twenty-nine-minute experimental film 'Christmas on Earth' caused a sensation when it first screened in New York City in 1963. Its orgy scenes, double projections and overlapping images shattered artistic conventions and announced a powerful new voice in the city's underground film scene. All the more remarkable that the vision belonged to an 18-year-old girl. A virtual Zelig of the '60s, Barbara Rubin introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan to Kabbalah and bewitched Allen Ginsberg. The same unbridled creativity that inspired her to make films when women simply didn't, saw her breach yet another male domain, Orthodox Judaism, before her mysterious death at thirty-five years old. Life-long friend Jonas Mekas saved all her letters, creating a rich archive that film-maker Chuck Smith carefully sculpts into this fascinating portrait of a nearly forgotten artist. An avant-garde maverick, a rebel in a man's world, Barbara Rubin regains her rightful place in film history.

Plot Keywords: rabbi, director, jewish woman, artist, dark, cool, creative ...

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#6. Medium Cool (1969)

Storyline: John Cassellis is the toughest TV-news reporter around. His area of interest is reporting about violence in the ghetto and racial tensions. But he discovers that his network helps the FBI by letting it look at his tapes to find suspects. When he protests, he is fired and goes to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.—Mattias Thuresson

Plot Keywords: tv reporter, political activist, cameraman, widow, police officer, hippie, fiery ...

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#7. Slacker (1990)

Storyline: Presents a day in the life in Austin, Texas among its social outcasts and misfits, predominantly the twenty-something set, using a series of linear vignettes. These characters, who in some manner just don't fit into the establishment norms, move seamlessly from one scene to the next, randomly coming and going into one another's lives. Highlights include a UFO buff who adamantly insists that the U.S. has been on the moon since the 1950s, a woman who produces a glass slide purportedly of Madonna's pap smear, and an old anarchist who sympathetically shares his philosophy of life with a robber.

Plot Keywords: slacker, anarchist, musician, philosopher, friend, taxi driver, offbeat ...

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#8. Howl (2010)

Storyline: It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and animation that echoes the poem's surreal style. All three coalesce in hybrid that dramatizes the birth of a counterculture.

Plot Keywords: beatnik, poet, friend, judge, publisher, jack kerouac, creative ...

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#9. East of Havana (2006)

Storyline: East of Havana is a blunt, unflinching close-up on the lives of three young rappers compelled to address their generation's future from the confines of a Cuban ghetto. Soandry, Magyori, and Mikki are the defacto leaders of Cuba's rebellious underground hip hop movement. Possessing the undeniable talent and charisma of pop icons, these fearless performers push self-expression to its sharpest, riskiest, and most triumphant point.—Anonymous

Plot Keywords: rapper, government official, dj, rousing, inspiring, musical gathering, rap music ...

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#10. Alice's Restaurant (1969)

Storyline: Arlo Guthrie's song is converted into a motion picture. Arlo goes to see Alice for Thanksgivng and as a favor takes her trash to the dump. When the dump is closed, he drops it on top of another pile of garbage at the bottom of a ravine. When the local sheriff finds out a major manhunt begins. Arlo manages to survive the courtroom experience but it haunts him when he is to be inducted into the army via the draft. The movie follows the song with Arlo's voice over as both music and narration.—John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>

Plot Keywords: activist, hippie, singer, quirky, madcap, restaurant, courtroom ...

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#11. The Big Fix (1978)

Storyline: In Los Angeles, Moses Wine, who was part of the counter-culture of the late 1960s at UC-Berkeley, still has those radical feelings but no longer does anything about them. His wife Suzanne, who has transformed from a 1960s hippie to a 1970s new-ageist, divorced him when his law school background didn't materialize into the upper middle class liberal life she was expecting, she having sole custody of their two young sons, with Moses having visitation rights. Moses fell into work as a private investigator of the gumshoe variety, which usually doesn't cover his monthly child support payments. After not seeing her for ten years, Moses is contacted by Lila Shea, an old girlfriend from Berkeley, to do some investigative work on behalf of her boss, Sam Sebastian, the Southern California coordinator for the gubernatorial campaign of Congressman Miles Hawthorne. Lila felt Moses would be well suited to the job because of running within "the" crowd at Berkeley, even if only knowing the main players by name and reputation. Flyers have been circulating with a doctored photo of Hawthorne and Howard Eppis in a friendly embrace, Eppis who in the late 1960s was part of the California 4 - the other three being Michael and Wendy Linker, and Luis Vasquez - an anti-establishment group convicted of several counts related to their work against the government. While the Linkers are behind bars probably for the rest of their lives, Luis Vasquez is a free man working for the rights of Mexican laborers, while Eppis has been a fugitive ever since, the authorities who are still looking for him. The flyers, which contain extreme socialist rhetoric and an implication of Hawthorne welcoming Eppis' endorsement, have the potential to derail Hawthorne's campaign. Moses is tasked with finding out who is behind the flyers - the most obvious being the campaign of Hawthorne's competitor, Senator Dillworthy - and if it is indeed not Eppis, why they would have specifically used Eppis' name. Moses accepts the job despite not endorsing Hawthorne - or Dillworthy for that matter - he equating Hawthorne's excitement factor to watching paint dry. The further Moses and Lila get into the investigation, the number of unanswered questions they have grows, and the more people who were associated with Eppis at the time cannot be located, including Oscar Procari, Jr., who funded the California 4's defense probably to spite his industrialist father. With the many trails, Moses and Lila still believe finding Eppis would answer many questions. All the while, Moses tries to rekindle a relationship with Lila. The investigation ends up having a change of focus with the potential for deadly violence on multiple levels and when incidents makes it personal to Moses.—Huggo

Plot Keywords: private investigator, politician, ex-girlfriend, fugitive, father, amusing, offbeat ...

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#12. The Trip (1967)

Storyline: Paul Groves (Peter Fonda), a television commercial director, is in the midst of a personality crisis. His wife Sally (Susan Strasberg) has left him and he seeks the help of his friend John (Bruce Dern), a self-styled guru who's an advocate of LSD. Paul asks John to be the guide on his first "trip". John takes Paul to a "freak-out" at his friend Max's (Dennis Hopper) pad. Splitting the scene, they score some acid from Max and return to John's split-level pad with an indoor/outdoor pool. Paul experiences visions of sex, death, strobe lights, flowers, dancing girls, witches, hooded riders, a torture chamber, and a dwarf. He panics but John tells him to "go with it, man." Would you trust John?—alfiehitchie

Plot Keywords: director, guru, friend, hippie, beautiful woman, estranged wife, dreamy ...

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#13. Wild in the Streets (1968)

Storyline: Wealthy twenty-two year old Max Frost - born Max Jacob Flatow, Jr. - is a rock music superstar, he a rock music franchise unto himself. He has cut ties with his parents, especially due to the control wielded by his overbearing mother, Daphne Flatow, that control against which he rebelled and is still rebelling in the form of having an entourage solely of young people, who he believes knows better than people even a few years older than them. Age-wise, the senior member of his entourage is his acid-dropping girlfriend, former child star Sally LeRoy, age twenty-four, the junior member being fifteen year old Yale law graduate Billy Cage, his business advisor and his band's guitarist. Max decides to endorse thirty-seven year old Congressman Johnny Fergus, running on the Democratic ticket for a California senate seat, as one of Johnny's platform policies is to lower the voting age to eighteen. Johnny happily accepts that endorsement because of Max's power over young people, whose votes Johnny is trying to court. But as Max sees that Johnny doesn't go far enough in his policies - Max believing the voting age should be fourteen so someone like Billy can vote - Max figures the best way to get what he wants is to start his own political machine, first within the current regulations of the land, then once "in", working from the inside to change the laws to transfer the power from the "old" - who he and his team see as anyone over thirty-four - to the young. The questions become how far Max and his team will go to ensure his vision of the world comes to fruition, and how far the establishment will go to try and stop him and his followers.—Huggo

Plot Keywords: politician, revolutionary, singer, guitarist, anthropologist, senator, eerie ...

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