Forces of Nature (2004), The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005), The Straight Story (1999), A Christmas Story (1983), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Come Back, Little Sheba (1952), Terms of Endearment (1983), Eternity: The Movie (2014) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Midwest movies.
Storyline: Special prosecutor John Conroy hopes to combat organized crime in his city, and appoints his cop father Matt as chief investigator. John doesn't understand why Matt is reluctant, but cynical reporter Jerry McKibbon thinks he knows: he's seen Matt with mob lieutenant Harrigan. Jerry's friendship for John is tested by the question of what to do about Matt, and by his attraction to John's girl Amanda. Meanwhile, the threatened racketeers adopt increasingly violent means of defense.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: prosecutor, police officer, mobster, journalist, father, girlfriend, brooding ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Michael Hunter's lovely, beloved 17 year-old son Kyle committed suicide, although he was in therapy for depression. This ruins Michael's marriage, his daughter Shelly moves in with her mother. He stops treating patients in order to write and teach Psychotherapy, until many years later when a student gets him fascinated by the case of Thomas 'Tommy' Caffey. He was about to be released at his 18th birthday from the closed 'boys school' he was placed into after his father, Joseph, was put into jail for beating his adulterous mother to death. Michael feels that Tommy carries a big chip on his shoulder, ignores that Shelly fell for him at first sight, but is mesmerized by Tommy's resemblance (purposefully enhanced) to Kyle. There is also a revealing meeting with Tommy's dad in jail.—KGF Vissers
Plot Keywords: psychiatrist, son, teen boy, social worker, student, father, disturbing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Navy Lt. Richard Perry becomes an undercover man out to discover the leaders of a group of well connected men who pull off bank robberies during the McKinley administration (early 20th century).—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: naval officer, gangster, singer, theodore roosevelt, suspenseful, melodramatic, white house ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Classic tale of teenage rebellion and repression features a delightful combination of dance choreography and realistic and touching performances. When teenager Ren McCormack and his family move from big-city Chicago to a small Midwestern town, he's in for a real case of culture shock. Though he tries hard to fit in, the streetwise Ren can't quite believe he's living in a place where rock music and dancing are illegal. However, there is one small pleasure: Ariel Moore, a troubled but lovely blonde with a jealous boyfriend. And a Bible-thumping minister, who is responsible for keeping the town dance-free. Ren and his classmates want to do away with this ordinance, especially since the senior prom is around the corner, but only Ren has the courage to initiate a battle to abolish the outmoded ban and revitalize the spirit of the repressed townspeople. Fast-paced drama is filled with such now-famous hit songs as the title track and "Let's Hear It for the Boy".
Plot Keywords: newcomer, best friend, girlfriend, student, reverend, mother, inspiring ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A kind-hearted young man is thrown out of his corrupt home town of West Rome, Oklahoma. He falls asleep and dreams that he is back in the days of olden Rome, where he gets mixed up with court intrigue and a murder plot against the Emperor.
Plot Keywords: deliveryman, servant, slave, emperor, roman, love interest, madcap ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Billy Starkman is a seemingly ordinary man living in a small Midwestern town who one day wakes up, murders his family, climbs a rural water tower with a high-powered hunting rifle and begins shooting innocent people. Threading the terribly tragic with the maddeningly mundane, Charming Billy attempts to imagine what could possibly lead a man to commit the unimaginable.—Wm. R. Pace <wmrpace@aol.com>
Plot Keywords: father, grandfather, husband, wife, sniper, bleak, chilling ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: It's Homecoming weekend at Midwestern University, the weekend which will culminate with the big game between Midwestern and Michigan. Homecoming marks the return for the first time in six years of alumnus All-American Joe Ferguson, whose world is all about football and especially his place in it. Mild-mannered English Professor Tommy Turner is able to handle the thought of Joe's return to campus as the ex-boyfriend of Tommy's wife of six years, Ellen Turner née Stanley, who is temperamentally more like Joe than him. Tommy knows that Ellen loves him, the reason he doesn't mind the thought of Joe. The weekend starts off well enough for Tommy in that he believes he is being promoted from associate to full professor, which if be the case would be much earlier than he or Ellen had expected. However, it comes to his attention that Michael Barnes, an idealistic student of his who is also the editor of the campus' literary magazine, has written an editorial for the upcoming edition of the magazine denouncing what he considers the fascist policies of the Ed Keller led Board of Trustees, who have gone on a Communist witch hunt among the faculty, and praising who he considers principled Tommy, as Tommy is planning on reading to his English Composition class a letter written by anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Tommy admits the fact that Michael has written is true, he regularly reading what he considers documents of good writing by non-professional writers, regardless of content or the author, as he is also planning to read to his class a document written by Abraham Lincoln. Frederick Damon, the Dean of the English Department, wants to stay out of the fray and what he knows will be the wrath of the powerful Keller about the editorial and Tommy's intended actions. Tommy has to decide what to do, he reading the letter which would jeopardize his life at Midwestern. Through the weekend, he also sees what he thinks is more clearly Ellen's kinship to both him and Joe, she who would be better off with his competitor than him. What Tommy decides to do may not only affect his position and his marriage, but also the life of Ellen's younger sister Patricia Stanley as two men vie for her affections: Michael and the team's star fullback, the dimwitted Wally Myers.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: professor, dean, student, wife, ex-boyfriend, trustee, uplifting ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A family with an abusive father, a sensitive son, and a mother out of her depth: we see them when Michael is about 12 and when he's in his 30's, a writer of romance novels, going home for his mother and sister's college graduations. We go back and forth between the two periods: when Michael is a boy, the pressure builds to the point when the thin thread keeping them as a family threatens to break, and there's a fight. During Michael's trip home, there's an unexpected death which prolongs his stay and brings to the light his relationship with his father, his aunt, and her young children. Michael's estranged wife joins them for the funeral.
Plot Keywords: professor, novelist, husband, wife, son, daughter, emotional ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Compilation of four short films about homoerotic situations involving young men. Tom DeCerchio directed "Nunzio's Second Cousin", telling the story of a gay cop who forces a gay-basher to come to his house and have dinner with his family. In "Alkali, Iowa", by Mark Christopher, a young gay man finds out some of his father's past secrets. And "Must Be the Music", by Nickolas Perry, follows four teenagers looking for love in nightclubs.—lukejoplin@infolink.com.br
Plot Keywords: gay man, young man, teen boy, police officer, father, suburbanite, creative ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In a small North American town, the middle age Martha and the twenty and something years old Kyle work in a doll factory. Martha nurses her old father and usually gives a lift to Kyle, who works also in the night-shift cleaning a shovel factory. When the young single mother Rose is hired to work with airbrush and stencils in the factory, she is befriended by Kyle and Martha. In a Friday night, Rose hires Martha to work as babysitter of her two year old daughter Jesse and Martha finds that she is dating Kyle. Rose returns back home early after stealing Kyle's savings, and Martha witnesses Jesse's father Jake accusing Rose of stealing weed and money from his house. On the next morning, Rose is found strangled in her house and Detective Don Taylor interviews Jake, Kyle and Martha along his investigation.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Plot Keywords: young man, middle-aged woman, coworker, love interest, single mother, ex-boyfriend, calm ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Grainbelt University has one attraction for Dobie Gillis - women, especially Pansy Hammer. Pansy's father, even though and maybe because she says she's in dreamville, does not share her affection for Dobie. An English essay which almost revolutionizes English instruction, and Dobie's role in a chemistry lab explosion convinces Mr. Hammer he is right. Pansy is sent off broken-hearted to an Eastern school, but with the help of Happy Stella Kolawski's all-girl band, several hundred students and an enraged police force, Dobie secures Pansy's return to Grainbelt.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: student, girlfriend, roommate, love interest, father, professor, charming ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Good-natured astronomer Sam is devastated when the love of his life, Linda, leaves him for a suave Frenchman named Anton. He therefore does what every other normal dumpee would do; go to New York and set up home in the abandoned building opposite his ex-girlfriend's apartment, intent on winning her back and waiting until she decides to leave her current lover. What Sam does not count on is being joined several weeks later by ultra hip tomboy Maggie, a photographer and motor-cyclist who is determined to get revenge on Anton, her ex-fiance. Hostile at first, the two of them eventually join forces in an attempt to separate the couple, and ruin Anton's life. However, complications ensue when Sam and Maggie start falling for each other.
Plot Keywords: astronomer, fiancée, chef, ex-girlfriend, mother, professor, dark ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Andy Hardy, now a grown man with a wife and children, returns to his hometown on a business trip and finds himself getting mixed up in local politics.
Plot Keywords: attorney, wife, son, mother, sister, businessman, cheery ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: 1920's bandleader Chuck Arnold meets hometown girl Peggy at one of the band's dances and next day weds her. Though she loves him, life on the road becomes increasingly difficult for her, but it is the 1929 Crash that makes things really tough for the both of them.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Plot Keywords: bandleader, flapper, husband, wife, manager, musician, emotional ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Professor Harold Hill (Matthew Broderick) is a con artist who runs a very particular scam. With the help of his partner in crime, Marcellus Washburn (David Aaron Baker), Hill travels to small towns, convinces the townsfolk they need a marching band, collects money for instruments and uniforms, then splits with the cash. When Hill tries his luck in the small Iowa town of River City, however, he finds himself up against his staunchest opponent yet: nosy librarian Marian Paroo (Kristin Chenoweth).
Plot Keywords: con artist, band leader, student, librarian, musician, mayor, amusing ...
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