Salesman (1969), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Waiting for Guffman (1996), American Honey (2016), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), Lonesome Jim (2005), Thin Ice (2011) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Midwest America movies.
Storyline: Filmmakers (and brothers) Albert and David Maysles follow four employees of a company that makes expensive, ornate, illustrated bibles as they attempt to sell the items door-to-door to less-than-interested customers, who are mainly poor or lower-middle-class Catholics with little money to spend on pretty Bibles.—Gary Dickerson <slug@mail.utexas.edu>
Plot Keywords: documentary, american film, 1960s, real life, social observation, working class, american dream ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: What's Eating Gibert Grape is a beautifully shot movie of tenderness, caring and self-awareness that is set amongst the fictional working class one street town Endora. Centred around the Grape family Ellen and Amy and their two brothers Arnie and Gilbert, who, along with their morbidly obese widowed mother Bonnie Grape are striving to survive and coexist with the absence of a father figure, low wage work and seventeen-year-old Arnie's severe mental condition. It is in this awkward and extremely one sided affair that the unfortunate Gilbert has to constantly, while working for the town's slowly dying convenience store, take care of his younger brother Arnie. Gilbert's life, his future, is thwarted he knows this, but it is in this guardian angel that his love and bond for Arnie cannot, and will not, be let go. That is until the free spirit of Becky arrives in town, and with her grandmother are stranded for the week while waiting for parts for their vehicle. This realization unties new ...
Plot Keywords: family, coming of age, small town life, responsibility, sibling bond, social outcasts, romance ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A town of Blaine, Missouri is preparing for celebrations of its 150th anniversary. Corky St.Clair, an off-off-off-off-off-Broadway director is putting together an amateur theater show about the town's history, starring a local dentist, a couple of travel agents, a Dairy Queen waitress, and a car repairman. He invites a Broadway theater critic Mr. Guffman to see the opening night of the show.
Plot Keywords: comedy, mockumentary, musical, small town life, over-the-top acting, satire, improvisation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Star, a teenage girl with nothing to lose, joins a traveling magazine sales crew, and gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard partying, law bending and young love as she criss-crosses the Midwest with a band of misfits.
Plot Keywords: youth, road movie, american dream, rebellion, coming of age, poverty, freedom ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Preston, Idaho's most curious resident, Napoleon Dynamite, lives with his grandma and his 32-year-old brother (who cruises chat rooms for ladies) and works to help his best friend, Pedro, snatch the Student Body President title from mean teen Summer Wheatley.
Plot Keywords: comedy, teen, indie film, high school, quirky, humor, coming of age ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A final live variety show broadcast via radio becomes a metaphor for the natural order of life. A concept and script by Garrison Keilor uses every natural and technical element of working with a tight and close ensemble producing a weekly show to sooth us and guide us through the natural but difficult transitions of aging, becoming less relevant and then dying as new, young life develops and strengthens during our final "performances." This is a rare film for it's remarkable cast and crew and one wonders how the great Robert Altman was able to gather them all at the same place and time to shoot this film.
Plot Keywords: musical, comedy, drama, country music, song and dance, nostalgia, ensemble cast ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Jim is a young man who, after deciding he can't make it on his own, moves back to his hometown in Indiana -- under his parents' roof. He's saved from his family's dysfunction by a local woman and her son, who sees him as a father figure.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: independent film, drama, black comedy, family, coming of age, small town life, depression ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A dishonest insurance salesman's life quickly disintegrates during a Wisconsin winter when he teams up with a psychopath to steal a rare violin at the home of a reclusive farmer.
Plot Keywords: crime, thriller, black comedy, suspense, deception, insurance fraud, small town ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A Democratic strategist helps a retired veteran run for mayor in a small, conservative Midwest town.
Plot Keywords: political satire, comedy, american politics, election, democracy, democratic party, small-town life ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In Iowa, laid-back Bob has won the state fair's butter-carving contest 15 years running; his tightly-wound and hard-charging wife Laura sees Bob becoming governor, so when the contest organizers ask him to step aside so others can win, she's incensed; when Bob won't protest, she decides to enter herself. In the county contest, she's up against Destiny, an African-American foster child, and Brooke, a prostitute Bob hasn't paid. When things don't go Laura's way, she enlists the help of Boyd, an old boyfriend. Laura's step-daughter and Destiny's foster parents are in the mix as things heat up at the state fair. What are Destiny and Laura's destiny?
Plot Keywords: comedy, satire, competition, family, political allegory, ambition, morality ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Jonas is a fraudulent faith healer, who uses all the tricks in the book to con the people attending his shows. Jonas and his team of helpers, including Jane who is in need of some romance, travel the country stopping at big towns and cities to put on their show. When one of the trucks breaks down in a small town, Jonas is quick to accept the challenge of making money in this town. His other goal is to seduce Marva, a waitress in the town, but she's a hard nut to crack, as is Will, the local sheriff who's determined to expose Jonas as a fraud.
Plot Keywords: faith, miracle, religion, healing, money, redemption, small town ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: When 11-year-old Gitty discovers that her beloved father is hiding a wealthy man in her family's silo in order to save their struggling farm, she is forced to choose between saving the man's life or protecting her family from the consequences of their actions. AMERICAN FABLE is a fairytale thriller set in the 1980s rural Midwest about a courageous girl living in a dark - sometimes magical - world.
Plot Keywords: fantasy, coming of age, family, mystery, thriller, drama, rural ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In the hot summer of 1988, against the backdrop of mass hysteria over satanic ritualistic homicides, the leather-clad metalhead, Alexis, and her best friends, Val and Beverly, embark on a road trip to a heavy-metal concert. But, there, a chance encounter with a trio of young hard rockers will pave the way for seduction, deceit, and murder, as nothing is what it appears to be. Now, blood stains the walls of Alexis' secluded mansion in the woods. Who shall live, and who shall die after summoning the darkness?—Nick Riganas
Plot Keywords: horror, thriller, crime, mystery, cult, supernatural, gore ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: An annual beauty pageant in small-town Minnesota turns ridiculously competitive and ultimately chaotic in this biting comedy. Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst), the daughter of hard-drinking mom Annette (Ellen Barkin), and Becky Leeman (Denise Richards), who is motivated by her former beauty-queen mother, Gladys (Kirstie Alley), are among the top contenders in the event. As Amber, Becky, and other local girls prepare for the big day, bizarre incidents occur, leading up to an ending with a bang.
Plot Keywords: dark comedy, beauty pageant, teenagers, murder, satire, small town life, competition ...
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