Taxi Driver (1976), American Gangster (2007), Ray (2004), Malcolm X (1992), The Great Debaters (2007), Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011), A Great Day in Harlem (1994) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Harlem Manhattan New York City movies.
Storyline: Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he suffers from insomnia, he spends his time working as a taxi driver at night, watching porn movies at seedy cinemas during the day, or thinking about how the world, New York in particular, has deteriorated into a cesspool. He's a loner who has strong opinions about what is right and wrong with mankind. For him, the one bright spot in New York humanity is Betsy, a worker on the presidential nomination campaign of Senator Charles Palantine. He becomes obsessed with her. After an incident with her, he believes he has to do whatever he needs to make the world a better place in his opinion. One of his priorities is to be the savior for Iris, a twelve-year-old runaway and prostitute who he believes wants out of the profession and under the thumb of her pimp and lover Matthew.
Plot Keywords: taxi driver, child prostitution, mentally unstable, urban decay, manhattan new york city, neo noir, street life ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Following the death of his employer and mentor, Bumpy Johnson, Frank Lucas establishes himself as the number one importer of heroin in the Harlem district of Manhattan. He does so by buying heroin directly from the source in South East Asia and he comes up with a unique way of importing the drugs into the United States. As a result, his product is superior to what is currently available on the street and his prices are lower. His alliance with the New York Mafia ensures his position. It is also the story of a dedicated and honest policeman, Richie Roberts, who heads up a joint narcotics task force with the Federal government. Based on a true story.
Plot Keywords: drug trafficking, ghetto, nipples, mobster, mob boss, gangster, criminal syndicate ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The story of Ray Charles, music legend. Told in his adult live with flashbacks to his youth we see his humble origins in Florida, his turbulent childhood which included losing his brother and then his sight, his rise as pianist in a touring band, his writing his own songs and running his own band and then stardom. Also includes his addiction to drugs and its affect on his working life and family life.
Plot Keywords: based on true story, drug addict, civil rights, concert, male female relationship, dream, racial discrimination ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Biograpical epic of Malcolm X, the legendary African American leader. Born Malcolm Little, his father (a Garveyite Baptist minister) was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. Malcolm became a gangster, and while in jail discovered the Nation of Islam writings of Elijah Muhammad. He preaches the teachings when let out of jail, but later on goes on a pilgrimage to the city of Mecca, there he converts to the original Islamic religion and becomes a Sunni Muslim and changes his name to El-Hajj Malik Al-Shabazz. He is assassinated on February 21, 1965 and dies a Muslim martyr.
Plot Keywords: islam, african american, cult film, blaxploitation, based on autobiography, assassination, racism ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Marshall, Texas, described by James Farmer, Jr. as "the last city to surrender after the Civil War," is home to Wiley College, where, in 1935-36, inspired by the Harlem Renaissance and his clandestine work as a union organizer, Professor Melvin Tolson coaches the debate team to a nearly-undefeated season that sees the first debate between U.S. students from white and Negro colleges and ends with an invitation to face Harvard University's national champions. The team of four, which includes a female student and a very young James Farmer, is tested in a crucible heated by Jim Crow, sexism, a lynch mob, an arrest and near riot, a love affair, jealousy, and a national radio audience.
Plot Keywords: student, based on true story, black american, professor, debate, rifle, gun ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: John McClane is now almost a full-blown alcoholic and is suspended from the NYPD. But when a bomb goes off in the Bonwit Teller Department Store the police go insane trying to figure out what's going on. Soon, a man named Simon calls and asks for McClane. Simon tells Inspector Walter Cobb that McClane is going to play a game called "Simon Says". He says that McClane is going to do the tasks he assigns him. If not, he'll set off another bomb. With the help of a Harlem electrician, John McClane must race all over New York trying to figure out the frustrating puzzles that the crafty terrorist gives him. But when a bomb goes off in a subway station right by the Federal Reserve (the biggest gold storage in the world) things start to get heated.
Plot Keywords: knocked out, english subtitles in original, evil man, opening action scene, two man army, revolver, shoulder holster ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: For decades, Diana Vreeland was one of the leading authorities in fashion through eccentric self-taught skill and a bold stylistic audacity. This film guides you through this fashion pioneer's long career from her youth in Paris until she became a leading magazine fashion columnist and editor. In this medium, Vreeland challenged its preconceptions to present a new definition of beauty and vivaciousness where nice clothes were just the beginning for something deeper. Even when that vocation ended, Vreeland managed to gain a new museum profession to present clothing's history in her own inimitable way.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
Plot Keywords: archive footage, money, wealth, harlem manhattan new york city, celebrity, model, nudity ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Art Kane, now deceased, coordinated a group photograph of all the top jazz musicians in NYC in the year 1958, for a piece in Esquire magazine. Just about every jazz musician at the time showed up for the photo shoot which took place in front of a brownstone near the 125th street station. The documentary compiles interviews of many of the musicians in the photograph to talk about the day of the photograph, and it shows film footage taken that day by Milt Hinton and his wife.—Daren Gill
Plot Keywords: photograph, african american, harlem manhattan new york city, new york city, manhattan new york city, f rated, jazz ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Harry Angel has a new case, to find a man called Johnny Favourite. Except things aren't quite that simple and Johnny doesn't want to be found. Let's just say that amongst the period detail and beautiful scenery, it all gets really really nasty.
Plot Keywords: flashback, devil worship, bathtub, lust, teenage girl, serial killer, female rear nudity ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In Harlem, 1987. Sixteen year old Claireece Jones - who goes by her middle name Precious - is illiterate and overweight. She is pregnant with her second child, both children fathered by her biological father, who has continually raped her since she was a child, but who she doesn't see otherwise. Her infant daughter, Mongo - such named since she has Down Syndrome - lives with Precious' grandmother. Precious lives with her mother Mary, who abuses Precious both physically and emotionally. Mary does nothing but smoke, watch television and collect welfare through fraud (as she doesn't ever look for a job) and believes that education does nothing for Precious, who she would rather also collect welfare if only to bring money into the household. To escape her life, Precious often daydreams of herself in glamorous situations. Because of her current pregnancy, Precious' principal transfers her into an alternative school. In dealing with the school's sympathetic teacher Miss Blu Rain, Precious ...
Plot Keywords: lesbian couple, lesbian, bad mother, teacher student relationship, female protagonist, mother daughter relationship, black american ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The story runs in the 1910's New York. Coalhouse Walker Jr. is a black piano player. He has won fame and fortune playing with a jazz band. Some white men do not like this situation, and one day they assault him and spoil his brand new car. Walker tries by all means to get justice, without an answer...—Michel Rudoy <mdrc@hp9000a1.uam.mx>
Plot Keywords: racial slur, immigration, husband wife relationship, fireman, director, atlantic city new jersey, anarchist ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: African-American teen sweethearts Fonny and Tish are ripped apart when Fonny is wrongly arrested for the rape of a Puerto Rican woman because of the machinations of a racist cop. While seeking justice for Fonny, a pregnant Tish relies on her Harlem community, including her sister, mother Sharon and future mother-in-law.
Plot Keywords: prison, extreme close up, pregnancy, 1970s, based on novel, false accusation, sculptor ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Loring "Red" Nichols is a cornet-playing country boy who goes to New York in the 1920s full of musical ambition and principles. He gets a job playing in Wil Paradise's band, but quits to pursue his dream of playing Dixieland jazz. He forms the "Five Pennies" which features his wife, Bobbie, as vocalist. At the peak of his fame, Red and Bobbie's daughter, Dorothy, develops polio. Red quits the music business to move to Los Angeles where the climate is better for Dorothy. As Dorothy becomes a young teen, she learns of her father's musical past, and he is persuaded to open a small nightclub which is failing until some noted names from his past come to help out.—Ray Hamel <hamel@primate.wisc.edu>
Plot Keywords: 1920s, drunkenness, father daughter relationship, friendship, guilt, harlem manhattan new york city, hospital ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: 4 Harlem teens, Q, Bishop, Raheem and Steel, are out skipping school one day when they find out an old friend was killed in a shootout at a bar. After this, Bishop tells his friends that they have no respect, or juice. To get some, they rob a corner grocery store, but things take an unexpected turn. Only the four friends know what happened, but one of them is out for himself.
Plot Keywords: blaxploitation, gay slur, f word, black comedy, machismo, 1990s, brooklyn bridge ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A drama that looks back on the Harlem Renaissance from the perspective of an elderly, black writer who meets a gay teenager in a New York homeless shelter.
Plot Keywords: gay, intergenerational friendship, older man younger man relationship, repetition in title, harlem manhattan new york city, homosexual, manhattan new york city ...
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