Baraka (1992), Running on Empty (1988), Zodiac (2007), Moneyball (2011), Fruitvale Station (2013), Blindspotting (2018), Tape (2001), Black Panther (2018) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Oakland California movies.
Storyline: Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on "where," but on "what's there." It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred Balinese Hindu men perform kecak, the monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: trippy, environment, holocaust, time lapse photography, human skull, fast motion scene, canyon ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The Popes are a family who haven't been able to use their real identity for years. In the late sixties, the parents set a weapons lab afire in an effort to hinder the government's Vietnam war campaign. Ever since then, the Popes have been on the run with the authorities never far behind. Today, their eldest son wants a life of his own although he is aware that would mean that his parents would either get caught or he will never see them again.
Plot Keywords: teenage romance, fugitive, music teacher, piano, aspiring musician, fleeing, fire ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A serial killer in the San Francisco Bay Area taunts police with his letters and cryptic messages. We follow the investigators and reporters in this lightly fictionalized account of the true 1970's case as they search for the murderer, becoming obsessed with the case. Based on Robert Graysmith's book, the movie's focus is the lives and careers of the detectives and newspaper people.
Plot Keywords: serial killer, year 1970, year 1969, investigation, reporter, female stockinged feet, female stockinged legs ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Oakland A's GM Billy Beane is handicapped with the lowest salary constraint in baseball. If he ever wants to win the World Series, Billy must find a competitive advantage. Billy is about to turn baseball on its ear when he uses statistical data to analyze and place value on the players he picks for the team.
Plot Keywords: baseball, voice over, 2000s, 1980s, 1970s, flashback, professional athlete ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: This is the true story of Oscar, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who wakes up on the morning of December 31, 2008 and feels something in the air. Not sure what it is, he takes it as a sign to get a head start on his resolutions: being a better son to his mother, whose birthday falls on New Year's Eve, being a better partner to his girlfriend, who he hasn't been completely honest with as of late, and being a better father to T, their beautiful 4 year old daughter. He starts out well, but as the day goes on, he realizes that change is not going to come easy. He crosses paths with friends, family, and strangers, each exchange showing us that there is much more to Oscar than meets the eye. But it would be his final encounter of the day, with police officers at the Fruitvale BART station that would shake the Bay Area to its very core, and cause the entire nation to be witnesses to the story of Oscar Grant.
Plot Keywords: gay, friendship, brother sister relationship, telephone, telephone call, unemployment, loss of job ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Collin (Daveed Diggs) must make it through his final three days of probation for a chance at a new beginning. He and his troublemaking childhood best friend, Miles (Rafael Casal), work as movers and are forced to watch their old neighborhood become a trendy spot in the rapidly gentrifying Bay Area. When a life-altering event causes Collin to miss his mandatory curfew, the two men struggle to maintain their friendship as the changing social landscape exposes their differences. Explores the intersection of race and class set against the backdrop of Oakland.
Plot Keywords: race relations, car alarm, sailboat, football, photo album, reference to fred astaire, abandoned house ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Twenty-eight year olds Jon and Vince, friends from high school, meet in Vince's seedy motel room in Lansing, Michigan. Jon had invited Vince to town from his current residence of Oakland to help celebrate the fact of his latest movie, independently shot, having a screening at the local film festival the following day, the first public screening of one of his movies. While Jon seems to have grown up in having this career path and a nice room in an upscale hotel provided by the festival, Vince, who, in preparing for the evening has already had a few beer by the time Jon arrives, hasn't, he who deals drugs for a living with no change on the horizon, and his girlfriend, who was supposed to accompany him to Lansing, having broken up with him, indirectly because of his immaturity. This divergence quickly becomes an issue of contention between the two. But as Vince's behavior is seemingly more and more substance affected, he having broken out the weed and coke, his intention with Jon may be ...
Plot Keywords: single set production, real time, reunion, secret, revenge, minimal cast, drug use ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: After the events of Captain America: Civil War, Prince T'Challa returns home to the reclusive, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda to serve as his country's new king. However, T'Challa soon finds that he is challenged for the throne from factions within his own country. When two foes conspire to destroy Wakanda, the hero known as Black Panther must team up with C.I.A. agent Everett K. Ross and members of the Dora Milaje, Wakandan special forces, to prevent Wakanda from being dragged into a world war.
Plot Keywords: africa, marvel cinematic universe, marvel comics, based on comic book, blaxploitation, superhero, king ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: After a terrible air disaster, survivor Max Klein emerges a changed person. Unable to connect to his former life or to wife Laura, he feels godlike and invulnerable. When psychologist Bill Perlman is unable to help Max, he has Max meet another survivor, Carla Rodrigo, who is racked with grief and guilt since her baby died in the crash which she and Max survived.
Plot Keywords: based on novel, cornfield, dance teacher, desert, dream sequence, faith, father son relationship ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In an alternate version of Oakland, Cassius Green gets a telemarketing job and finds the commission paid job a dispiriting struggle as a black man selling to predominately white people over the phone. That changes when a veteran advises him to use his "white voice," and the attitude behind it to make himself more appealing to customers. With a bizarrely high-pitched accent, Cassius becomes a success even as his colleagues form a union to improve their miserable jobs. Regardless, Cassius finds himself promoted a "Power Caller" selling the most morally abhorrent but lucrative products and services as his connection to his girlfriend and colleagues fades away. However, Cassius' conscience arises anew as he finds himself in the midst of his boss' bizarre world of condescending bigoted decadence and his sinister plans to create the perfect subservient work force with Cassius' help.
Plot Keywords: absurdism, oakland california, slave labor, social satire, satire, labor strike, art gallery ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Goldie returns from five years at the state pen and winds up King of the pimping game. Trouble comes in the form of two corrupt white cops and a crime lord who wants him to return to the small time.
Plot Keywords: poliziottesco, black cop, racial slur, street life, death, corruption, sadism ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Steve Everett (Clint Eastwood), Oakland Tribune journalist with a passion for women and alcohol, is given the coverage of the upcoming execution of murderer Frank Louis Beachum (Isaiah Washington). His attractive colleague Michelle Ziegler (Mary McCormack) died in a car accident the night before. Bob Findley (Denis Leary), Steve's boss and husband to Steve's current affair, wants him dead and gone as soon as possible. When Steve stumbles across the possibility of Frank Louis Beachum being innocently on death row, Bob feels his time to have come. Now Steve only has a few hours left to prove the innocence of Frank and to be right with this theory, as he definitely will be history if he's not.
Plot Keywords: reporter, flirtation, governor, lawyer, locket, panties, police chase ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: At 16, Nick Twisp is wry about his teen funk: he lives in Oakland with his sex-addled mother; his father's child support is her meal ticket. While camping in Ukiah, Nick meets Sheeni: for him, it's love at first sight. Nick has to figure out how to get his father a job in Ukiah, then how to get sent to live with his father, then how to get close to Sheeni, whose religious parents may want her sent away from temptation to a boarding school. There's also Sheeni's all-American boyfriend to contend with. Overwhelmed by the challenges, Nick's about to give up when he conjures an alter ego who whispers revolt into his ear. Nick is not altogether hapless, but can this end well?
Plot Keywords: coming of age, boyfriend girlfriend relationship, based on novel, obsession, masturbation, legs, f word ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 1999, the Janjira nuclear plant was mysteriously destroyed with most hands lost including supervisor Joe Brody's colleague and wife, Sandra. Years later, Joe's son, Ford, a US Navy ordnance disposal officer, must go to Japan to help his estranged father who obsessively searches for the truth of the incident. In doing so, father and son discover the disaster's secret cause on the wreck's very grounds. This enables them to witness the reawakening of a terrible threat to all of Humanity, which is made all the worse with a second secret revival elsewhere. Against this cataclysm, the only hope for the world may be Godzilla, but the challenge for the King of the Monsters will be great even as Humanity struggles to understand the destructive ally they have.
Plot Keywords: radiation, creature, kaiju, disaster, nuclear power plant, combat, professor ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In this modern day Romeo and Juliet, kung fu action star Jet Li plays Romeo to hip-hop singer, Aaliyah Haughton's Juliet. Li is an ex-cop investigating the murder of his brother, who had ties with the Chinese mafia in America. Aaliyah plays the daughter of the American mob boss. Neither side approves of their romance, so, obviously, kung fu action ensues, with a soundtrack by Aaliyah.
Plot Keywords: police car, death of brother, crab, corrupt cop, brother sister relationship, brother brother relationship, bomb ...
Movie Details Click Here!