The Green Mile (1999), A Face in the Crowd (1957), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), The Help (2011), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Mississippi Burning (1988) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Southern U.s. movies.
Storyline: Jack Burden is a newspaper reporter who first hears of Willie Stark when his editor sends him to Kanoma County to cover the man. What's special about this nobody running for county treasurer? He's supposedly an honest man. Burden discovers this to be true when he sees Stark delivering a speech and having his son pass out handbills, while the local politicians do their best to intimidate him. Willie Stark is honest and brave. He's also a know-nothing hick whose schoolteacher wife has given him what little education he has. Stark loses the race for treasurer, but later makes his way through law school, becoming an idealistic attorney who fights for what is good. Someone in the governor's employ remembers Stark when the governor needs a patsy to run against him and split the vote of his rival. The fat cats underestimate Stark; but Jack Burden, Stark's biggest supporter, overestimates the man's idealism. To get where he wants to go, Willie Stark is willing to crack a few eggs - which ...
Plot Keywords: politician, governor, rise and fall, election campaign, political corruption, based on novel, ambition ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In Canton, Mississippi, 10-year-old Tonya Hailey is viciously brutalized by two white racist rednecks -- James Louis "Pete" Willard and Billy Ray Cobb. Almost immediately after Tonya is found and rushed to a hospital, Pete and Billy Ray are found at a roadside bar, where they had been bragging about what they did to Tonya. Tonya's understandably distraught and enraged father, Carl Lee Hailey, remembers a case from a year ago, when four white men raped an African-American girl in a nearby town, and got acquitted. Carl is determined to not let that happen in this case. While deputy Dwayne Powell Looney is escorting Pete and Billy Ray up a flight of stairs to a court room, Carl emerges from the building's basement with an assault rifle, and he kills Pete and Billy Ray for what they did to Tonya. Carl is later arrested at his house by African-American sheriff Ozzie Walls, and Carl is scheduled to be placed on trial. Despite the efforts of the NAACP and local African-American leaders to ...
Plot Keywords: title spoken by character, infidelity, redemption, righteous rage, tragedy, courtroom, bigot ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In one of her most renowned roles, Bette Davis portrays Julie Marsden, a spoiled Southern belle who risks losing her suitor with her impetuous behavior. Engaged to successful banker Preston Dillard, Julie pushes him away with her arrogant and contrary ways, leading to a scandalous scene at a major social event and his subsequent departure. When Preston eventually returns and Julie attempts to win him back, she discovers that it may be too late.
Plot Keywords: based on play, southern belle, american civil war, 19th century, selfishness, love, civil war ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: John Sayles' murder-mystery explores interpersonal and interracial tensions in Rio County, Texas. Sam Deeds is the local sheriff who is called to investigate a 40-year-old skeleton found in the desert....As Sam delves deeper into the town's dark secrets, he begins to learn more about his father, the legendary former sheriff Buddy Deeds, who replaced the corrupt Charlie Wade. While Sam puzzles out the long-past events surrounding the mystery corpse, he also longs to rekindle a romance with his old high-school flame. Sayles' complex characters are brought together as the tightly woven plot finally draws to its dramatic close.
Plot Keywords: neo western, father son relationship, family history, told in flashback, interracial relationship, whodunit, nonlinear timeline ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Rural Louisiana, summer of 1957, Elvis is King. At 14, Dani is coming of age. Her older sister is beautiful, smart, and off to Duke in the fall; her mom's pregnant with number four (Dad wants a son), and Dad's pretty strict. Life gets sweeter when 17-year-old Court Foster, his widowed mom, and two little brothers move into the vacant farm next door. Court likes Dani's high spirits and direct way, and though he has a man's responsibilities on the farm, they go off swimming sometimes. The waters of adolescence are deeper than Dani realizes as hers and Court's feelings get jumbled. Then Mother Nature throws wrenching surprises at Dani, and she must come to terms with new emotions.
Plot Keywords: title spoken by character, puberty, swimming pool, record player, rain, funeral, chewing gum ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Living in Tiger Tail County, Mississippi, middle aged Archie Lee Meighan and nineteen year old "Baby Doll" Meighan née McCargo have been married for close to two years. Their marriage is not based on love, but each getting what they want from the other. Their marriage agreement has them consummating their marriage on her twentieth birthday, which is in three days, the act to which Baby Doll is not really looking forward. But she does taunt him and other men with her overt "baby doll" sexuality, the baby doll aspect which she fosters by sleeping in their house's nursery in a crib. Baby Doll's now deceased father allowed the marriage on the stipulation that Archie Lee provide Baby Doll financial security as displayed by the most resplendent house in the south. They currently live in a dilapidated mansion with her Aunt Rose Comfort, and although Archie Lee is making some renovations on it, he no longer has the financial means to make it what Baby Doll wants as his cotton ginning competitor, the recently arrived Sicilian Silva Vacarro who runs the cotton plantation syndicate, has effectively put him and many others in the area out of business. The Meighan's fortunes may change after Vacarro's cotton gin burns down in a case of arson. Vacarro is certain Archie Lee is the arsonist. After meeting the Meighans and learning more about their marriage, Vacarro believes the way to get what he wants is through Baby Doll. This action begins the three way battle of wills between Vacarro, Archie Lee and Baby Doll.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: southern gothic, slip the undergarment, virginity, older man younger woman relationship, erotica, father daughter relationship, horniness ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Pivoting around the lively Truvy Jones' Louisiana beauty parlour, a tightly-knit band of friends, confront griefs, loss, life's unforeseen tragedies and heartaches with what they do best: gossiping and sharing. The spirited diabetic and bride-to-be, Shelby; her always supportive mother, M'Lynn; Truvy's gawky assistant, Annelle; the city's curmudgeon, Ouiser; and the town's former first lady, Clairee, are the warm Southern belles who know how to survive life's challenges with their unwavering friendship. But when Shelby decides to conceive, things will turn upside down..
Plot Keywords: louisiana, diabetic, locker room, chick flick, wedding, female bonding, friendship between women ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Dramatizes the events in 1955-1956 in Montgomery, Alabama, when blacks boycotted public transport because they were forced to sit at the back. Odessa works as a maid for the Thompsons, and as well as she is treated, she feels it is her duty to walk to work, even if it means she is exhausted, and gets to work late.—Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au>
Plot Keywords: based on true story, 1950s, social activism, friendship, interracial friendship, race relations, racist ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in the Bathtub, a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink's tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he's no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack, temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink's health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.
Plot Keywords: community, louisiana, southern u.s., alcoholic, child protagonist, climate change, hospital ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: When the new warden comes in disguised as an inmate, he sees firsthand all the corruption and scams the guards and prison officials are running. When he reveals himself and starts to implement reforms to stop the corruption, the local business community, who had been benefiting from the scams, fights back, and the corrupt prison system starts making political trouble for the new warden.
Plot Keywords: prison, abuse of power, undercover, based on true story, male nudity, prison rape, corruption ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Navin is an idiot. He grew up in Mississippi as adopted son of a black family but on his 18th birthday he feels he wants to discover the rest of the world and sets out to St. Louis. There everyone exploits his naivety, but then a simple invention brings him a fortune.
Plot Keywords: surprise ending, coming of age, dancing, film projector, gas station, hitchhiking, knife throwing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A squad of National Guards on an isolated weekend exercise in the Louisiana swamp must fight for their lives when they anger local Cajuns by stealing their canoes. Without live ammunition and in a strange country, their experience begins to mirror the Vietnam experience.
Plot Keywords: independent film, tragedy, manhunt, rural setting, hiking, journey, travelling ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Lula's psychopathic mother goes crazy at the thought of Lula being with Sailor, who just got free from jail. Ignoring Sailor's probation, they set out for California. However their mother hires a killer to hunt down Sailor. Unaware of this, the two enjoy their journey and themselves being together... until they witness a young woman dying after a car accident - a bad omen.—Tom Zoerner <Tom.Zoerner@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Plot Keywords: domineering mother, avant garde, surrealism, violence, forbidden love, murder, black comedy ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Most everyone in town thinks that Sheriff Calder is merely a puppet of rich oil-man Val Rogers. When it is learned that local baddie Bubber Reeves has escaped prison, Rogers' son is concerned because he is having an affair with Reeves' wife. It seems many others in town feel they may have reasons to fear Reeves. Calder's aim is to bring Reeves in alive, unharmed. Calder will have to oppose the powerful Rogers on one hand and mob violence on the other, in his quest for justice.—Buxx Banner <bux572@aol.com>
Plot Keywords: escaped convict, sheriff, manhunt, racism, southern u.s., outsider, small town ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The Disciples of James Dean meet up on the anniversary of his death and mull over their lives in the present and in flashback, revealing the truth behind their complicated lives. Who is the mysterious Joanne and what's the real story behind Mona's son, James Dean Junior ?—David Gibson <djg@ukc.ac.uk>
Plot Keywords: bare chested male, texan, jukebox, rain, reference to elizabeth taylor, shrine, southern u.s. ...
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