Drama
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
(2009)
William M. Finkelstein (screenplay)
3 wins & 9 nominations.
After Katrina, police sergeant Terence McDonagh rescues a prisoner, hurts his back in the process and earns a promotion to lieutenant plus an addiction to cocaine and painkillers. Six months later, a family is murdered over drugs; Terence runs the investigation. His drug-using prostitute girlfriend, his alcoholic father's dog, run-ins with two old women and a well-connected john, gambling losses, a nervous young witness, and thefts of police property put Terence's job and then his life in danger. He starts seeing things. He wants a big score to get out from under mounting debts, so he joins forces with drug dealers. The murders remain unsolved. A bad lieutenant gets worse.
Barton Fink
(1991)
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Nominated for 3 Oscars. Another 13 wins & 12 nominations.
In 1941, New York intellectual playwright Barton Fink comes to Hollywood to write a Wallace Beery wrestling picture. Staying in the eerie Hotel Earle, Barton develops severe writer's block. His neighbor, jovial insurance salesman Charlie Meadows, tries to help, but Barton continues to struggle as a bizarre sequence of events distracts him even further from his task.
Battle Royale
(2000)
Koushun Takami (novel), Kenta Fukasaku (screenplay)
7 wins & 8 nominations.
Forty-two students, three days, one deserted Island: welcome to Battle Royale. A group of ninth-grade students from a Japanese high school have been forced by legislation to compete in a Battle Royale. The students are each given a bag with a randomly selected weapon and a few rations of food and water and sent off to kill each other in a no-holds-barred (with a few minor rules) game to the death, which means that the students have three days to kill each other until one survives--or they all die. The movie focuses on a few of the students and how they cope. Some decide to play the game like the psychotic Kiriyama or the sexual Mitsuko, while others like the heroes of the movie--Shuya, Noriko, and Kawada--are trying to find a way to get off the Island without violence. However, as the numbers dwell down lower and lower on an hourly basis, is there any way for Shuya and his classmates to survive?
Battle Royale II
(2003)
Kenta Fukasaku, Norio Kida, Koushun Takami (characters)
2 wins & 1 nomination.
Three years after the failure of the last BR program, a second act is forged and a class of students are sent to an island with one objective: kill international terrorist Shuya Nanahara.
Before I Go to Sleep
(2014)
Rowan Joffe, S.J. Watson (based on the novel by)
N/A
A woman wakes up every day, remembering nothing as a result of a traumatic accident in her past. One day, new terrifying truths emerge that force her to question everyone around her.
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
(2007)
Kelly Masterson
17 wins & 25 nominations.
Needing extra cash, two brothers conspire to pull off the perfect, victimless crime. No guns, no violence, no problem. But when an accomplice ignores the rules and crosses the line, his actions trigger a series of events in which no one is left unscathed.
Berberian Sound Studio
(2012)
Peter Strickland
16 wins & 15 nominations.
A sound engineer's work for an Italian horror studio becomes a terrifying case of life imitating art.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
(2014)
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Armando Bo, Raymond Carver (play)
Won 4 Oscars. Another 179 wins & 264 nominations.
Actor Riggan Thomson is most famous for his movie role from over twenty years ago of the comic book superhero Birdman in the blockbuster movie of the same name and its two equally popular sequels. His association with the role took over his life, where Birdman is more renowned than "Riggan Thomson" the actor. Now past middle age, Riggan is trying to establish himself as a true artist by writing, directing, starring in and co-producing with his best friend Jake what is his Broadway debut, an adaptation of Raymond Carver's story, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. He is staking his name, what little artistic reputation that comes with that name and his life savings on the project, and as such will do anything needed to make the play a success. As he and Jake go through the process of the previews toward opening night, Riggan runs into several issues: needing to find a replacement for the integral supporting male role the night before the first preview; hiring the talented Broadway name, Mike Shiner, for that role, Mike who ends up being difficult to work with and who may end up overshadowing Riggan in the play; having to deal potentially with a lawsuit based on one of his actions to ensure success; needing to be there for his daughter, Sam, who he has hired to be his production assistant and who has just come out of drug rehab; and pleasing the New York Times critic, Tabitha Dickinson, who wants to use any excuse to give the play a scathing review which in turn would close the show after the opening night performance. But Riggan's biggest problem may be his own insecurities, which are manifested by him constantly hearing what he believes to be the truth from the voice of his Birdman character, who he often battles both internally and externally.
Biutiful
(2010)
Alejandro G. Iñárritu (screenplay), Alejandro G. Iñárritu (based on a story by), Nicolás Giacobone (screenplay), Armando Bo (screenplay)
Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 18 wins & 45 nominations.
This is the story of Uxbal, a man living in this world, but able to see his death, which guides his every move.
Black Death
(2010)
Dario Poloni (screenplay)
3 wins & 7 nominations.
Set during the time of the first outbreak of bubonic plague in England, a young monk is tasked with learning the truth about reports of people being brought back to life, a mission that pulls him toward a village ruler who has made a dark pact with evil forces.
Black Hawk Down
(2001)
Mark Bowden (book), Ken Nolan (screenplay)
Won 2 Oscars. Another 7 wins & 37 nominations.
Action/war drama based on the best-selling book detailing a near-disastrous mission in Somalia on October 3, 1993. On this date nearly 100 U.S. Army Rangers, commanded by Capt. Mike Steele, were dropped by helicopter deep into the capital city of Mogadishu to capture two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord. This lead to a large and drawn-out firefight between the Rangers and hundreds of Somali gunmen, leading to the destruction of two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters. This film focuses on the heroic efforts of various Rangers to get to the downed black hawks, centering on Sgt. Eversmann, leading the Ranger unit Chalk Four to the first black hawk crash site, Warrant Officer Durant who was captured after being the only survivor of the second black hawk crash, as well as many others who were involved.
Black Mass
(2015)
Mark Mallouk (screenplay), Jez Butterworth (screenplay), Dick Lehr (based on the book by), Gerard O'Neill (based on the book by)
5 wins & 20 nominations.
Based on a true story of James "Whitey" Bulger, an Irish Mob godfather and FBI informant who had a "secret trading" deal with his brother, William "Billy" Bulger, a state senator and a Boston public figure, and John Connolly, an FBI agent. They planned to take down the Italian mob and mafia in Boston, which went awry and things turned massively violent. When the credence for each other began fading out, drug dealing, murders, and extortion started to rise, and forced the FBI's Boston office to confirm that Whitey Bulger was one of the most notorious criminals in US history and also one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List criminals.
Black Pond
(2011)
Tom Kingsley (story), Will Sharpe (story), Will Sharpe
Nominated for 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 1 win & 4 nominations.
An ordinary British family and their friend are accused of murder when a stranger dies at their dinner table. Black Pond is an existential comedy drama starring two-time BAFTA winner Chris ...
Blade Runner 2049
(2017)
Hampton Fancher (screenplay by), Michael Green (screenplay by), Hampton Fancher (story by), Philip K. Dick (based on characters from the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by)
Won 2 Oscars. Another 95 wins & 154 nominations.
Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.
Blue Velvet
(1986)
David Lynch (screenplay)
Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 18 wins & 16 nominations.
The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child.
Bowling for Columbine
(2002)
Michael Moore
Won 1 Oscar. Another 35 wins & 10 nominations.
The United States of America is notorious for its astronomical number of people killed by firearms for a developed nation without a civil war. With his signature sense of angry humor, activist filmmaker Michael Moore sets out to explore the roots of this bloodshed. In doing so, he learns that the conventional answers of easy availability of guns, violent national history, violent entertainment and even poverty are inadequate to explain this violence when other cultures share those same factors without the equivalent carnage. In order to arrive at a possible explanation, Michael Moore takes on a deeper examination of America's culture of fear, bigotry and violence in a nation with widespread gun ownership. Furthermore, he seeks to investigate and confront the powerful elite political and corporate interests fanning this culture for their own unscrupulous gain.
Brazil
(1985)
Terry Gilliam (screenplay), Tom Stoppard (screenplay), Charles McKeown (screenplay)
Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 8 wins & 3 nominations.
A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state.
Brick
(2005)
Rian Johnson
11 wins & 22 nominations.
The lonely teenager Brendan finds his former girlfriend Emily dead in the entrance of a tunnel of sewage and recalls her phone call two days ago, when she said to him that she was in trouble. Brendan, who still loved Emily, met bad elements of his high-school trying to contact her, and when he succeeded, she told him that she was OK. He hides her body in the tunnel and decides to investigate the meaning and connection of four words, including "brick" and "pin", that Emily told him to find who killed her. Using the support of his nerd friend Brain, he successively meets the small time drug dealers Kara, Dode, Brad Bramish, Laura and Tugger, to reach the teenager powerful drug dealer The Pin. Slowly, Brendan unravels the motives why Emily was killed and plots a revenge.
Bride of Frankenstein
(1935)
Mary Shelley (suggested by: the original story written in 1816 by), William Hurlbut (adapted by), John L. Balderston (adapted by), William Hurlbut (screenplay)
Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 2 wins.
Dr. Frankenstein and his monster both turn out to be alive, not killed as previously believed. Dr. Frankenstein wants to get out of the evil experiment business, but when a mad scientist, Dr. Pretorius, kidnaps his wife, Dr. Frankenstein agrees to help him create a new creature, a woman, to be the companion of the monster.
Bridge of Spies
(2015)
Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Won 1 Oscar. Another 29 wins & 88 nominations.
During the Cold War, an American lawyer is recruited to defend an arrested Soviet spy in court, and then help the CIA facilitate an exchange of the spy for the Soviet captured American U2 spy plane pilot, Francis Gary Powers.