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Best Cocaine Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of cocaine cinema — measured across 1,659 indexed frames from 26 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Cocaine films over-index on neon light, cigarette and neon sign — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas (1998)

    Terry GilliamDP Nicola PecoriniIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo drive a red convertible across the Mojave desert to Las Vegas with a suitcase full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. As their consumption of drugs increases at an alarming rate, the stoned duo trash their hotel room and fear legal repercussions. Duke begins to drive back to L.A., but after an odd run-in with a cop, he returns to Sin City and continues his wild drug binge.

  2. 2

    True Romance (1993)

    Tony ScottDP Jeffrey L. KimballIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    In Detroit, Clarence Worley goes to the movie theater alone on the day of his birthday to watch some movies. The gorgeous Alabama Whitman accidentally drops her popcorn on Clarence and they watch the movie together. Later they go to a diner for pie, and end up having a one night stand. In the morning, Alabama confesses that she is a call-girl hired to spend the night with him, but she has fallen in love with him. In the morning they get married and Clarence goes to the club where she worked to bring her some clothes. However, her pimp Drexl Spivey and his partner beat up Clarence and he reacts by killing them both. Clarence asks for Alabama's suitcase with her clothes and the other girls mistakenly give another one with cocaine. When Clarence discovers the mistake, he decides to travel with Alabama to the house of his friend, the aspiring actor Dick Ritchie, to sell the drug and travel to Mexico. He visits his father Clifford Worley and gives his address to him. But the Sicilian Mafia is the owner of the drug and a group of killers are sent to hunt down Clarnece and Alabama.

  3. 3

    Casino (1995)

    Martin ScorseseDP Robert RichardsonIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    This Martin Scorsese film depicts the Janus-like quality of Las Vegas--it has a glittering, glamorous face, as well as a brutal, cruel one. Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro, mobsters who move to Las Vegas to make their mark, live and work in this paradoxical world. Seen through their eyes, each as a foil to the other, the details of mob involvement in the casinos of the 1970s and '80s are revealed. Ace is the smooth operator of the Tangiers casino, while Nicky is his boyhood friend and tough strongman, robbing and shaking down the locals. However, they each have a tragic flaw--Ace falls in love with a hustler, Ginger, and Nicky falls into an ever-deepening spiral of drugs and violence.

  4. 4

    Triple 9 (2016)

    John HillcoatDP Nicolas KarakatsanisIMDb 6.3TMDB 6.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    In TRIPLE 9, a crew of dirty cops are blackmailed by the Russian mob to execute a virtually impossible heist. The only way to pull it off is to manufacture a 999, police code for "officer down". Their plan is turned upside down when the unsuspecting rookie they set up to die foils the attack, triggering a breakneck, action-packed finale filled with double-crosses, greed and revenge.

  5. 5

    The Last Boy Scout (1991)

    Tony ScottDP Ward RussellIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    Somewhere in Los Angeles, the city of broken dreams, a stripper is murdered. Now, the private detective she had hired and her ex-footballer boyfriend are going to find her murderer... if they don't kill each other first. But the more they dig, the deeper they become enmeshed in a web of extortion, blackmail and corrupt politics hidden beneath the surface of professional football.

  6. 6

    Boogie Nights

    Paul Thomas AndersonDP Robert ElswitIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Set in 1977, back when sex was safe, pleasure was a business and business was booming, idealistic porn producer Jack Horner aspires to elevate his craft to an art form. Horner discovers Eddie Adams, a hot young talent working as a busboy in a nightclub, and welcomes him into the extended family of movie-makers, misfits and hangers-on that are always around. Adams' rise from nobody to a celebrity adult entertainer is meteoric, and soon the whole world seems to know his porn alter ego, "Dirk Diggler". Now, when disco and drugs are in vogue, fashion is in flux and the party never seems to stop, Adams' dreams of turning sex into stardom are about to collide with cold, hard reality.

  7. 7

    Scarface (1983)

    Brian De PalmaDP John A. AlonzoIMDb 8.3TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    Tony Montana manages to leave Cuba during the Mariel exodus of 1980. He finds himself in a Florida refugee camp but his friend Manny has a way out for them: undertake a contract killing and arrangements will be made to get a green card. He's soon working for drug dealer Frank Lopez and shows his mettle when a deal with Colombian drug dealers goes bad. He also brings a new level of violence to Miami. Tony is protective of his younger sister but his mother knows what he does for a living and disowns him. Tony is impatient and wants it all however, including Frank's empire and his mistress Elvira Hancock. Once at the top however, Tony's outrageous actions make him a target and everything comes crumbling down.

  8. 8

    Carlito’s Way (1993)

    Brian De PalmaDP Stephen H. BurumIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    A Puerto Rican ex-con pledges to stay away from his former drug dealing ways but finds himself being dragged back by his past connections and the naive machinations of his lawyer and best friend. Hoping to raise enough money to get away from New York, Carlito Brigante takes on the job of running a nightclub, renews an affair with a dancer but old associates and old instincts suck him back into a world of violence and mistrust.

  9. 9

    9 Songs (2004)

    Michael WinterbottomDP Marcel ZyskindIMDb 4.7TMDB 5.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.

  10. 10

    Mayhem (2017)

    Joe LynchDP Steve GainerIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Mayhem tells the story of a virus that infects a corporate law office on the day attorney Derek Cho (Yeun) is framed by a co-worker and wrongfully fired. The infection is capable of making people act out their wildest impulses. Trapped in the quarantined building, our hero is forced to savagely fight tooth and nail for not only his job but his life.

What cocaine films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a cocaine frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — neon light is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • neon light4.2×
  • cigarette3.4×
  • neon sign2.4×
  • blazer2.4×
  • blood2.4×
  • telephone2.3×
  • sunglasses2.3×
  • mirror2.2×

How cocaine films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate cocaine from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 11%low anglevs 5% baseline
  • 34%naturalvs 44% baseline
  • 50%low keyvs 39% baseline
  • 52%nightvs 42% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Triple Frontier (2019) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,659 frames from 26 films carrying the cocaine label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/cocaine

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