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Best Detroit, michigan Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of detroit, michigan cinema — measured across 1,053 indexed frames from 12 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Detroit, michigan films over-index on handgun, tie and leather jacket — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    No Sudden Move (2021)

    Steven SoderberghDP Steven SoderberghIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    A group of criminals are brought together under mysterious circumstances and have to work together to uncover what's really going on when their simple job goes completely sideways.

  2. 2

    RoboCop (2014)

    José PadilhaDP Lula CarvalhoIMDb 6.1TMDB 5.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    The year is 2028 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Overseas, their drones have been used by the military for years - and it's meant billions for OmniCorp's bottom line. Now OmniCorp wants to bring their controversial technology to the home front, and they see a golden opportunity to do it. When Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) - a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit - is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp sees their chance for a part-man, part-robot police officer. OmniCorp envisions a RoboCop in every city and even more billions for their shareholders, but they never counted on one thing: there is still a man inside the machine pursuing justice.

  3. 3

    The Irishman (2019)

    Martin ScorseseDP Rodrigo PrietoIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran is a man with a lot on his mind. The former labor union high official and hitman, learned to kill serving in Italy during the Second World War. He now looks back on his life and the hits that defined his mob career, maintaining connections with the Bufalino crime family. In particular, the part he claims to have played in the disappearance of his life-long friend, Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who mysteriously vanished in late July 1975 at the age of 62.

  4. 4

    Presumed Innocent (1990)

    Alan J. PakulaDP Gordon WillisIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    Rozat Sabich - Rusty to most that know him, even in formal circumstances - is the Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Kindle County, Illinois. His wife, Barbara Sabich, has been struggling with focus on completing her Ph.D. dissertation in Mathemetics - a thus far ten year process - she who nonetheless is applying for a college teaching position. They are generally in a loving, supportive marriage, Barbara who seems to have gotten over Rusty's infidelity with his colleague Carolyn Polhemus, an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney. Carolyn is ambitious, she who, in part, used Rusty to try and climb up the ladder. Barbara will still throw the issue of Carolyn in his face whenever there are problems between the two. Rusty and Carolyn's affair is unknown to others in their personal and professional circles. Rusty is handed the most personal case of his career when his boss and mentor, Chief Prosecuting Attorney Raymond Horgan, assigns him the case to discover who killed Carolyn, her dead body found in her apartment in what looks initially to be a violent rape, with Carolyn eventually strangled and no sign of forced entry, leading to the belief her killer was whoever her lover or possibly someone she prosecuted. Raymond, who is in a difficult reelection campaign, wants a quick resolution to the investigation, as "finding the killer" will greatly increase his chances of getting reelected. Rusty tries to dissuade Raymond from giving him the case because of the affair of which Raymond is unaware, with Rusty eventually having no choice but to accept barring disclosure of the affair. As Rusty proceeds with the investigation, he takes steps to hide the affair largely to protect Barbara and their adolescent son, Nat Sabich. Those measures come back to bite him when they and other evidence collected by the police lead to him being charged for Carolyn's murder. Rusty hires Sandy Stern, one of his toughest adversaries in a number of previous cases. During the court proceedings, many involved do whatever they can protect their own interest regardless of the truth. Beyond Rusty being convicted or acquitted, a question thus becomes if the truth matters or if the murderer will ever be discovered.

  5. 5

    Narc (2002)

    Joe CarnahanDP Alex NepomniaschyIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    An undercover narc dies, the investigation stalls, so the Detroit P.D. brings back Nick Tellis, fired 18-months ago when a stray bullet hits a pregnant woman. Tellis teams with Henry Oak, a friend of the dead narc and an aggressive cop constantly under the scrutiny of internal affairs. They follow leads, informants turn up dead, Nick's wife is unhappy he's back on the street, Henry's protective of the dead cop's wife. Nick reads and re-reads the case file, broods, watches Oak's heavy-handed style, sometimes joining in. The brass want to close out the case, Nick and Henry stay on it, and bits of evidence point them to an auto body shop. What actually happened; will Nick ever know?

  6. 6

    The Crow (1994)

    Alex ProyasDP Dariusz WolskiIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    A poetic guitarist Eric Draven is brought back to life by a crow a year after he and his fiancée are murdered. The crow guides him through the land of the living, and leads him to his killers: knife thrower Tin-tin, drugetic Funboy, car buff T-Bird, and the unsophisticated Skank. One by one, Eric gives these thugs a taste of their own medicine. However their leader Top-Dollar, a world-class crime lord who will dispatch his enemies with a Japanese sword and joke about it later, will soon learn the legend of the crow and the secret to the vigilante's invincibility.

  7. 7

    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.

  8. 8

    Detroit (2017)

    Kathryn BigelowDP Barry AckroydIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    A police raid in Detroit in 1967 results in one of the largest RACE riots in United States history. The story is centred around the Algiers Motel incident, which occurred in Detroit, Michigan on July 25, 1967, during the racially charged 12th Street Riot. It involves the death of three black men and the brutal beatings of nine other people: seven black men and two white women.

  9. 9

    Gran Torino (2008)

    Clint EastwoodDP Tom SternIMDb 8.1TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is a widower who holds onto his prejudices despite the changes in his Michigan neighborhood and the world around him. Kowalski is a grumpy, tough-minded, unhappy old man who can't get along with either his kids or his neighbors. He is a Korean War veteran whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino he keeps in mint condition. When his neighbor Thao Lor (Bee Vang), a young Hmong teenager under pressure from his gang member cousin, tries to steal his Gran Torino, Kowalski sets out to reform the youth. Drawn against his will into the life of Thao's family, Kowalski is soon taking steps to protect them from the gangs that infest their neighborhood.

  10. 10

    Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

    Jim JarmuschDP Yorick Le SauxIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    Set against the romantic desolation of Detroit and Tangiers, an underground musician, deeply depressed by the direction of human activities, reunites with his resilient and enigmatic lover. Their love story has already endured several centuries at least, but their debauched idyll is soon disrupted by her wild and uncontrollable younger sister. Can these wise but fragile outsiders continue to survive as the modern world collapses around them?

What detroit, michigan films are made of

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

  • handgun4.0×
  • tie3.2×
  • leather jacket2.4×
  • neon sign2.3×
  • wood paneling2.3×
  • necktie2.2×
  • suit jacket2.2×
  • fedora2.1×

How detroit, michigan 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 detroit, michigan from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 49%low keyvs 39% baseline

What breaks the pattern

It Follows (2015) 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 1,053 frames from 12 films carrying the detroit, michigan 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/detroit-michigan

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