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Best Drinking Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of drinking cinema — measured across 1,258 indexed frames from 17 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Drinking films over-index on necklace, microphone and stone wall — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

    Martin McDonaghDP Ben DavisIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them.

  2. 2

    Death Becomes Her (1992)

    Robert ZemeckisDP Dean CundeyIMDb 6.7TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1978, on Broadway, the decadent and narcissist actress Madeline Ashton is performing Songbird, based on Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. Then she receives her rival Helen Sharp, who is an aspiring writer, and her fiancee Ernest Menville, who is a plastic surgeon, in her dressing-room. Soon Menville calls off his commitment with Helen and marries Madeline. Seven years later, Helen is obese in a psychiatric hospital and obsessed in seeking revenge on Madeline. In 1992, the marriage of Madeline and Menville is finished and he is no longer a surgeon but an alcoholic caretaker. Out of the blue, they are invited to a party where Helen will release her novel Forever Young and Madeline goes to a beauty shop. The owner gives a business card of the specialist in rejuvenation Lisle Von Rhuman to her. When the envious Madeline sees Helen thin in a perfect shape, she decides to seek out Lisle and buys a potion to become young again. Further, she advises that Madeline must take care of her body. Meanwhile Helen seduces Menville and they plot a scheme to kill Madeline. When Madeline comes home, she has an argument Menville and he pushes her from the staircase. She breaks her neck but becomes a living dead. When Helen arrives at Menville's house expecting that Madeline is dead, she is murdered by Madeline. But she also becomes a living dead and they conclude they need Menville to help them to maintain their bodies. But Menville wants to leave them.

  3. 3

    Das Boot (1981)

    Wolfgang PetersenDP Jost VacanoIMDb 8.4TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    It is 1942 and the German submarine fleet is heavily engaged in the so-called "Battle of the Atlantic" to harass and destroy British shipping. With better escorts of the destroyer class, however, German U-boats have begun to take heavy losses. "Das Boot" is the story of the crew of one such U-Boat, with the film examining how these submariners maintained their professionalism as soldiers and attempted to accomplish impossible missions, all the while attempting to understand and obey the ideology of the government under which they served.

  4. 4

    Kill Your Darlings (2013)

    John KrokidasDP Reed MoranoIMDb 6.4TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    In the early 1940s, Allen Ginsberg is an English major at Columbia University, only to learn more than he bargained for. Dissatisfied by the orthodox attitudes of the school, Allen finds himself drawn to iconoclastic colleagues like Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Together, this gang would explore bold new literary ideas that would challenge the sensibilities of their time as the future Beat Generation. However, for all their creativity, their very appetites and choices lead to more serious transgressions that would mark their lives forever.

  5. 5

    Unfinished Business (2015)

    Ken ScottDP Oliver StapletonIMDb 5.4TMDB 5.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    A hard-working small business owner and his two associates travel to Europe to close the most important deal of their lives. But what began as a routine business trip goes off the rails in every imaginable – and unimaginable – way, including unplanned stops at a massive sex fetish event and a global economic summit.

  6. 6

    Monster-in-Law (2005)

    Robert LuketicDP Russell CarpenterIMDb 5.6TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    After years of looking for Mr. Right, Charlotte 'Charlie' Cantilini finally finds the man of her dreams, Kevin Fields, only to discover that his mother, Viola, is the woman of her nightmares. A recently fired news anchor who is afraid she will lose her son the way she has just lost her career, Viola determines to scare off her son's new fiancé by becoming the world's worst mother-in-law. While Viola's long-time assistant Ruby does her best to help Viola execute her crazy schemes, Charlie decides to fight back and the gloves come off as the two women battle it out to see just who is the alpha-female.

  7. 7

    Bug

    William FriedkinDP Michael GradyIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    Having escaped her abusive ex-husband Goss, recently released from state prison, Agnes, a lonely waitress with a tragic past moves into a sleazy, rundown motel. Her lesbian co-worker R.C. introduces her to Peter, a peculiar, paranoiac drifter and they begin a tentative romance. However, things aren't always as they appear and Agnes is about to experience a claustrophobic nightmare reality as the bugs begin to arrive...

  8. 8

    Spring Breakers (2012)

    Harmony KorineDP Benoît DebieIMDb 5.3TMDB 5.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Brit, Candy, Cotty, and Faith have been best friends since grade school. They live together in a boring college dorm and are hungry for adventure. All they have to do is save enough money for spring break to get their shot at having some real fun. A serendipitous encounter with rapper "Alien" promises to provide the girls with all the thrill and excitement they could hope for. With the encouragement of their new friend, it soon becomes unclear how far the girls are willing to go to experience a spring break they will never forget.

What drinking films are made of

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

  • necklace2.1×
  • microphone2.0×
  • stone wall2.0×
  • mustache1.9×
  • glass1.8×
  • beard1.7×
  • tie1.6×
  • shirt1.6×

How drinking 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 drinking from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 88%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Bad Lieutenant (1992) 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 1,258 frames from 17 films carrying the drinking label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 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/drinking

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These are real movie frames, shown at reduced resolution. All rights remain with their respective owners; they appear here for study, commentary and education under fair-use principles. How these are meant to be used