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Best Marijuana Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of marijuana cinema — measured across 1,800 indexed frames from 26 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Marijuana films over-index on tank top, teenager and cigarette — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Beach Rats (2017)

    Eliza HittmanDP Hélène LouvartIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    An aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online.

  2. 2

    American Honey (2016)

    Andrea ArnoldDP Robbie RyanIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    A restless teenager escapes her troubled home and joins a traveling crew of young drifters selling magazines across the American Midwest. Immersed in a world of reckless partying, risky hustles, and fleeting romances, she searches for freedom and belonging on the open road.

  3. 3

    Ginger Snaps (2000)

    John FawcettDP Thom BestIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    Is becoming a woman analogous, in some deep psychological way, to becoming a werewolf? Ginger is 16, edgy, tough, and, with her younger sister, into staging and photographing scenes of death. They've made a pact about dying together. In early October, on the night she has her first period, which is also the night of a full moon, a werewolf bites Ginger. Within a few days, some serious changes happen to her body and her temperament. Her sister Brigitte, 15, tries to find a cure with the help of Sam, a local doper. As Brigitte races against the clock, Halloween and another full moon approach, Ginger gets scarier, and it isn't just local dogs that begin to die.

  4. 4

    The Beach (2000)

    Danny BoyleDP Darius KhondjiIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Garland's novel centers on a young nicotine-addicted traveler named Richard, an avid pop-culture buff with a particular love for video games and Vietnam War movies. While at a hotel in Bangkok, he finds a map left by his strange, whacked-out neighbor, who just committed suicide. The map supposedly leads to a legendary island paradise where some other wayward souls have settled.

  5. 5

    On The Road (2012)

    Walter SallesDP Éric GautierIMDb 6.0TMDB 5.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Shaken by the death of his father and discouraged by his stalled career, writer Sal Paradise goes on a road trip hoping for inspiration. While traveling, he is befriended by charismatic and fearless Dean Moriarty and Moriarty's free-spirited and seductive young wife, Marylou. Traveling across the American southwest together, they strive to break from conformity and and search the unknown, and their decisions change the very course of their lives.

  6. 6

    American Beauty (1999)

    Sam MendesDP Conrad HallIMDb 8.3TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    After his death sometime in his 43rd year, suburbanite Lester Burnham tells of the last few weeks of his life, during which he had no idea of his imminent passing. He is a husband to real estate agent Carolyn Burnham and father to high school student Jane Burnham. Although Lester and Carolyn once loved each other, they now merely tolerate each other. Typical wallflower Jane also hates both her parents; the three suffer individually in silence in their home life. Jane tries to steer clear of both her parents. Carolyn, relatively new to the real estate business, wants to create the persona of success to further her career, aspiring to the professional life of Buddy Kane, the king of the real estate business in their neighborhood. Lester merely walks mindlessly through life, including at his job in advertising. His company is downsizing, and he, like all the other employees, has to justify his position to the newly hired efficiency expert to keep his job. Things change for Lester when he falls in love at first sight with Jane's more experienced classmate, Angela Hayes. Both Janie and Angela can see Lester's sexual infatuation with Angela, who courts such attention from any man as a sign that she is model material, she having once appeared in Seventeen and is a career to which she aspires. Lester's infatuation with Angela gives him a reenergized view on life, where he openly doesn't care anymore what anyone thinks about what he does, anyone except Angela. This infatuation coincides with the Fittses moving in next door: homophobic disciplinarian US Marine Colonel Frank Fitts who rules the house with a military fist (that fist being both figurative and literal), his semi-comatose wife Barbara Fitts, and their bright and quietly subversive 18-year-old son Ricky Fitts, who openly abides by his father's rules while behind the scenes lives by his own quite different perspective. Much like Lester's infatuation, Ricky immediately becomes infatuated with Jane; he considers girls like Angela as ordinary. The entry of Angela and the Fittses into the Burnhams' lives ultimately leads to each of the players confronting what is truly in his or her heart.

  7. 7

    We're the Millers (2013)

    Rawson Marshall ThurberDP Barry PetersonIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    After being robbed of a week's take, small-time pot dealer David is forced by his boss to go to Mexico to pick up a load of marijuana. In order to improve his odds of making it past the border, David asks the broke stripper Rose and two local teenagers to join him and pretend they're on a family holiday.

  8. 8

    A Serious Man (2009)

    Ethan Coen, Joel CoenDP Roger DeakinsIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Bloomington, Minnesota, 1967: Jewish physics lecturer Larry Gopnik is a serious and a very put-upon man. His daughter is stealing from him to save up for a nose job, his pot-head son, who gets stoned at his own bar-mitzvah, only wants him round to fix the TV aerial and his useless brother Arthur is an unwelcome house guest. But both Arthur and Larry get turfed out into a motel when Larry's wife Judy, who wants a divorce, moves her lover, Sy, into the house and even after Sy's death in a car crash they are still there. With lawyers' bills mounting for his divorce, Arthur's criminal court appearances and a land feud with a neighbour Larry is tempted to take the bribe offered by a student to give him an illegal exam pass mark. And the rabbis he visits for advice only dole out platitudes. Still God moves in mysterious - and not always pleasant - ways, as Larry and his family will find out.

  9. 9

    Super Dark Times (2017)

    Kevin PhillipsDP Eli BornIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Teenagers Zach and Josh have been best friends their whole lives, but when a gruesome accident leads to a cover-up, the secret drives a wedge between them and propels them down a rabbit hole of escalating paranoia and violence.

  10. 10

    Requiem For A Dream (2000)

    Darren AronofskyDP Matthew LibatiqueIMDb 8.3TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn) is a retired widow, living in a small apartment. She spends most of her time watching TV, especially a particular self-help show. She has delusions of rising above her current dull existence by being a guest on that show. Her son, Harry (Jared Leto) is a junkie but along with his friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) has visions of making it big by becoming a drug dealer. Harry's girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) could be fashion designer or artist but is swept along in Harry's drug-centric world. Meanwhile Sara has developed an addiction of her own. She desperately wants to lose weight and so goes on a crash course involving popping pills, pills which turn out to be very addictive and harmful to her mental state.

What marijuana films are made of

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

  • tank top2.9×
  • teenager2.9×
  • cigarette2.1×
  • glasses2.0×
  • sunglasses1.9×
  • necklace1.7×
  • bed1.6×
  • sweater1.6×

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

  • 85%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) 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 1,800 frames from 26 films carrying the marijuana 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/marijuana

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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