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Best New jersey Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of new jersey cinema — measured across 1,910 indexed frames from 27 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

New jersey films over-index on plaid shirt, collared shirt and blood — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

    Danny SteinmannDP Stephen L. PoseyIMDb 4.8TMDB 5.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Five years after killing the goalie hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees, Tommy Jarvis has grown up in various mental hospitals unable to get over the nightmares about Jason's return. When Tommy is sent to a rural halfway house in New Jersey for mentally disturbed teenagers, a series of grisly murders begin anew as another hockey-masked killer begins killing off all people at and around the residence. Has Jason returned from the dead to re-start his killing spree? Has Tommy decided to take over the reign of Jason, or has someone else?

  2. 2

    Jason Goes To Hell (1993)

    Adam MarcusDP Bill DillIMDb 4.1TMDB 4.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    The secret of Jason's evil is revealed. It is up to the last remaining descendant of the Voorhees family to stop Jason before he becomes immortal and unstoppable. This is the final (?) battle to end Jason's reign of terror forever.

  3. 3

    Paterson (2016)

    Jim JarmuschDP Frederick ElmesIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    Exactly one week in the life of a young man named Paterson of Paterson, New Jersey is presented. He lives an extremely regimented and routinized life, that routine perhaps most vividly displayed by the fact that he is able to wake up at exactly the same time every day without an alarm. That life includes eating Cheerios for breakfast, walking to work carrying his brown bag lunch packed in his lunch pail by his wife Laura, having a casual chat with his colleague Donny before he begins his shift driving the #23 Paterson bus for the local public transit company, walking home where he straightens out the exterior mailbox which somehow during the day gets knocked crooked, eating dinner with Laura and listening to her goings-on of the day, taking Laura's English bulldog Marvin - who he would admit to himself he doesn't much like - out for a walk to his neighborhood bar where he has one and only one beer before walking home with Marvin. There are day to day variations which are often the result of how certain other routines associated to him manifest themselves, such as what drama will occur in the relationship of Marie and Everett who are always at the bar together despite her always saying that they are no longer together, or in what form Laura's unique and distinctive design sense will affect Paterson's life directly or indirectly. Paterson's keen observances of what happens around him are largely the bases for the poems he writes, he constantly thinking of these and writing them in his secret notebook whenever he has a spare moment during his day. He is influenced by among others Paterson natives such as William Carlos Williams and his epic poem "Paterson". Paterson's writing are largely for himself, although Laura would like him to share more with her and the rest of the world. Something that happens to Paterson this week has the potential to knock his routinized world into a tailspin.

  4. 4

    Cop Land (1997)

    James MangoldDP Eric Alan EdwardsIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    Sometime in the 1970's, police officers from New York City wanted a safe haven to live, away from the dangers of the streets of New York City, this is when they established a "Cop Land" in the small New Jersey town of Garrison. Freddy Heflin who was always admired by the New York cops wanted to become one, but because he was deaf in one ear this prevents him from achieving his goal, but has become sheriff of Garrison. Recently there have been a dark omen surrounding the NYPD, and Freddy is now investigating on this case, then Internal Affairs officer Mo Tilden is also on the case and asks Freddy for help, but Freddy could not. Now Freddy suspects that a New York City cop named Ray Donlan might be one of the many cops who is corrupted by the mob and other criminals. Now, Freddy must find a cop who is nicknamed "Superboy" who can testify against Donlan and protect him, before Donlan finds Superboy and kills him.

  5. 5

    The Hurricane (1999)

    Norman JewisonDP Roger DeakinsIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    This film tells the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, an African-American man who rose above his troubled youth to become a top contender for the middle-weight boxing title. However, his dreams are shattered when he is accused of a triple murder, and is convicted to three natural-life terms. Despite becoming a cause celebre and his dogged efforts to prove his innocence through his autobiography, the years of fruitless efforts have left him discouraged. This changes when an African-American boy and his Canadian mentors read his book and are convinced of his innocence enough to work for his exoneration. However, what Hurricane and his friends learn is that this fight puts them against a racist establishment that profited from this travesty and have no intention of seeing it reversed.

  6. 6

    Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)

    Jim JarmuschDP Robby MüllerIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    A hitman who lives by the code of the samurai, works for the mafia and finds himself in their crosshairs when his recent job doesn't go according to plan. Now he must find a way to defend himself and his honor while retaining the code he lives by.

  7. 7

    The Brothers Bloom (2008)

    Rian JohnsonDP Steve YedlinIMDb 6.7TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    The Brothers Bloom are the best con men in the world, swindling millionaires with complex scenarios of lust and intrigue. Now they've decided to take on one last job – showing a beautiful and eccentric heiress the time of her life with a romantic adventure that takes them around the world.

  8. 8

    Happiness (1998)

    Todd SolondzDP Maryse AlbertiIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    A woman breaks up with her boyfriend, he thinks it's because he's fat. A man is unable to tell her next door neighbor he finds her sexually attractive. An old couple wants to split up, but they don't want to get a divorce. A therapist masturbates to teen magazines. An 11 year old kid is insecure about the fact that he hasn't cum yet. Office workers try to recall the face of a coworker who recently died. A woman is sure she has everything she could ever want. The lives of these individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

  9. 9

    The Many Saints of Newark (2021)

    Alan TaylorDP Kramer MorgenthauIMDb 6.3TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Young Anthony Soprano is growing up in one of the most tumultuous eras in Newark's history, becoming a man just as rival gangsters begin to rise up and challenge the all-powerful DiMeo crime family's hold over the increasingly race-torn city. Caught up in the changing times is the uncle he idolizes, Dickie Moltisanti, who struggles to manage both his professional and personal responsibilities and whose influence over his nephew will help make the impressionable teenager into the all-powerful mob boss we'll later come to know: Tony Soprano.

  10. 10

    World War Z (2013)

    Marc ForsterDP Ben SeresinIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    Life for former United Nations investigator Gerry Lane and his family seems content. Suddenly, the world is plagued by a mysterious infection turning whole human populations into rampaging mindless zombies. After barely escaping the chaos, Lane is persuaded to go on a mission to investigate this disease. What follows is a perilous trek around the world where Lane must brave horrific dangers and long odds to find answers before human civilization falls.

What new jersey films are made of

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

  • plaid shirt2.2×
  • collared shirt1.9×
  • blood1.8×
  • car1.8×
  • lamp1.7×
  • neon sign1.6×
  • tree1.6×
  • stubble1.6×

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

  • 54%nightvs 43% baseline
  • 50%low keyvs 40% baseline
  • 83%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Jason X (2001) 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 1,910 frames from 27 films carrying the new jersey 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/new-jersey

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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