Best Taxi Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of taxi cinema — measured across 968 indexed frames from 13 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Taxi films over-index on taxi, blonde hair and steering wheel — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Collateral (2004)
Michael MannDP Dion BeebeIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
This action thriller follows LA cabbie Max Durocher, the type of person who can wax poetic about other people's lives, which impresses U.S. Justice Department prosecutor Annie Farrell, one of his fares, so much that she gives him her telephone number at the end of her ride. Although a dedicated man as seen through the efficiency in which he does his work, he can't or won't translate that eloquence into a better life for himself. He deludes himself into believing that his now twelve year cabbie job is temporary and that someday he will own his own limousine service. He even lies to his hospitalized mother that he already owns one, with a further lie that he tells her as such primarily to make her happy, rather than the truth which is that he won't do anything to achieve that dream. One night, Max picks up a well dressed man named Vincent, who asks Max to be his only fare for the evening. For a flat fee of $600, plus an extra $100 if he gets to the airport on time - Vincent wants Max to drive him to five stops that evening. Max somewhat reluctantly agrees. Max learns the hard way at their first stop when a body falls from a third story apartment window and lands dead on top of his cab that Vincent is a contract hit man. Vincent's main goal, as per his current contract, is to kill five people, one at each of the stops, but he will not let others get in the way of that goal, even if it means killing them, including Max. As Vincent forces Max to continue driving him for the evening, Max tries slyly at every turn to take back control of his life from Vincent, especially when Max learns of one of the names on Vincent's hit list. Meanwhile, LAPD narcotics detective, Ray Fanning, and ultimately the FBI get involved when Vincent's first victim is associated with a case in which Ray is working undercover. Ray is able to piece together information which makes him hot on Max and Vincent's tail.
- 2
Night on Earth (1991)
Jim JarmuschDP Frederick ElmesIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
A collection of five stories involving cab drivers in five different cities. Los Angeles - A talent agent for the movies discovers her cab driver would be perfect to cast, but the cabbie is reluctant to give up her solid cab driver's career. New York - An immigrant cab driver is continually lost in a city and culture he doesn't understand. Paris - A blind girl takes a ride with a cab driver from the Ivory Coast and they talk about life and blindness. Rome - A gregarious cabbie picks up an ailing man and virtually talks him to death. Helsinki - an industrial worker gets laid off and he and his compatriots discuss the bleakness and unfairness of love and life and death.
- 3
Taxi Driver (1976)
Martin ScorseseDP Michael ChapmanIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he suffers from insomnia, he spends his time working as a taxi driver at night, watching porn movies at seedy cinemas during the day, or thinking about how the world, New York in particular, has deteriorated into a cesspool. He's a loner who has strong opinions about what is right and wrong with mankind. For him, the one bright spot in humanity is Betsy, a worker on the presidential nomination campaign of Senator Charles Palantine. After an incident, he believes he has to do whatever he needs to make the world a better place.
- 4
Tangerine (2015)
Sean BakerDP Sean BakerIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
After twenty-eight long days of absence, Sin-Dee is back on the block. It's Christmastime, and everyone wants to get into the festive spirit; however, Sin-Dee is in for a shock when she accidentally discovers that Chester, the love of her life, has been cheating on her. And to think that poor Sin-Dee has been making plans for the future. To save what's left of her dignity, heartbroken Sin-Dee embarks on a desperate mission to locate two-timing Chester, and no one can stop her--not even her best friend Alexandra, who vainly tries to be the voice of reason. Now, nothing can stand in the way of justice. After all, who wants to live a lie?
- 5
28 Days Later (2002)
Danny BoyleDP Anthony Dod MantleIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Animal activists invade a laboratory with the intention of releasing chimpanzees that are undergoing experimentation, infected by a virus -a virus that causes rage. The naive activists ignore the pleas of a scientist to keep the cages locked, with disastrous results. Twenty-eight days later, our protagonist, Jim, wakes up from a coma, alone, in an abandoned hospital. He begins to seek out anyone else to find London is deserted, apparently without a living soul. After finding a church, which had become inhabited by zombie like humans intent on his demise, he runs for his life. Selena and Mark rescue him from the horde and bring him up to date on the mass carnage and horror as all of London tore itself apart. This is a tale of survival and ultimately, heroics, with nice subtext about mankind's savage nature.
- 6
Escape From New York (1981)
John CarpenterDP Dean CundeyIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
In the future, crime is out of control and New York City's Manhattan is a maximum security prison. Grabbing a bargaining chip right out of the air, convicts bring down the President's plane in bad old Gotham. Gruff Snake Plissken, a one-eyed lone warrior new to prison life, is coerced into bringing the President, and his cargo, out of this land of undesirables.
- 7
Dressed to Kill (1980)
Brian De PalmaDP Ralf D. BodeIMDb 7.0TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
While taking a shower, Kate Miller, a middle-aged, sexually frustrated New York City housewife, has a rape fantasy while her husband stands at the sink shaving. Later that day, after complaining to her psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott about her husband's pathetic performance in bed, she meets a strange man at a museum and returns to his apartment where they continue an adulterous encounter that began in the taxicab. Before she leaves his apartment, she finds papers which certify that the man has a venereal disease. Panicked, Kate rushes into the elevator, but has to return to his apartment when she realizes she's forgotten her wedding ring. When the elevator doors open, she's brutally slashed to death by a tall blonde woman wearing dark sunglasses. Liz Blake, a high-class call girl, is the only witness to the murder and she becomes the prime suspect and the murderer's next target. Liz is rescued from being killed by Kate's son Peter, who enlists the help of Liz to catch his mother's killer as Detective Marino, who's in charge of the case, is uncooperative in the investigation.
- 8
Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
John McTiernanDP Peter Menzies Jr.IMDb 7.6TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
John McClane is now almost a full-blown alcoholic and is suspended from the NYPD. But when a bomb goes off in the Bonwit Teller Department Store the police go insane trying to figure out what's going on. Soon, a man named Simon calls and asks for McClane. Simon tells Inspector Walter Cobb that McClane is going to play a game called "Simon Says". He says that McClane is going to do the tasks he assigns him. If not, he'll set off another bomb. With the help of a Harlem electrician, John McClane must race all over New York trying to figure out the frustrating puzzles that the crafty terrorist gives him. But when a bomb goes off in a subway station right by the Federal Reserve (the biggest gold storage in the world) things start to get heated.
What taxi films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a taxi frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — taxi is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- taxi44.0×
- blonde hair4.6×
- steering wheel3.3×
- streetlamp3.3×
- asphalt2.9×
- car2.4×
- neon sign2.2×
- stubble2.2×
How taxi 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 taxi from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 26%dayvs 42% baseline
- 30%naturalvs 43% baseline
- 59%nightvs 43% baseline
- 53%low keyvs 40% baseline
- 26%closeupvs 21% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Ed Wood (1994) 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 968 frames from 13 films carrying the taxi 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/taxi
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