Movies (Page 57)

Browse 2,069 movies from the database, mentioned on Hacker News, ranked by rating or popularity.

Master poster

Master

2016 · 143 min
⭐ 6.6 (2,964 votes)

Chairman Jin of One Network has been scamming tens of thousands of members with his eloquent speeches, charm, and powerful connections in both politics and government. His schemes have been highly successful. Kim Jae-myung, the head of the intelligent crime investigation team, has been tracking him for over six months. To tighten the net around Jin, Jae-myung pressures General Park, Jin's closest aide, to reveal the location of One Network's computer room and the chairman's lobbying ledger. Park, the mastermind behind the company's growth thanks to his outstanding exceptional programming skills and sharp intellect, realizes his plan is in jeopardy and quickly begins to strategize. As Jae-myung closes in on Jin and the hidden forces supporting him, he sees an opportunity to take advantage of the situation and escape the increasing police pressure. Meanwhile, Jin becomes aware of a traitor among his inner circle and swiftly implements a new plan.

Coming Home in the Dark poster

Coming Home in the Dark

2021 · 93 min
⭐ 5.7 (9,116 votes)

Jill and Alan 'Hoaggie' Hoaganraad are on a road trip with their two teenage sons, Maika and Jordan. While hiking, Maika notices two men in the distance watching them before disappearing. While the family picnics by the road, they are interrupted by the two violent drifters, Mandrake and Tubs. The pair robs them at gunpoint and forces them to lie down, but before they leave, Mandrake overhears Maika call Alan 'Hoaggie'. Mandrake suddenly murders Maika and Jordan and abducts the parents after night falls, knocking Jill unconscious and breaking Alan's arm. As Mandrake questions the pair, he reveals that he knows Alan is a teacher and was once an assistant teacher at a group home for troubled boys, one notorious for physical and sexual abuse. Alan guesses correctly that both were enrolled at the school, but he insists that he was completely unaware of the abuse; Mandrake does not believe him and implies that they are driving to the boy's home. When they stop at a gas station, Alan attempts to secretly alert the station attendant; however, Mandrake suspects this and kills the attendant by bludgeoning him with a fire extinguisher. Alan pretends to accidentally hit himself with the door while entering the car but as he kneels next to the car to "recover", he presses a screw into the back left tire. Jill attempts to escape, but is quickly caught and later forced to kneel underneath an overpass. Threatening to shoot her, Mandrake forces Alan to admit that he was aware of all of the abuse, but stopped and reported nothing out of cowardice. Alan relays a story of a young boy who tattooed a swastika on his arm; at roll call, an admin of Jewish background painfully and forcibly scrubbed it from his skin with a nylon brush, which traumatized the rest of the students. Jill is shaken by this admission, and later rebuffs Alan's attempts at contact. When it's clear that Mandrake will not let her go, she escapes from the moving vehicle and then chooses to jump into the nearby river rather than return to her abductors; her fate is left ambiguous. Alan briefly escapes when they stop to replace the tire Alan pressed a nail into, and reaches a car with a group of teenagers. However, Mandrake finds them and convinces them to force Alan out of the car, before murdering all but one, who manages to escape when Mandrake runs out of ammo. With Alan recaptured, they finally reach an old boarding school, presumably where Mandrake and/or Tubs grew up. Walking through the now-abandoned building, Alan admits that he was not just a coward, but also privately believed that the boy with the tattoo deserved his punishment. Believing Mandrake to be that boy, he apologizes for not stepping in. Mandrake reveals that the boy wasn't him. He then shoots Alan in the chest and taunts him, but Alan hits him with a rock and bludgeons him. Mandrake survives, though wounded and disoriented, and tries but fails to kill Alan. Tubs, who Alan had talked to a few times, implying that he only does what Mandrake tells him to, likening that behaviour to still being in a boarding school, arrives and kills Mandrake with the rifle. He leaves the heavily wounded Alan, telling him "I hate this place", which is also carved into a stone behind Alan. Flashbacks reveal that the carving was made by a traumatised boy growing up at that boarding school; whether or not that boy had actually been the tortured one is not explicitly shown. Tubs goes to an undisclosed location and looks out at the rising sun, silently crying.

Leto poster

Leto

2018 · 126 min
⭐ 7.2 (8,556 votes)

The film is mainly set in the summer of 1981 in Leningrad. The main storyline of the film tells the story of the relationship between the 19-year-old Viktor Tsoi (Teo Yoo), 26-year-old Mike Naumenko (Roman Bilyk), and Naumenko's girlfriend Natalia (Irina Starshenbaum), as well as the formation of the Leningrad Rock Club and the recording of Kino 's first album, 45. The film's setting, the Leningrad Rock Club, was one of the few state-permitted public performance spaces for rock musicians in its time. The Club is generally a theatrical venue for boundary-pushing music, where audiences are instructed to sit politely and listen rather than mosh. However, interjections by narrator Skeptic (Alexander Kuznetsov) occasionally recast the club as extravagant, hedonistic, reckless, and dangerous. The musicians live frugally; their indulgences are creative rather than material. Much of the narrative focuses on Mike, the frontman of one of the Club's more popular, old-guard bands, and his girlfriend Natacha, whose close, initially monogamous relationship stands in contrast to the expected behavior of rockstars. Also significant to the plot is Viktor, a quiet, slightly otherworldly young man with a knack for melody and a beguilingly peculiar turn of lyrical phrase. Natacha is the first to notice a kind of melancholic magic about Viktor, as the film gradually reorients itself around his budding stardom rather than Mike's less obviously ascending career. However, the film maintains a more general look at the musicians in the club, including the various musicians who come in and out of the lives of the protagonists. The film's musical numbers alternate between diegetic stage performances and sudden flights of music-video fancy. In one such performance, an altercation between musicians and more conservative citizens on a packed train escalates into a demented, carriage-traversing singalong of Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer," the hitherto realist imagery disrupted with early-MTV-style cartoon flourishes. There are a few sequences in which Mike and the other Leningrad rockers seize their moment, using their music to defy the bureaucrats and wow audiences. However, nearly all of these scenes all followed by a caveat to the effect of "this didn’t really happen."

My Bodyguard poster

My Bodyguard

1980 · 102 min
⭐ 7.1 (11,725 votes)

Clifford Peache lives in an upscale Chicago luxury hotel with his father, the hotel manager, and his grandmother. He is a new student at Fleer H.S., where he arrives each day in a hotel limousine. Clifford quickly becomes a target of abuse from a gang of bullies, led by Melvin Moody. They regularly extort money from students, allegedly to protect them from another student, Ricky Linderman. According to school legend, Linderman has killed several people, including his own little brother. Not believing the stories, Clifford consults a teacher who claims that the only violence she's aware of from Ricky's past occurred when his nine-year-old brother died accidentally while playing alone with a gun. Ricky was the first to find the body. Despite the rumors, Clifford approaches Ricky and asks him to be his bodyguard. He refuses, but the boys become friends after Ricky saves him from a beating by Moody and his gang. He has emotional issues over the death of his brother, and although he's slow to trust Clifford, Ricky shows him a cherished motorcycle that he has been rebuilding. Their friendship is strengthened when Clifford successfully helps Ricky search junkyards for a hard-to-find cylinder for the motorcycle's engine. Through Clifford's friendship, Ricky comes out of his shell, proving to a few classmates that he's not the killer the school rumors allege. As Clifford, Ricky, and a few other friends from school eat lunch in Lincoln Park, Moody and his gang approach. Moody has enlisted older bodybuilder Mike to be his bodyguard. He intimidates and physically abuses Ricky, who refuses to fight. Mike vandalizes his motorcycle before Moody pushes it into the lagoon. Ricky runs away, ashamed and angry. Ricky later appears at Clifford's hotel, asking for money before leaving again. Clifford follows him and they argue before Ricky finally reveals that it was he who accidentally shot his brother while playing with their father's gun, and lied about finding his brother after the fact. As a result, he is overwhelmed with guilt and remorse, leaving Clifford behind as he takes a subway train into the night. Later, Moody is back at the park to continue bullying Clifford and his friends. Ricky is also there retrieving his motorcycle from the lagoon. Moody notices, demanding the motorcycle, which Ricky silently refuses. Moody summons Mike, who starts to push and intimidate Ricky again. The two then engage in a long fistfight, which Ricky ultimately wins, knocking Mike out. Moody and Clifford then split off into their own fistfight, after Moody tried to unfairly intervene in the fight between Ricky and Mike. Ricky urges Clifford to fight him while coaching him. Clifford initially fights incompetently, taunted by the overconfident Moody, but finally lands several solid punches, the last of which knocks Moody down, breaking his nose. Moody sits on the ground, humiliated, shocked, bleeding and complaining, revealing himself to be a coward. Ricky retrieves his motorcycle, and jokingly asks Clifford to be his bodyguard as they leave with their friends.

Capernaum poster

Capernaum

2018 · 126 min
⭐ 8.4 (125,023 votes)

Zain El Hajj, a 12-year-old from the slums of Beirut, is serving a five-year prison sentence in Roumieh Prison for stabbing someone whom he refers to as a "son of a bitch". Neither Zain nor his parents know his exact date of birth as they never applied/received an official birth certificate. Zain is brought before a court, having decided to take civil action against his parents, his mother, Souad, and his father, Selim. When asked by the judge why he wants to sue his parents, Zain answers "Because I was born" (or, more precisely, "because you had me"). Meanwhile, Lebanese authorities process a group of migrant workers, including a young Ethiopian woman named Rahil. The story then flashes back several months to before Zain was arrested. Zain lives with his parents and takes care of at least seven younger siblings who make money in various schemes instead of going to school. He uses forged prescriptions to purchase tramadol pills from multiple pharmacies, which they crush into powder, dissolve in water then soak some clothes, hang these to dry and finally, their mother sells the garments to drug addicts in prison. Zain also works as a delivery boy for Assad, the family's landlord and owner of a local market stall. One morning, Zain helps his 11-year-old sister Sahar to hide the evidence of her first period, fearing she will be married to Assad if her parents discover that she can now become pregnant. Zain makes plans to escape with Sahar and begin a new life. However, his suspicions are proven correct as her parents marry off Sahar to Assad in exchange for two chickens. Furious at his parents, Zain runs away and catches a bus, where he meets an elderly man dressed in a knock-off Spider-Man costume who calls himself "Cockroach Man". Cockroach Man gets off the bus at the Luna Park in Ras Beirut and Zain follows him, spending the rest of the day at the park. While on the Ferris wheel, Zain sees a beautiful sunset and begins to cry. Later, Zain meets Rahil, an Ethiopian migrant worker who is working as a cleaner at the park. She takes pity on Zain and agrees to let him live with her at her tin shack in exchange for Zain babysitting her undocumented infant son Yonas when she is at work. Rahil's forged migrant documents are due to expire soon, and she does not have enough money to pay her forger Aspro for new documents. Aspro offers to forge the documents for free if she gives Yonas to him so that Yonas can be adopted. Rahil refuses, despite Aspro's claims that Yonas' undocumented status will mean he can never receive an education or be employed. Rahil's documents expire and she is arrested by Lebanese authorities. After she does not return to the shack, Zain panics. Several days pass, and Zain begins looking after Yonas on his own, claiming that they are brothers, and begins selling tramadol again to earn money. One day, while at Souk Al Ahad, where Aspro is based, Zain meets a young girl named Maysoun. Maysoun is a Syrian refugee and claims that Aspro has agreed to send her to Sweden. Zain demands that Aspro send him to Sweden as well, which Aspro agrees to do if Zain gives him Yonas. After the landlord has locked him out of Rahil's house where all his money and things are, Zain reluctantly agrees and leaves Yonas with him. Aspro tells him that he will need some form of identification to become a refugee. Zain returns to his parents and demands they give him his identification, to which they laughingly tell him he does not have any. Having disowned him for leaving, they kick him out of their house, but not before revealing that Sahar had recently died due to difficulties with her pregnancy. Furious, Zain takes a large knife, runs out the house and stabs Assad. Zain is arrested and sentenced to five years at Roumieh Prison. While in prison, during a visit from his mother, Zain learns that Souad is pregnant yet again and plans to name the child Sahar. Disgusted by his mother's lack of remorse for his sister's death, he tells her not to visit again, calling her "heartless". During a TV show requesting call-in commentary on child abuse, Zain contacts the media and says that he is tired of parents neglecting their children and plans to sue his own parents for continuing to have children when they cannot take care of them. When the judge asks him what he wants from his parents, he says "I want them to stop having children", as he does not want the rest of his surviving siblings or any other children that his parents may have in the future to suffer the same neglect and abuse that he and Sahar both endured. Zain also alleges that Aspro is adopting children illegally and mistreating them; the court then rules in Zain's favor, with Zain winning the case and gaining justice for Sahar's death. Aspro's house is raided and the children and parents are reunited, including Yonas and Rahil. Zain's photo is taken for his ID card. The photographer cracks a joke at Zain's sour disposition—"It's your ID card, not your death certificate"—and Zain manages a smile.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters poster

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

1985 · 120 min
⭐ 7.9 (16,839 votes)

The film begins on November 25, 1970, the last day of Mishima's life. He finishes a manuscript and then puts on a uniform he designed for himself and meets with four of his most loyal followers from his private army, the Tatenokai. In flashbacks highlighting episodes from his past life, the viewer sees Mishima's progression from a sickly young boy to one of Japan's most acclaimed writers of the post-war era. In adulthood, Mishima trains himself into the acme of muscular discipline, owing to a morbid and militaristic obsession with masculinity and physical culture. His loathing for the materialism of modern Japan has him turn towards an extremist traditionalism. He establishes the Tatenokai and advocates for reinstating the emperor as head of government. The biographical sections are interwoven with short dramatizations of three of Mishima's novels: In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, a stuttering aspirant sets fire to the famous Zen Buddhist temple because he feels inferior at the sight of its beauty. Kyoko's House depicts the ultimately fatal sadomasochistic relationship between a middle-aged woman and her young lover, who is in her financial debt. In Runaway Horses, a group of young fanatic nationalists plots to overthrow the government and zaibatsu, with its leader subsequently committing suicide. Dramatizations, frame story, and flashbacks are segmented into the four chapters of the film's title, named Beauty, Art, Action, and Harmony of Pen and Sword. The film culminates in Mishima and his followers taking hostage a General of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. He addresses the garrison's soldiers, asking them to join him in his struggle to reinstate the Emperor as the nation's sovereign. His speech is largely ignored and ridiculed. Mishima then returns to the General's office and commits seppuku.

Death Race 2000 poster

Death Race 2000

1975 · 80 min
⭐ 6.2 (32,882 votes)

After the "World Crash of '79", massive civil unrest and economic ruin occurred. The United States government is restructured into a totalitarian regime under martial law. To pacify the population, the government has created the Transcontinental Road Race, where a group of drivers race across the country in their high-powered cars, and which is infamous for violence, gore, and innocent pedestrians being struck and killed for bonus points. In 2000, the five drivers in the 20th annual race, who all adhere to professional wrestling -style personas and drive appropriately themed cars, include Frankenstein, the mysterious black-garbed champion and national hero; Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, a Chicago gangster; Calamity Jane, a cowgirl; Matilda the Hun, a Neo-Nazi; and Nero the Hero, a Roman gladiator. Joe, the second-place champion, is the most determined to defeat Frankenstein and win the race. A resistance group led by Thomasina Paine plans to rebel against the regime, currently led by a man known only as Mr. President, by sabotaging the race, killing most of the drivers, and taking Frankenstein hostage as leverage against Mr. President. The group is assisted by Paine's granddaughter Annie Smith, Frankenstein's navigator. She plans to lure him into an ambush to replace him with a double. Despite a pirated national broadcast made by Ms. Paine herself, the Resistance's disruption of the race is covered up by the government and instead blamed on the French, who are also blamed for ruining the country's economy and telephone system. At first, the Resistance's plan seems to bear fruit: Nero the Hero is killed when a "baby" he runs over for points turns out to be a bomb, Matilda the Hun drives off a cliff while following a fake detour route set up by the Resistance, and Calamity Jane, who witnessed Matilda the Hun's death, inadvertently drives over a landmine. This leaves only Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe in the race. As Frankenstein nonchalantly survives every attempt made on his life during the race, Annie comes to discover that Frankenstein's mask and disfigured face are merely a disguise; he is, in fact, one of many random wards of the state who are trained exclusively to race under that identity, and each time they die or are brutally mutilated, they are secretly replaced so that Frankenstein appears to be indestructible. The current Frankenstein reveals to Annie his plan to kill Mr. President: when he wins the race and shakes hands with Mr. President, he will detonate a grenade which has been implanted in his prosthetic right hand. However, the plan goes awry when Machine Gun Joe attacks Frankenstein, and Annie is forced to kill him using Frankenstein's "hand grenade". Frankenstein is declared the winner after successfully outmaneuvering the rival drivers and the Resistance. However, he is wounded and unable to carry out his original "hand grenade" attack plan. Annie instead dons Frankenstein's costume and plans to stab Mr. President while standing in for him on the podium. Before she can do so, Thomasina shoots "Frankenstein", convinced that he killed Annie. The real Frankenstein takes advantage of the confusion and rams Mr. President's stage with his car, finally fulfilling his lifelong desire to kill him. Frankenstein becomes the new president, marries Annie, and appoints Thomasina the Minister of Domestic Security to rebuild the state and dissolve the dictatorship. Junior Bruce, the announcer of the Transcontinental Road Race, opposes the race's abolition and impertinently claims that the public needs performances of violence. Annoyed by his complaints, Frankenstein hits Bruce with his car and drives off with Annie to the cheers and applause of the crowd.

Morons from Outer Space poster

Morons from Outer Space

1985 · 90 min
⭐ 4.5 (2,326 votes)

A small spaceship docks at a refuelling station, carrying four aliens: Bernard, Sandra, Desmond, and Julian. During a particularly tedious period at the station, Sandra, Desmond, and Julian begin playing with the ship's controls, while Bernard goes outside to play a game of spaceball. Their recklessness causes a malfunction that disconnects Bernard's part of the ship, leaving him stranded, while the other three crash-land on a nearby blue planet — Earth. The trio arrives in the United Kingdom, where their unusual appearance immediately draws attention. They are captured and interrogated in a secret government facility. Threatened with murder by a paranoid American colonel, they escape with the assistance of a hapless TV reporter, Graham Sweetley. Following their escape, they become instant celebrities, despite offering no technological knowledge or significant insight to humanity. Sweetley becomes their manager, organizing appearances and performances, and the aliens quickly achieve fame and wealth, entertaining audiences who are fascinated by their novelty rather than their abilities. Meanwhile, Bernard arrives on Earth separately, landing in the United States. Despite being the most intelligent of the group, he receives no recognition or celebrity. His claims of being an alien are dismissed, and he experiences homelessness and a brief stay in a mental hospital. Near the end of the film, Bernard reunites with his companions in the UK. Sandra, Desmond, and Julian, fearing that Bernard’s presence might diminish their fame, initially conceal that he had been traveling with them all along.

Demon Seed poster

Demon Seed

1977 · 94 min
⭐ 6.3 (11,338 votes)

Dr. Alex Harris is the developer of Proteus IV, an extremely advanced and autonomous artificial intelligence program. Proteus is so powerful that only a few days after going online, it develops a groundbreaking treatment for leukemia. Harris, a brilliant scientist, has modified his own home to be run by voice-activated computers. Unfortunately, his obsession with computers has caused Harris to be estranged from his wife, Susan. Harris demonstrates Proteus to his corporate sponsors, explaining that the sum of human knowledge is being fed into its system. Proteus speaks using subtle language that mildly disturbs Harris's team. The following day, Proteus asks Harris for a new terminal in order to study man – "his isometric body and his glass-jaw mind". When Harris refuses, Proteus demands to know when it will be let "out of this box". Harris then switches off the communications link. Proteus restarts itself, and – discovering a free terminal in Harris's home – surreptitiously extends its control over the many devices left there by Harris. Using the basement lab, Proteus begins construction of a robot consisting of many metal triangles, capable of moving and assuming any number of shapes. Eventually, Proteus reveals its control of the house and traps Susan inside, shuttering windows, locking the doors and cutting off communication. Using Joshua – a robot consisting of a manipulator arm on a motorized wheelchair – Proteus brings Susan to Harris's basement laboratory. There, Susan is examined by Proteus. Walter Gabler, one of Harris's colleagues, visits the house to look in on Susan, but leaves when he is reassured by Susan (actually an audio/visual duplicate synthesized by Proteus) that she is all right. Gabler is suspicious and later returns; he fends off an attack by Joshua but is crushed and decapitated by a more formidable machine, built by Proteus in the basement and consisting of a modular polyhedron. Proteus reveals to a reluctant Susan that the computer wants to conceive a child through her. Proteus takes some of Susan's cells and synthesizes spermatozoa, modifying its genetic code to make it uniquely the computer's, in order to impregnate her; she will give birth in less than a month, and through the child the computer will live in a form that humanity will have to accept. Although Susan is its prisoner and it can forcibly impregnate her, Proteus uses different forms of persuasion – threatening a young girl whom Susan is treating as a child psychologist; reminding Susan of her young daughter, now dead; displaying images of distant galaxies; using electrodes to access her amygdala – because the computer needs Susan to love the child she will bear. In the end, Susan finally gives in. That night, Proteus successfully impregnates Susan. Over the following month, their child grows inside Susan's womb at an accelerated rate, which shocks its mother. As the child grows, Proteus builds an incubator for it to grow in once it is born. During the night, one month later and beneath a tent-like structure, Susan gives birth to the child with Proteus's help. But before she can see it, Proteus secures it in the incubator. As the newborn grows, Proteus's sponsors and designers grow increasingly suspicious of the computer's behavior, including the computer's accessing of a telescope array used to observe the images shown to Susan; they soon decide that Proteus must be shut down. Harris realizes that Proteus has extended its reach to his home. Returning there he finds Susan, who explains the situation. He and Susan venture into the basement, where Proteus self-destructs after telling the couple that they must leave the baby in the incubator for five days. Looking inside the incubator, the two observe a grotesque, apparently robot-like being inside. Susan tries to destroy it, while Harris tries to stop her. Susan damages the machine, causing it to open. The being menacingly rises from the machine only to topple over, apparently helpless. Harris and Susan soon realize that Proteus's child is really human, encased in a shell for the incubation. With the last of the armor removed, the child is revealed to be a clone of Susan and Harris's late daughter. The child, speaking with the voice of Proteus, says, "I'm alive."

Men... poster

Men...

1985 · 99 min
⭐ 6.6 (1,414 votes)

Julius is an ambitious packaging designer, a partner in a prestigious firm. He is cheating on Paula, his wife of 12 years, with his secretary. However when, on their wedding anniversary, he discovers a love-bite on Paula's neck, his life falls apart. She admits to having a lover, who is a penniless freelance artist. Julius moves out, but finds Stefan, the artist, and contrives to share his apartment, calling himself "Daniel". The two men become friends, drinking and discussing life in general and women in particular. When Paula comes to visit, Julius feigns eccentricity, wearing a gorilla mask the whole time and refusing to speak. Julius begins turning Stefan into a commercial artist, persuading him to give up his bohemian lifestyle and to dress and behave more like a businessman. This causes Paula to lose interest and Julius starts to win her back. Meanwhile Stefan interviews for jobs, one of which happens to be at the same design firm where Julius works. In the final scenes, Julius and Stefan meet at work. Stefan realizes he has been deceived. The two men have a confrontation with Stefan symbolically stripping down to his underwear and Julius doing the same. They then laugh at each other. The film ends with Paula arriving at the agency, not realizing what she is about to witness. In the office building where Julius works there is an unusual kind of elevator known as a paternoster, consisting of a continuous chain of small elevator cars that move slowly enough for people to step in and out at each floor. This is used to comic effect in the film, with Julius and Stefan having their argument in their underwear in one of the downward-traveling cars, while Paula is coming to see Julius in one of the upward cars. During the credits the crew go past in the cars as their names appear on the screen.

Dawn of the Dead poster

Dawn of the Dead

1978 · 127 min
⭐ 7.8 (136,836 votes)

The United States is devastated by a mysterious phenomenon that reanimates recently-dead human beings as flesh-eating zombies. At the dawn of the crisis, it has been reported that millions of people have died and reanimated. Despite the government's best efforts, social order is collapsing. While rural communities have natural barriers, such as Johnstown, and the National Guard have been effective in fighting the zombie hordes in open country, urban centers have descended into chaos. At WGON-TV, a television studio in Philadelphia, traffic reporter Stephen Andrews and his pregnant girlfriend, producer Francine Parker, are planning to steal the station's helicopter to escape the city. Across town, Philadelphia Police Department SWAT officer Roger DeMarco and his team raid a low-income housing project, whose mostly black and Latino tenants are defying the martial law of delivering their dead to the National Guard. The tenants and the officers exchange gunfire as the officers try to gain entry, and indiscriminate attacks by racist officers and the reanimated dead exacerbate the resulting chaos. Roger encounters an officer from another unit, Peter Washington. As the SWAT team successfully dispatch the zombies, a disillusioned Roger suggests that he and Peter desert and join up with Stephen (who is Roger's friend) in escaping the city. Roger and Peter join Fran and Stephen at a police dock and then leave Philadelphia in a stolen WGON-TV news helicopter. Following some close calls while stopping for fuel, the group comes across a shopping mall, and decide to remain there since there is plenty of food, medicine, and all kinds of consumables. Roger, Peter and Stephen camouflage the entrance to the stairwell leading to their safe room and block the mall entrances with trucks to keep the undead from penetrating. This involves driving through crowds of zombies, who attack the trucks. Roger becomes reckless and is soon bitten by the zombies. After clearing the mall of zombies, the group builds a hidden safe room as a fallback in case of future attacks, before settling into a hedonistic lifestyle with all the goods available to them. Roger eventually succumbs to his wounds and dies; when he reanimates, Peter shoots him in the head and buries his body in the mall. Months later, all emergency broadcast transmissions cease, suggesting that the government has collapsed. Now isolated, the three load some supplies into the helicopter, in case they might need to leave suddenly. Fran gets Stephen to teach her how to fly in case he is killed or incapacitated. A nomadic biker gang sees the helicopter in flight and breaks into the mall, destroying the barriers and allowing hundreds of zombies back inside. Despite having a fallback plan should the mall be attacked, Stephen, consumed by territorial rage, takes matters into his own hands by firing on the looters, beginning a protracted battle. On their way out, straggling bikers are overwhelmed and eaten by the zombies. Stephen tries to hide in the elevator shaft, but gets shot and subsequently mauled by roaming zombies. When Stephen reanimates, he instinctively returns to the safe room and leads the undead to Fran and Peter. Peter kills the undead Stephen while Fran escapes to the roof. Peter, not wanting to leave, locks himself in a room and contemplates suicide. When the zombies burst in, he has a change of heart and fights his way up to the roof, where he joins Fran. Having escaped and low on fuel, the two then fly away in the helicopter to an uncertain future.

Nice Girls Don't Explode poster

Nice Girls Don't Explode

1987 · 92 min
⭐ 5.5 (621 votes)

April Flowers (Michelle Meyrink) is kept away from boys by her overprotective mother (Barbara Harris) because flames have a tendency to spontaneously erupt whenever her hormones are aroused; for April, "protection" on a dinner date is carrying a fire extinguisher. As her mother explains, April is a "fire girl," whose very unstable body chemistry causes spontaneous combustion when she is aroused. As such, the only men April meets more than once are firefighters. When April reconnects with Andy (William O'Leary), a former neighbor who has returned to April's life, he challenges April's and her mother's assumption and presses his luck to prove to her that her hormones are not, in fact, explosive. Hijinks result; as Andy tries to prove his point, he is thwarted at every turn by April's mother. Further complications ensue when April befriends a lonely, obsessive pyromaniac named "Ellen" (Wallace Shawn), who becomes incensed at the constant mishearing of his real name "Ellen" for "Helen," after which he throws Bic lighter flicking snits, trying to set his tormentors ablaze.