Best Oil Movies & TV Shows

A mysterious master criminal known as The Voice plots with his gang to sabotage the Milesburg Oil Company, but the rightful heir has a secret army of her own to protect her rights.

Black Gold is a reality-documentary television series that chronicles three oil drilling rigs in Andrews County, Texas, 30 miles northwest of Odessa. It is partly produced by Thom Beers, creator of Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. The Black Gold theme song is sung by country music star Trace Adkins. The title "Black Gold" comes from a slang term for oil. Black Gold airs Wednesday nights on truTV at 10pm. It is also shown as a special presentation on TNT in high definition. The show also airs in the United Kingdom on Five, under the title Oil Riggers.

London Bridges, a fast rising Hollywood starlet, with her pampered pomeranian Latte in tow, arrives on location for "There Will Be Oil" to see that she won't be receiving the star treatment she is used to.

The Joy of Painting was an American television show hosted by painter Bob Ross that taught its viewers techniques for landscape oil painting. Although Ross could complete a painting in half an hour, the intent of the show was not to teach viewers "speed painting". Rather, he intended for viewers to learn certain techniques within the time that the show was allotted. The show began on January 11, 1983, and lasted until May 17, 1994, a year before Ross' death.

A great warrior is displaced to the distant future by the evil shape-shifting wizard Aku. The world has become a bleak place under the rule of Aku, segregated into fantastic tribes and ruled by Aku's evil robot warlords. Jack travels this foreign landscape in search of a time portal that can return him to his home time so he can "undo the future that is Aku!".

True story of an abusive husband's obsession with his wife and daughter.

A small boy is sent away from his village. He is to be trained as a samurai warrior and return to fight the evil shapeshifter, Aku, who has wreaked havoc throughout the village. His skills honed, the warrior attempts a return to his home, but winds up in a future time landscape. Here, the locals call the stranger, a sort of Dirty Harry kung fu loner, "Jack" and assist him in his path homeward. This is the original feature length presentation that kicked off the SAMURAI JACK phenomenon on the Cartoon Network.

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.

Ruthless silver miner, turned oil prospector, Daniel Plainview, moves to oil-rich California. Using his son to project a trustworthy, family-man image, Plainview cons local landowners into selling him their valuable properties for a pittance. However, local preacher Eli Sunday suspects Plainview's motives and intentions, starting a slow-burning feud that threatens both their lives.

Newspaper magnate, Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Sergeant Carlos Olivarez (Buck Jones) becomes entangled in the machinations of an oil baron, havoc-wreaking bandits, and the femme fatale who ruined his brother.

After being run out of town after town for trying to sell worthless stock, two con artists breeze into the small town of Chesterville, where they find themselves accused of kidnapping a young boy to whom they offered a ride. When that misunderstanding is cleared up, the two conmen hatch a plot to unload all their worthless paper on the gullible citizens of Chesterville.

Returning to their hometowns, Texas filmmakers Richard Linklater, Alex Stapleton, and Iliana Sosa chronicle the complex history of each city, while examining the toll that the prison system, oil business, and border laws have on those communities.

Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtin, both down on their luck in Tampico, Mexico in 1925, meet up with a grizzled prospector named Howard and decide to join with him in search of gold in the wilds of central Mexico. Through enormous difficulties, they eventually succeed in finding gold, but bandits, the elements, and most especially greed threaten to turn their success into disaster.

Virunga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is Africa’s oldest national park, a UNESCO world heritage site, and a contested ground among insurgencies seeking to topple the government that see untold profits in the land. Among this ongoing power struggle, Virunga also happens to be the last natural habitat for the critically endangered mountain gorilla. The only thing standing in the way of the forces closing in around the gorillas: a handful of passionate park rangers and journalists fighting to secure the park’s borders and expose the corruption of its enemies. Filled with shocking footage, and anchored by the surprisingly deep and gentle characters of the gorillas themselves, Virunga is a galvanizing call to action around an ongoing political and environmental crisis in the Congo.

The gang decides to build their own fire engine.

In 1846, Anthony Hope sails into London with the mysterious Sweeney Todd, a once-naive barber whose life and marriage was uprooted by a corrupt justice system. Todd confides in Nellie Lovett, the owner of a local meat pie shop, and the two become partners, as Todd swears revenge on those that have wronged him and decides to take up his old profession.

Shot in documentary style from the perspective of an almost alien observer, the film is an exploration of the ravaged oil fields of post-Gulf War Kuwait. An effective companion to his earlier film Fata Morgana, Herzog again perceives the desert as a landscape with its own voice, as he glides over seas of oil, geyser-like infernos, monstrous smoke plumes and ashen roadways. With musical accompaniment by Wagner, Prokofiev and Pärt to boot, he observes the soot-covered creatures allured by the blaze.

A documentary about the psychological costs of working in Alberta's oil sands and the mental health crisis that's been ignored for a decade.

An unlikely team of activists and innovators hatches a bold mission to save endangered species.

Steptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about a father and son played by Wilfred Brambell and Harry H. Corbett who deal in selling used items. They live on Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd's Bush, London. Four series were broadcast by the BBC from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974. Its theme tune, "Old Ned", was composed by Ron Grainer. The series was voted 15th in a 2004 BBC poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom. It was remade in the US as Sanford and Son, in Sweden as Albert & Herbert and in the Netherlands as Stiefbeen en zoon. In 1972 a movie adaptation of the series, Steptoe and Son, was released in cinemas, with a second Steptoe and Son Ride Again in 1973.

An oil industrialist, an environmental activist and a politician are in conflict in this drama set around a summit on climate change.

A Louisiana con man enters his steamboat into a winner-take-all race with a rival while trying to find a witness to free his nephew, about to be hanged for murder.

A look at how climate change affects our environment and what society can do to prevent the demise of endangered species, ecosystems, and native communities across the planet.

An old fisherman goes out on his fishing trip and makes a huge catch, the biggest of his life.

Wealthy rancher Bick Benedict and dirt-poor cowboy Jett Rink both woo Leslie Lynnton, a beautiful young woman from Maryland who is new to Texas. She marries Benedict, but she is shocked by the racial bigotry of the White Texans against the local people of Mexican descent. Rink discovers oil on a small plot of land, and while he uses his vast, new wealth to buy all the land surrounding the Benedict ranch, the Benedict's disagreement over prejudice fuels conflict that runs across generations.

PUMP is a documentary that tells the story of America’s addiction to oil, from its corporate conspiracy beginnings to its current monopoly today, and explains clearly and simply how we can end it — and finally win choice at the pump. Today, oil is our only option for transportation-fuel at the pump. Our exclusive use of it has drained our wallets, increased air pollution and sent our sons and daughters to war in faraway lands. PUMP shows how, through the use of a variety of replacement fuels, we will be able to fill up our cars — cheaper, cleaner and American made — and in the process create more jobs for a stronger, healthier economy. Narrated by Jason Bateman and featuring notable experts such as John Hofmeister former President of Shell Oil, and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, PUMP will forever change the way you think about your car — and the fuel that powers it.

An American oil company representative almost sacrifices his marriage for his career.

Spin doctors spread misinformation and confusion among American citizens to delay progress on such important issues as global climate change.

Mary Rafferty comes from a poor family of steel mill workers in 19th Century Pittsburgh. Her family objects when she goes to work as a maid for the wealthy Scott family which controls the mill. Mary catches the attention of handsome scion Paul Scott, but their romance is complicated by Paul's engagement to someone else and a bitter strike among the mill workers.

The life story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who spent years building a 1920 Indian motorcycle—a bike which helped him set the land-speed world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.

An apocalyptic story set in the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and most everyone is crazed fighting for the necessities of life. Within this world exist two rebels on the run who just might be able to restore order.

Ali is a young Tunisian who dreams of a better life and ekes out a lonely existence selling contraband oil on the black market. When his father dies, he is forced to care for his two younger sisters who have been left to their own devices in a house from which they will soon be evicted. As he wrestles with the sudden weight of responsibility and the injustices he faces, anger and indignation stir within Ali – that of a generation still fighting to be heard more than a decade after the revolution…

A sugar-refinery worker flees his Northern Italy town after a woman refuses his marriage proposal.

An engineer makes a thieving entertainer work off her debts as a housekeeper at his jungle mining camp.

An Israeli man, raised by a wealthy and powerful Arab, comes into conflict with his heritage when he is entrusted with managing his country's oil fortunes and must deal with a fanatical terrorist group led by his daughter.

1971 post civil rights San Francisco seemed like the perfect place for a black Korean War veteran and his family to realize their dream of economic independence, and a chance for him to be his own boss. Charlie Walker would soon find out how naive he was. In a city full of impostors and naysayers, he refused to take "No" for an answer. That is, until a catastrophic disaster opened a door that had never been open to a black man before. This is a story about what happened when he stepped through that door with both feet.

John Berger's Ways of Seeing changed the way people think about painting and art criticism. This watershed work shows, through word and image, how what we see is always influenced by a whole host of assumptions concerning the nature of beauty, truth, civilization, form, taste, class and gender. Exploring the layers of meaning within oil paintings, photographs and graphic art, Berger argues that when we see, we are not just looking - we are reading the language of images.

The murder of Sonia Baker, a young political researcher, leads journalist Cal McCaffrey to uncover complex links between government and big business.

Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger says that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the film’s message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".

In a small and conservative Scottish village, a woman's paralytic husband convinces her to have extramarital intercourse so she can tell him about it and give him a reason for living.

After avenging his family's brutal murder, Wales is pursued by a pack of soldiers. He prefers to travel alone, but ragtag outcasts are drawn to him - and Wales can't bring himself to leave them unprotected.

A pair of former high school sweethearts reunite after many years when they return to visit their small hometown.

With unprecedented access to the nuclear industry in France, Russia, and the United States, Nuclear Now explores the possibility for the global community to overcome the challenges of climate change and energy poverty to reach a brighter future through the power of nuclear energy. Beneath our feet, Uranium atoms in the Earth’s crust hold incredibly concentrated energy. Science unlocked this energy in the mid-20th century, first for bombs and then to power submarines. The United States led the effort to generate electricity from this new source. Yet in the mid-20th century as societies began the transition to nuclear power and away from fossil fuels, a long-term PR campaign to scare the public began, funded in part by coal and oil interests.

Four men from different parts of the globe, all hiding from their pasts in the same remote South American town, agree to risk their lives transporting several cases of dynamite (which is so old that it is dripping unstable nitroglycerin) across dangerous jungle terrain.

A first-time captain leads a convoy of allied ships carrying thousands of soldiers across the treacherous waters of the “Black Pit” to the front lines of WW2. With no air cover protection for 5 days, the captain and his convoy must battle the surrounding enemy Nazi U-boats in order to give the allies a chance to win the war.

In this documentary, filmmakers Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand (Blue Vinyl) follow a troupe of self-proclaimed global warming "warriors" on a mission to get the world to care about rising temperatures and melting polar ice caps. Taking a topic that's inherently serious and applying their signature blend of humor and emotional heft, Gold and Helfand advance the environmental dialogue in a surprisingly entertaining way.

Documentary written and presented by scientist Richard Dawkins, in which he seeks to expose "those areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell", including mediumship, psychokinesis, acupuncture, and other forms of alternative medicine.

Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede". When the killers find the Swede, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede's past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.

A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess.