Best movies like The Monkey Hustle

Early Errol Morris documentary intersplices random chatter he captured on film of the genuinely eccentric residents of Vernon, Florida. A few examples? The preacher giving a sermon on the definition of the word "Therefore," and the obsessive turkey hunter who speaks reverentially of the "gobblers" he likes to track down and kill.

The lives of a group of young Chicago men, as seen through the eyes of one of them, a writer.

A young black man named Bigger Thomas takes a job working for a highly influential Chicago family, a decision that will change the course of his life forever.

After growing up during the tumultuous 1960s, ex-Black Panther Marcus returns to his home in Philadelphia in 1976 and reconnects with Pat, the widow of a Panther leader. Marcus befriends Pat's young daughter and attempts to conquer his demons. Interfering with Marcus's good intentions are the neighborhood's continuing racial and social conflicts, as well as old enemies and friends -- both with scores to settle.

The story of a serial killer known as "Georgie Porgie." The Chicago turnpike is threatened over a three-day period as the police try to catch him by blocking the whole area.

To survive harsh economic times, Calvin and Angie have merged the barbershop and beauty salon into one business. The days of male bonding are gone as Eddie and the crew must now contend with sassy female co-workers and spirited clientele. As the battle of the sexes rages on, a different kind of conflict has taken over Chicago. Crime and gangs are on the rise, leaving Calvin worried about the fate of his son. Together, the friends come up with a bold plan to take back their beloved neighborhood.

An 18th century African prince is turned into a vampire while visiting Transylvania. Two centuries later, he rises from his coffin attacking various residents of Los Angeles and meets Tina, a woman who he believes is the reincarnation of his deceased wife.

When Lindsay Porter, responsible mother and head of the local neighborhood watch program, falls for Stephen, the handsome new bachelor on the block, she begins to fear she and her daughter's lives may be in grave danger.

Single mom Sarah moves into the suburbs and starts dating a firefighter, only to find herself the target of an obsessive neighborhood watchman who aims to prove he's the best man to protect her, even if he has to create the danger himself.

Archival footage, animation, and music are used to look back at the eight anti-war protesters who were put on trial following the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

When their only daughter Blair leaves the family nest, Luther and Nora Krank decide to book an island cruise to beat the yuletide blues and just skip the holidays. But their decision to boycott tradition has the whole neighborhood in an uproar, and when Blair calls on Christmas Eve to announce a surprise visit with her new fiancée, the Kranks have just twelve hours to perform a miracle and pull themselves and their neighbors together to throw the best celebration ever!

In the mid-1960s, a group of high school friends who live on the Near North Side of Chicago enjoy life to the fullest...parties, hanging out, meeting new friends. Then life changes for two of the guys when they are falsely arrested in connection with stealing a Cadillac. We follow their lives through to the dramatic end of high school.

The American comedian/actor delivers a story about the alternative Hip Hop scene. A small town Ohio mans moves to Brooklyn, New York, to throw an unprecedented block party.

A lawyer defends her father accused of war crimes, but there is more to the case than she suspects.

Retired cop and celebrity DJ Tucker Williams (aka The Disco Godfather) takes to the streets as a dangerous hallucinogenic drug called Angel Dust begins to take hold of the neighborhood.

Several Black men take a cross-country bus trip to attend the Million Man March in Washington, DC in 1995. On the bus are an eclectic set of characters including a laid-off aircraft worker, a man whose at-risk son is handcuffed to him, a black Republican, a former gangsta, a Hollywood actor, a cop who is of mixed racial background, and a white bus driver. All make the trek discussing issues surrounding the march, including manhood, religion, politics, and race.

Five years after throwing a killer party and stealing Muffin away from alpha-male Zeta frat member Bud, head party nerd Ritchie is married (to Muffin!) and runs a detective agency.

Spike Lee's take on the "Son of Sam" murders in New York City during the summer of 1977 centering on the residents of an Italian-American South Bronx neighborhood who live in fear and distrust of one another.

What was supposed to be a peaceful protest turned into a violent clash with the police. What followed was one of the most notorious trials in history.

John Cassellis is the toughest TV news reporter around. After extensively reporting about violence and racial tensions in poor communities, he discovers that his network is helping the FBI by granting them access to his footage to find suspects.

Vietnam vet Jon Rubin returns to New York and rents a rundown flat in Greenwich Village. It is in this flat that he begins to film, 'Peeping Tom' style, the people in the apartment across the street. His obsession with making films leads him to fall in with a radical 'Black Power' group, which in turn leads him to carry out a bizarre act of urban terrorism.

A newly married couple tries to enhance their social life by throwing fabulous parties and inviting all their friends in Brooklyn to their home.

Kid'N'Play leave their neighborhood and enter the world of adulthood and higher education. Play attempts to get rich quick in the music business while Kid faces the challenges of college.

Hip Hop duo Kid & Play return in the second follow-up to their 1990 screen debut House Party. Kid (Christopher "Kid" Reid) is taking the plunge and marrying his girlfriend Veda (Angela Means), while his friend Play (Christopher Martin) is dipping his toes into the music business, managing a roughneck female rap act called Sex as a Weapon. Play books the ladies for a concert with heavy-hitting pr

Now in his sixties, Joe is released from the hospital after a long battle with pneumonia and forced to confront the harsh reality of his legacy: everyone he knew had assumed he was dead, and life had gone on around him without missing a beat. Returning to his old neighborhood in Chicago's 'Patch' district, he finds his car gone, all his worldly possessions pawned by his landlord, and the apartment he's lived in his entire adult life rented out to a single mother and her eight-year-old daughter.

Darius Lovehall is a young black poet in Chicago who starts dating Nina Moseley, a beautiful and talented photographer. While trying to figure out if they've got a "love thing" or are just "kicking it," they hang out with their friends, talking about love and sex. Then Nina tests the strength of Darius' feelings and sets a chain of romantic complications into motion.

Sun Ra and his Solar Myth Arkestra return to Earth after several years in space. Ra proclaims himself "the alter-destiny", meets with inner-city youths and battles with the devil himself to save the black race.

On the Las Vegas strip, two unlikely men rendezvous: Samuel Hill, an ill-kempt desert miner, and Benjamin Jabowski, a John Birch Society dandy from the city. Intent on some sort of mayhem, they enter the Herald Club before the burlesque show starts, and they wire something to the electrical box, set to blow at midnight. They sit at the back of the club to get to know each other. As they drink and glance at the stage, Sam tells of a partner driven mad by visions of naked women in the sagebrush; Ben tells a tale of trying to rid his neighborhood of a pin-up studio. As they get drunker and the clock ticks toward midnight, they pull their chairs closer to the women on stage.

A man coming off a disastrous affair with a married woman has a lyrical, strange and comedic cross-country journey in a modified VW bus.

Boyz In The Hood is transplanted to the modern day Chicago neighborhood of Englewood in William L. Cochran’s powerful directing debut. Englewood boldly blends humor, romance, tragedy, and hope in this tale of three friends struggling to get through high school. Amid violence,peer pressure, and family dysfunction, these friends pull through. Dennis,(Cochran) tackles the main role, whose behavior conceals his talents and his new girlfriend sees through his thug exterior. Will her encouragement be enough to steer him past disaster?

Ashes and Embers is an original screenplay by Haile Gerima, about a Vietnam veteran, who, several years after the war, is struggling to come to terms with his role in the war, and his role as a Black person in America. He survives by working odd jobs in Washington, D.C. and living with his girlfriend and her son. When criticism of his alienated behavior come from her and a father figure too often, he runs to the streets or to his grandmother's rural house in Virginia. Her criticism and his memories of the past both send him fleeing again to Los Angeles, where he is surrounded by superficial people who have forgotten how to be compassionate human beings. It is here that the advice of his friends and grandmother combine to transform him from an embittered ex-soldier to a strong and confident man.

A struggling writer accepts a once-in-a-lifetime offer to collaborate with a best-selling novelist at his remote Texas ranch.

Noble nightclub owner Samson does his best to keep his neighborhood clean of crime and drugs. When vicious mobster Johnny Nappa tries to muscle in on Samson's territory, Samson takes a brave stand against Nappa and his flunkies.

Black girl from rich family loves white boy from poor family.

A married woman with an unwanted pregnancy lives in a time in America where she can't get a legal abortion and works with a group of suburban women to find help.

Kenny is an ice cream vendor in Chicago with a crisp white uniform and an apathetic heart. When he encounters Lolita, a sharp-tongued but despondent insurance actuary, their heated conversation, natural spark and mutual hopelessness lead to an unusual proposal for a meet-cute: to travel to San Francisco, where they will jump off the Golden Gate Bridge together.

"Stony Island gives you a priceless look back at Chicago’s South Side neighborhood, at a time when very few films were made in within the city at all — and features a legion of legendary Chicago players (Gene Barge, Phil Upchurch, Larry Ball, Richie Davis, Tennyson Stephens, Ronnie Barron, and a young Susanna Hoffs) alongside Dennis Franz (“NYPD Blue”) and Rae Dawn Chong. Telling the story of a group of multiracial R&B performers, and how they’re affected by the death of a veteran musician from their circle, Stony Island is an incredible time capsule, and provides a sweetly funky soundtrack to boot!" -- The Cinefamily

Williamson plays a cop called 'Soda Cracker', whose partner was killed in a mysterious assassination. He is convinced that the murder was committed by his old enemy, Ivan Moss, played by Bo Svenson. Despite threats from the mob and from the police department, he vows to continue his mission to find the persons responsible for the assassination. Maud Adams plays his new police woman partner, who falls in love with him during their investigations. 'Soda Cracker' also has to deal with the fact that many of the police officers on the squad may be corrupt, and tries to break down the criminal network whilst finding evidence against Ivan Moss.

Six friends, who've known each other from childhood, break into the tower block they lived in as kids, now deserted and condemned, to rig-up a pirate radio station, get high and party. When one of the group goes missing, her friends begin to search the dark interior of the tower and soon realize that they are not alone: a resident psychopath lurks in the shadows and is hunting them down, taking them out, one-by-one.

Escaped mass murderer goes on a rampage and is hunted by the cop who sent him up the first time.

When his girlfriend dies of a drug overdose, a former Green Beret decides to take vengeance on the drug gangs responsible for her death.

When food correspondent, Carly, gets a shot at her own show, she is sent to Angel Heights to help Grant open his diner and film it as a Holiday special for her TV show. Will Grant and Carly open their hearts too?

Molly and Bee, sweet young 'working girls,' live in a cheap room over a New York grocery store. Molly's idol, wealthy Jack Cromwell, lives in a Long Island mansion but is markedly less happy, since his fiancée Jane won't discourage her other admirers. Fleeing in his car, Jack ends up in an urban block party where he meets you-know-who.

A college kid is sentenced to house arrest after committing a crime to impress a girl. After jail and possibly losing the family home, he decides to throw a house party to raise money for his mom while she is away.

A made-for-cable-TV docudrama about the trial of the men accused of conspiring to cause protesters to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Combines in an innovative manner dramatic recreations (largely faithful to the actual trial transcripts) with documentary footage and interviews with the actual defendants.

While gun violence was on the decline in most major US cities, why did it continue to increase in Chicago's segregated communities? What is known about the systems that created the problem, the laws that isolated it, and the policies that abandoned it? Using dramatic footage, including interviews with residents on the front lines over the last 15 years, this documentary opens a rare historical window into the systematic creation of poverty stricken communities plagued by gun violence. 

Carmen is a good student with a bad attitude who lives for dancing in the underground clubs of Chicago. She yearns to be 'somebody' but is afraid to believe in herself. Her immigrant Mexican, working-class parents want her to stay in school and get an education, so she attends junior college while working at a grocery store. Carmen's professor catches her performing one day in the neighborhood and challenges her to audition to a formal dance school in California. She gets into a fight with her chaotic family and runs away to her best friend Gina's place only to find out Gina's been getting beat up by her boyfriend. Meanwhile, Carmen's boyfriend, Jared wants her to commit and move in with him. Pulled apart in every direction, her dream of dancing fades. Can Carmen overcome her fears and take the biggest chance of her life, or will she succumb to her self-doubt?

An elderly motion picture artist drifts through a tenement block, devising a plan to change the lives of its dissatisfied residents with a dusting of Hollywood magic!

HWY: An American Pastoral is a film by Jim Morrison, Frank Lisciandro, Paul Ferrara, and Babe Hill and stars Morrison as a hitchhiker. It is a 50-minute experimental film in Direct Cinema style. It was shot during the spring and summer of 1969 in the Mojave Desert and in Los Angeles.

When a washed-up boxer invites a British priest to minister in his South Chicago neighborhood, he never suspects that the priest is not who he says he is.