QuadropheniaMovies like Quadrophenia
- Key Features:
- Coming-of-age, Youth culture, Identity crisis, Rebellion, Social alienation, Subculture, Rock opera, 1960s, Working class, Existential angst, Music-driven, Loss of innocence, Self-discovery
- Tone:
- gritty, dramatic, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Music fans, British cinema enthusiasts, Counter-culture aficionados, Coming-of-age stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Confusion → Frustration → Disillusionment
Quadrophenia

Based on the 1973 rock opera album of the same name by The Who, this is the story of 60s teenager Jimmy. At work he slaves in a dead-end job. While after, he shops for tailored suits and rides his scooter as part of the London Mod scene.
Quadrophenia
New York, early 1960s. Against the backdrop of a vibrant music scene and tumultuous cultural upheaval, an enigmatic 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives in the West Village with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music.

A group of bored teenagers rebel against authority in the community of New Granada.

After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.

A troubled rock star descends into madness in the midst of his physical and social isolation from everyone.

Alex, a high-school boy fond of rock and punk music, falls in love with Adelaide, who shares his feelings but doesn't want to get too involved because she will soon leave for studying in America. Alex gets relief in music and his friend Martino who leads what looks to him as a more complete life.

After a series of traumatic childhood events, a psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.

An aimless adolescent joins several itinerant misfits who live on the fringe of society and welcome at-risk youths into their fold.

The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’

A group of rock-music-loving students, with the help of the Ramones, take over their school to combat its newly installed oppressive administration.

After being sent to a detention centre, a teenage skinhead clashes with the social workers who want to conform him to the status quo.

Instead of adhering to the norms of their South Central neighborhood, a group of skater boys opt to bus into Hollywood and Beverly Hills, where they attract local rich girls - and plenty of trouble with the police, jealous boyfriends, and nervous parents.

Cynical look at a 1950s rebellious Rocker who has to confront his future, thugs with knives, and the crooked town sheriff.

In underworld terms, Chas Devlin is a 'performer,' a gangster with a talent for violence and intimidation. Turner is a reclusive rock superstar. When Chas and Turner meet, their worlds collide—and the impact is both exotic and explosive.

A lack of parental guidance encourages teens in an affluent California town to rebel with substance abuse and casual sex.

In 1973, 15-year-old William Miller's unabashed love of music and aspiration to become a rock journalist lands him an assignment from Rolling Stone magazine to interview and tour with the up-and-coming band, Stillwater.

A group of suburban teenagers try to support each other through the difficult task of becoming adults.

A biography of Ian Dury, who was stricken with polio at a young age and defied expectations by becoming one of the founders of the punk-rock scene in Britain in the 1970s.

A recent high school graduate is faced with two options, either go to a business school where his father wants him to go to, or get a full time job. However he decides to defy his father and go to Hawaii. Trouble is he has no money. Along the way he comes to understand his parents and eventually bonds with his father.

A malevolent rock star kidnaps a female singer to force her to participate in the summoning of a demon and her band must help her stop him.

A small town girl and a city boy meet on the Sunset Strip, while pursuing their Hollywood dreams.

A prim and proper schoolgirl goes against her society grandmother's wishes when she dates a motorcycle-riding juvenile delinquent.

Teenage musicians travel to England's Spike Island in the hope of attending an outdoor performance by their favorite band, the Stone Roses.

When teenager Ren and his family move from big-city Chicago to a small town in the West, he's in for a real case of culture shock after discovering he's living in a place where music and dancing are illegal.

Dave, nineteen, has just graduated high school, with his three friends: the comical Cyril, the warm hearted but short-tempered Moocher, and the athletic, spiteful but good-hearted Mike. Now, Dave enjoys racing bikes and hopes to race the Italians one day, and even takes up the Italian culture, much to his friends' and parents' annoyance.

As a fan of Albert Camus and Jean-Luc Godard, teenage Nick Twisp is definitely out of his element when his mother and her boyfriend move the family to a trailer park. When a pretty neighbor named Sheeni plays records by French crooners, it's love at first sight for frustrated and inexperienced Nick. Learning that she is dating someone, Nick launches a hilarious quest to find his way into Sheeni's heart -- and bed.

The film tells futurist, architect, and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller's incredible story through two teens hoping to get laid, become punk gods, and survive high school.

Queen Elizabeth I visits late 1970s England to find a depressing landscape where life has changed since her time.

Set in suburban New Jersey in the 1960s, a group of friends form a rock band and try to make it big.

A group of young mutants--humans with a genetic variation that gives them superpowers and makes them feared by the population at large--begin training at a school for heroes. Their studies are interrupted when they must rescue one of their number from a mad scientist who can enter others' dreams.

In a fantasy world of opposing kingdoms, a 15-year old girl must find the fabled MirrorMask in order to save the kingdom and get home.

Two former geeks become 1980s punks, then party and go to concerts while deciding what to do with their lives.

For teenage misfits Hunter and Kevin, the path to glory is clear: Devote themselves to metal. Win Battle of the Bands. And be worshipped like gods.

A day in the life of a group of teens as they travel around New York City skating, drinking, smoking and deflowering virgins.

In 1990s Los Angeles, a 13-year-old spends his summer navigating between a troubled home life and a crew of new friends he meets at a skate shop.

The adventures of a group of Texas teens on their last day of school in 1976, centering on student Randall Floyd, who moves easily among stoners, jocks and geeks. Floyd is a star athlete, but he also likes smoking weed, which presents a conundrum when his football coach demands he sign a "no drugs" pledge.

Fifteen-year-old Mia is in a constant state of war with her family and the world around her. When she meets her party-girl mother’s charming new boyfriend Connor, she is amazed to find he returns her attention, and believes he might help her start to make sense of her life.

Singer-songwriter Winslow Leach seeks revenge on the nefarious music producer Swan, who steals both Winslow's music and his favorite singer for the grand opening of Swan's new rock palace, the Paradise.

Young teenager Sam Witwicky becomes involved in the ancient struggle between two extraterrestrial factions of transforming robots – the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons. Sam holds the clue to unimaginable power and the Decepticons will stop at nothing to retrieve it.

A rebellious teenager, future Beatle John Lennon lives with his Aunt Mimi in working-class mid-1950s Liverpool, England. Mimi's husband suddenly dies, and John spies his mother Julia at the funeral. Despite Mimi's misgivings, John intends to have a real relationship with his mother. Julia introduces him to popular music and the banjo and, though a family conflict looms, young John is inspired to form his own band.

An orchestra assembles for a rehearsal in an ancient chapel under the inquisitive eyes of a TV documentary crew, but an uprising breaks out.

As played out by a theatre troupe, the last days of Jesus Christ are depicted from the perspective of Judas Iscariot, his betrayer. As Jesus' following increases, Judas begins to worry that Jesus is falling for his own hype, forgetting the principles of his teachings and growing too close to the prostitute Mary Magdalene.

Rachel is a rambunctious girl from a polygamist colony in southern Utah. On Rachel’s 15th birthday, she finds a forbidden cassette tape. Having never seen anything like it before, Rachel plays the cassette tape, and finds glorious rock & roll thereupon. Weeks later, Rachel realizes a miracle has occurred - and the cassette tape must have something to do with it. She leaves her family and runs away to the closest city: Las Vegas. There she searches for the singer of the band on the cassette tape.

For Jip, Lulu, Koop, Nina and Moff, the dead-end jobs they endure during the week just kill the time until Friday night. That's when they cut very loose and get on the rollercoaster ride that takes them right through to Monday morning.

A young actor arrives in Hollywood in 1969 during a transitional time in the Industry.

April 24, 1993: it's the last broadcast of Radiofreccia, an independent radio station closing after 18 years, barely one minute before coming of age. Bruno, one of its founders, begins to tell its story, the story of a group of friends—especially troubled Freccia's—and a period of their youth in their small hometown.

The embodiment of ultimate evil, a glowing orb terrorizes a young girl with bizarre stories of dark fantasy, eroticism and horror.

By the year 2056, an epidemic of organ failures has devastated the planet. The megacorporation GeneCo provides organ transplants on a payment plan - and those who can’t fulfill their plans have their organs repossessed. In the midst of this, a sickly teenager discovers a shocking secret about herself, her father, and their connection to GeneCo.

Singer Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bass guitarist John Deacon take the music world by storm when they form the rock 'n' roll band Queen in 1970. Hit songs become instant classics. When Mercury's increasingly wild lifestyle starts to spiral out of control, Queen soon faces its greatest challenge yet – finding a way to keep the band together amid the success and excess.

Follow Robbie Williams' journey from childhood, to being the youngest member of chart-topping boyband Take That, through to his unparalleled achievements as a record-breaking solo artist – all the while confronting the challenges that stratospheric fame and success can bring.

Set during a long, hot summer on the Thamesmead Estate in Southeast London, where three teenagers edge towards adulthood.

A young girl whose father is an ex-convict and whose mother is a junkie finds it difficult to conform and tries to find comfort in a quirky combination of Elvis and the punk scene.

Upon receiving his draft notice and leaving his family ranch in Oklahoma, Claude heads to New York and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to boot camp.

Nando and Erika, two young people in their twenties, meet several times without noticing. The story of the subculture of electronic music and rave parties and drugs like MDMA.

A creative and driven teenager is desperate to escape his hometown and the haunting memories of his turbulent childhood.

In 1960s Tulsa, class divisions ignite a violent rivalry between the working-class Greasers and the privileged Socs. When a deadly encounter forces two Greasers, Ponyboy and Johnny, to flee, their struggle for survival and redemption exposes the fragile innocence and enduring bonds of youth on the wrong side of town.

In a near-future Britain, young Alexander DeLarge and his pals get their kicks beating and raping anyone they please. When not destroying the lives of others, Alex swoons to the music of Beethoven. The state, eager to crack down on juvenile crime, gives an incarcerated Alex the option to undergo an invasive procedure that'll rob him of all personal agency. In a time when conscience is a commodity, can Alex change his tune?

Five friends who reunite in an attempt to top their epic pub crawl from 20 years earlier unwittingly become humankind's only hope for survival.

A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life and consider their daughter to be “misbehaving” whenever she’s trying to find her own way in life.

17-year-old Lisa feels certain that she inadvertently played a role in causing a traffic accident that claimed a woman's life. In her attempts to set things right, she meets with opposition at every step. Torn apart with frustration, she begins emotionally brutalizing her family, her friends, her teachers, and, most of all, herself. She has been confronted quite unexpectedly with a basic truth: that her youthful ideals are on a collision course with the realities and compromises of the adult world.

Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed high school student and comic book fan who one day decides to become a super-hero, even though he has no powers, training or meaningful reason to do so.

A sweeping multigenerational story set against the backdrop of the raw, roaring New York City of the late 1980s; adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, hardcore punk rock, the unbridled optimism and reckless stupidity of the young—and old—are all major elements in this heart-aching tale of the son of diehard hippies and his strange odyssey through the extremes of late 20th century youth culture.

Wyatt and Billy, two Harley-riding hippies, complete a drug deal in Southern California and decide to travel cross-country in search of spiritual truth.

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.

Simon Birch and Joe Wenteworth are boys who have a reputation for being oddballs. Joe never knew his father, and his mother, Rebecca, is keeping her lips sealed no matter how much he protests. Simon, meanwhile, is an 11-year-old dwarf whose outsize personality belies his small stature. Indeed, he often assails the local reverend with thorny theological questions and joins Joe on his quest to find his biological father.

In 1971, five college buddies from the University of Texas embark on a final road trip odyssey across the Mexican border before facing up to uncertain futures, in Vietnam and otherwise.

A young filmmaker in 1960s Paris juggles directing a cheesy sci-fi debacle, directing his own personal art film, coping with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, and a new-found infatuation with the sci-fi film's starlet.

Determined to avoid another night of driving aimlessly around Torrance in the Blue Torpedo, Joe and Hubbs set out on a quest for fine chicks. Their paths soon cross with Tack, from whom they learn about a pair of foreign radical chicks hanging out near the Frankie Avalon place. Over Joe's objections, Hubbs worms Tack out of the deal, and the pair take a slow ride toward their destiny.

The life of a working-class boy in Rome through the '70s and '80s, choosing his own path with his friends and family.

The story of the famous and influential 1960s rock band and its lead singer and composer, Jim Morrison.

Raised a boy in East Berlin, Hedwig undergoes a personal transformation in order to emigrate to the U.S., where she reinvents herself as an 'internationally ignored' but divinely talented rock diva, inhabiting a 'beautiful gender of one'.

College student Janardhan is a simpleton who desperately seeks inspiration for the musician inside him. Although heartbreak helps him reach his goal, it also leads him to self-destruction.

A young man turns from drug addiction and petty crime to a life redeemed by a discovery of compassion.

Drifting through his gap year with its internships and travel plans, Jack has always suspected there was more to life than this. A chance encounter with the beautiful and ethereal Evelyn swerves his life radically off course.

A couple of high school graduates spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college.

While The Rolling Stones rehearse "Sympathy for the Devil" in the studio, an alternating narrative reflects on 1968 society, politics and culture through five different vignettes.

The Los Angeles punk music scene circa 1980 is the focus of this film. With Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X.

When the young, attractive Joe Orton meets the older, more introverted Kenneth Halliwell at drama school, he befriends the kindred spirit and they start an affair. As Orton becomes more comfortable with his sexuality and starts to find success with his writing, Halliwell becomes increasingly alienated and jealous, ultimately tapping into a dangerous rage.

In 1970s London, a teenage outsider named Enn falls in love with a rebellious alien girl named Zan, who has come to Earth for a party. Together, they navigate the complexities of intergalactic culture and the trials of first love.

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

Many thousands of years in the future, Earth’s cities roam the globe on huge wheels, devouring each other in a struggle for ever diminishing resources. On one of these massive traction cities, the old London, Tom Natsworthy has an unexpected encounter with a mysterious young woman from the wastelands who will change the course of his life forever.

Seventeen-year-old Carlos doesn't fit in anywhere, not in his family nor with the friends he has chosen in school. But everything changes when he is invited to a mythical nightclub where he discovers the underground LGBTQ nightlife scene: punk, sexual liberty and drugs.

In 1978, a Kiss concert was an epoch-making event. For the four teen fans in Detroit Rock City getting tickets to the sold-out show becomes the focal point of their existence. They'll do anything for tickets -- compete in a strip club's amateur-night contest, take on religious protesters, even rob a convenience store!

In the 1970s, aimless teenager Greg Laurie searches for all the right things in all the wrong places until he meets Lonnie Frisbee, a charismatic hippie/street preacher. Together with local pastor Chuck Smith, they open the doors of a languishing church to an unexpected revival.

Paul, a teenager in the underground scene of early-nineties Paris, forms a DJ collective with his friends and together they plunge into the nightlife of sex, drugs, and endless music.

Precocious yet sensitive teenager James has a deep perception of the world but no idea how to live in it. Finding no help from his divorced parents nor his older memoir-writing sister, he decides to reject the beliefs adults try to push on him, starting with the college career that is looming over his last summer in New York, and embarks instead on a search for wisdom through nontraditional means...

A coming-of-age story that follows 12-year-old Andy Nichol, a bright student who, like most kids his age, will do anything to avoid conflict for fear of suffering overwhelming ridicule and punishment from his junior high school peers.

A ten year old boy gets tired of life with abusive parents and cashes in his piggy bank and steals a Mustang. He rides off into a surreal America playing "Motorama," a game sponsored by Chimera Gas Company. He has various encounters with different people, and eventually reaches the Chimera Gas Company where he finds they are not playing by the rules of the game.

After a singer loses his job at a coffee shop, he finds employment at a struggling carnival, but his attempted romance with a teenager leads to friction with her father.

A young French Canadian, one of five boys in a conservative family in the 1960s and 1970s, struggles to reconcile his emerging identity with his father's values.

A lone drifter stumbles upon a unique pair of sunglasses that reveal aliens are systematically gaining control of the Earth by masquerading as humans and lulling the public into submission.

Set in 1958, the coming of age story follows four lower middle-class Brooklyn teenagers known as The Lords of Flatbush. The Lords chase girls, steal cars, shoot pool, get into street fights, and hang out at a local malt shop.

Taken in by the musical world as a young orphan, Rick Martin grows up with a desire to play pure jazz instead of the commercial gigs he lands, whilst also coping with the problems caused by his tempestuous marriage to an aloof heiress.

Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends --Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning up and moving from Edinburgh to London, Mark finds he can't escape the life he left behind as Begbie and Sick Boy come knocking.

When aspiring musician and student Deniz falls for a rough-hewn motorbike racer, tragedy and family opposition obstruct their path to love.

When a group of rebellious deejays decides to defy the ban on government-censored music, they take to the seas to broadcast music and mayhem to millions of adoring fans.

A story about a troubled boy growing up in England, set in 1983. He comes across a few skinheads on his way home from school, after a fight. They become his new best friends, even like family. Based on experiences of director Shane Meadows.

In 1960, a hardy group of prep school students boards an old-fashioned sailing ship. With Capt. Christopher Sheldon at the helm, the oceangoing voyage is intended to teach the boys fortitude and discipline. But the youthful crew are about to get some unexpected instruction in survival when they get caught in the clutches of a white squall storm.


