The Price of FameMovies like The Price of Fame
- Key Features:
- Crime, Black comedy, Satire, Kidnapping, Fame, Greed, Social commentary, Partners in crime, Irony, Tragicomedy, Cult of personality, Media manipulation, Moral ambiguity, Nostalgia, European cinema, Dark humor, Absurdity
- Tone:
- humorous, satirical, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Fans of dark comedies, Viewers interested in social satire, Charlie Chaplin enthusiasts, European cinema fans
- Emotional Arc:
- Amusement → Discomfort
The Price of Fame

A criminal duo learns of Charlie Chaplin's death and decides to steal his coffin to hold for a ransom.
The Price of Fame
An undertaker who hasn't had any 'customers' in a long time is forced to pay one year's back-rent. To get money he starts to kill people, which brings absurd results.

A comedian's relationship with his family crumbles when his career begins to take off.

Suffering from empty nest syndrome, two lonely parents concoct a scheme to get their kids interested in them again: they pretend they've won the lottery.

Jean-Pierre, a wealthy businessman, is lonely. He still desires his wife but she only seems interested in shopping and the beauty salon. Tired of lunching alone every day, one day he decides to invite his chauffeur to join him, and a relationship quickly develops as the two find they have much in common. Are they just cash machines for their wives? Don't they deserve some love in return? Jean-Pierre confiscates his wife's credit card, but things don't turn out exactly the way he'd hoped...

An aged Charlie Chaplin narrates his life to his autobiography's editor, including his rise to wealth and comedic fame from poverty, his turbulent personal life and his run-ins with the FBI.

A crook named Ostap Bender, who survived a murder attempt by Kisa Vorobyaninov in "12 Chairs," now schemes to extort 1 million from an underground millionaire.

A montley group of free-lance photographers are desperate to grab a good shot of a celebrity.

A celebrity journalist, juggling her busy career and personal life, has her life over-turned by a freak car accident.

Aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin attempts to achieve success in show business by stalking his idol, a late night talk-show host who craves his own privacy.

Bernie Laplante is having a rough time. He's divorced, his ex-wife hates him and has custody of their son, the cops are setting a trap for him, then to top it all, he loses a shoe whilst rescuing passengers of a crashed jet. Being a thief who is down on his luck, Bernie takes advantage of the crash, but then someone else claims credit for the rescue.

Heartbroken that their children no longer want to spend time with them, two parents fake an inheritance to bring the family together for Christmas.

When they realize the times are changing, five crooks decide to switch from bank robberies to personality abductions.

Magistrate Jeanne Charmant-Killman doggedly investigates CEO Michel Humeau, who is accused of participating in massive corporate malfeasance. As her investigation leads her into the upper echelons of government, Jeanne becomes intoxicated by the power she is amassing.

After getting screwed over by life (again), two losers decide that enough is enough. Using stolen ski masks and stolen toy guns, they take hostages in their local bank, holding them for ransom. Things go well until the hostages learn what's going on, and demand a piece of the action for themselves.

Old professional killer Wagner seeks someone to teach what he knows as long as he is already dying, and he chooses Max, young and passionless thief to be his successor.

A down-on-his-luck publicist discovers a recently released mental health patient who looks just like a misbehaving movie star. The publicist subs him into a film, creating a new star. But fame and fortune are not all they are cracked up to be.

The story of Henry, a stand-up comedian with a fierce sense of humour and Ann, a singer of international renown. In the spotlight, they are the perfect couple, healthy, happy, and glamourous. The birth of their first child, Annette, a mysterious girl with an exceptional destiny, will change their lives.

Guillaume Canet is told by a young co-star that he's no longer Rock'n' Roll and can't sell films anymore. He then tries to prove her wrong and gets help from his girlfriend, Marion Cotillard.

After a pawn shop robbery goes askew, two criminals take refuge at a remote farmhouse to try to let the heat die down, but find something much more menacing.

A man meets up with two "good guys" to recover what is unlawfully his, taking them on his whirlwind ride, doing things they never would have imagined, just to survive.

Max and Riton, 2 thieves make plan to steal money in a train station office. They will operate through the wall in the public toilets.

An ageing punk-with-a-dog and his brother the conformist decide to get their revenge on a shopping mall. Directing duo Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern, longstanding comic crusaders against capitalism, again set out to surprise and shock the bourgeois audience.

Betty and Victor are a pair of scam artists. One day Betty brings in Maurice, a treasurer of a multinational company. Maurice is due to transfer 5 millions francs out of Switzerland, and Betty is convinced he plans to steal that money.

In this radical and endearing black comedy, a group of retrenched female factory workers decide to pool their compensation money… and hire a hit man to liquidate their boss.

An alienated and misanthropic teenager gains sudden and unwanted celebrity status after he's taken hostage by terrorists where his indifference to their threats to kill him makes news headlines.

Adolf Hitler is hiding out in California under the identity of Adolf Schwartz; however, he is soon murdered by a mysterious assailant. This coincides with the arrival of a mysterious woman in a nearby town. Whatever the case might be, nobody seems interested in investigating the crime, but there are many who are interested in her.

Alphonse Tram is unwittingly involved in several murders despite having no memory of committing the crimes. His confusion lead him to confess to his neighbour, Inspector Morvandieu. Alphonse and Morvandieu become the axis around which murders occur.

George Abitbol, the classiest man in the world, dies tragically during a cruise. The director of an American newspaper, wondering about the meaning of these intriguing final words, asks his three best investigators, Dave, Peter and Steven, to solve the mystery. (Sixteen French actors dub scenes from various Warner Bros. films to create a parody of Citizen Kane, 1941.)

Movie star Charlie Castle draws the ire of Hollywood producer Stanley Hoff when he refuses to sign a new seven-year contract. Castle is sick of the low quality of the studio's films and wants to start a new life. While his estranged wife supports him in the decision, Castle's talent agent urges him to reconsider. When Castle continues to be uncooperative, Hoff resorts to blackmail in order to get his way.

Dressed as a clown, the clever rascal Grimm holds up the most secure bank of Montreal and takes 30 hostages. While confusing and ridiculing the police with his strange behavior, he calmly manages to rid the bank of a fortune. But then an unsatisfied companion arouses trouble...

Four 1950s icons meet in the same hotel room, and two of them discover more in common between them than they ever anticipated.

The story throws Elvis impersonators, Indians, modern cowboys, a 6-foot-tall blond assassin, a frat boy, a corrupt sheriff and a prostitute into a chase for a priceless American Indian artifact stolen during a poker game at an Indian casino

A melancholic gunfighter is drawn into a vengeful and tragic kidnapping plot by his widowed ex-lover.

An art dealer, Charles Mortdecai, searches for a stolen painting rumored to contain a secret code that gains access to hidden Nazi gold.

Nino and Bruno are two comedians who reach the heights of success with their duo act, turning them into huge TV celebrities. However, the hate between them grows fast, as much as their fame.

Enigmatic gangster Silien may or may not be responsible for informing on Faugel, who was just released from prison and is already involved in what should be a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisting, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust?

Expert conman Joe Thanks teams up with half-breed Bill and naive Lucy to steal $300,000 from the Indian-hating Major Cabot. Their elaborate plan is full of disguises, double-crosses, and chases, but Joe always seems to know what he's doing.

Two movie producers who owe money to the mob set up their aging movie star for an insurance scam to try and save themselves. But they wind up getting more than they ever imagined.

Six outwardly average individuals have elaborate fetishes they indulge with surreptitious care. A mousy letter carrier makes dough balls she grotesquely ingests before bed. A shop clerk fixates on a TV news reader while he builds a machine to massage and masturbate him. One of his customers makes an elaborate chicken costume for a voodoo-like scene with a doll resembling his plump neighbor. She, in turn, has a doll that resembles him, which she whips and dominates in an abandoned church. The TV news reader has her own fantasy involving carp. Her husband, who is indifferent to her, steals materials to fashion elaborate artifacts that he rubs, scrapes and rolls across his body.

Louis just found the corpse of a man in front of his apartment building. Taken in for custody by Captain Buron, he finds himself on the wrong end of a surreal interrogation. But how can you prove you are innocent when the cops are crazy?

An artist grows distant from his new wife as an irrational fear of premature burial consumes him.

Social media sensation Magalie, known for posting shocking content, suffers a serious accident while filming one of her videos. She retreats to the mountains, accompanied by her assistant. Her peace is disrupted when a journalist begins blackmailing her.

Les Acteurs is the absurd story of Jean-Pierre Marielle desperately waiting for a cup of hot water, the story of a conspiracy against actors, the story of aging actors whose careers are slowly less active than they used to be, but a stunning tribute to French actors and their cinema.

A $10-million diamond rip-off, a stolen identity, a new life married to a diplomat. Laure Ash has risked big, won big. But then a tabloid shutterbug snaps her picture in Paris, and suddenly, enemies from Laure's secret past know who and where she is. And they all want their share of the diamond heist. Or her life. Or both.

Cinephile slackers Franz and Arthur spend their days mimicking the antiheroes of Hollywood noirs and Westerns while pursuing the lovely Odile. The misfit trio upends convention at every turn, be it through choreographed dances in cafés or frolicsome romps through the Louvre. Eventually, their romantic view of outlaws pushes them to plan their own heist, but their inexperience may send them out in a blaze of glory -- which could be just what they want.

The surreal tale of an unassuming man who is accused of a never-specified crime and shambles through bizarre encounters to escape this nightmare.

Five ordinary people disillusioned with politics—a perennial temp, a docker, a university professor, a TV reporter, and a convict—decide to kidnap a politician, to dispense justice and use the ransom money to compensate the family of a blue-collar worker who died in workplace accident.

“My plan was to die before the money ran out,” says 60-year-old penniless Manhattan socialite Frances Price, but things didn’t go as planned. Her husband Franklin has been dead for 12 years and with his vast inheritance gone, she cashes in the last of her possessions and resolves to live out her twilight days anonymously in a borrowed apartment in Paris, accompanied by her directionless son Malcolm and a cat named Small Frank—who may or may not embody the spirit of Frances’s dead husband.

Fed up of his business partner, Ernest Trend hires the services of two exterminators. When things go drastically wrong and they murder the wrong man, the race is on to frame an innocent video surveillance man.

Hoping to foil his own gold-digging wife's plan, a loathsome businessman arranges his own kidnapping, only to realize that there are plenty of other people interested in his wealth as well.

Michel takes up pickpocketing on a lark and is arrested soon after. His mother dies shortly after his release, and despite the objections of his only friend, Jacques, and his mother's neighbor Jeanne, Michel teams up with a couple of petty thieves in order to improve his craft. With a police inspector keeping an eye on him, Michel also tries to get a straight job, but the temptation to steal is hard to resist.

Creatively unfulfilled and facing financial ruin, Nick Cage must accept a $1 million offer to attend the birthday of a dangerous superfan. Things take a wildly unexpected turn when Cage is recruited by a CIA operative and forced to live up to his own legend, channeling his most iconic and beloved on-screen characters in order to save himself and his loved ones.

The adventures of an upper-class suburban family abruptly confronted with the younger brother's discovery of his homosexuality, the elder sister's suicide attempt and sadomasochist tendencies, and the intrusion of a very free-spirited maid and her husband. And it all started with the arrival in the family of an innocent looking rat.

Four separate stories deal with stereotypical ideas about Jews: their alleged influence on politics, the stereotype of Jewish business-mindedness, the Mossad, the Jewish world conspiracy and the memory of the Holocaust.

Maria, who's not as young as she used to be and who helps people older than her, is living from hand to mouth. She can't quite accept her precarious situation and steals a few euros here and there from all those lovely people she looks after with such devotion, and who adore her for it… But after an accusation of abuse of a vulnerable person, Maria winds up in police custody.

A hapless hunchback who only yearns for love, finds himself in the middle of a murderous feud between the Pope and the King of France when each orders the hunchback to kill the other.

Murderesses Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart find themselves on death row together and fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows in 1920s Chicago.

Willy and Tony have a brilliant idea for getting out of it financially: stealing a dog from the brigade des stups. But everything does not go as planned and the two accomplices will have to rely on the most corrupt of the cops.

A pathetic police chief, humiliated by everyone around him, suddenly wants a clean slate in life, and resorts to drastic means to achieve it.

This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.

A beautiful young gold-digger mistakes a lowly hotel clerk as a rich and therefore worthwhile catch.

A millionaire realizes he really wants to live after he has hired an assassin to kill him.

Largo Winch, devastated by the kidnapping of his son, realizes that if he finds those responsible for his bankruptcy, maybe he'll see his son again.

After being forced to drive a mysterious passenger at gunpoint, a man finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse where it becomes clear that not everything is as it seems.

A gangster escapes jail and quickly makes plans to continue his criminal ways elsewhere, but a determined inspector is closing in.

A deranged prison warden with a nasty habit of killing escapees forces the boyfriends of his teenage twin daughters into a shotgun wedding, after they claim to be pregnant. All hope seems lost, until the husbands hatch a madcap plan to rob a money train to freedom.

After winning the lottery, a convict must chase down the warden who has his winning ticket.

A self-assured businessman murders his employer, husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.

Passengers on a low cost flight from Djerba to Beauvais have their patience tested to destruction when their departure is delayed for eight hours because of a fault with the plane's air-conditioning. In the end, they are so fed up that they will do almost anything to get back home.

When a Hollywood star mysteriously disappears in the middle of filming, the studio sends their fixer to get him back.

Eddie Hawkins, called Hudson Hawk has just been released from ten years of prison and is planning to spend the rest of his life honestly. But then the crazy Mayflower couple blackmail him to steal some of the works of Leonardo da Vinci. If he refuses, they threaten to kill his friend Tommy.

Star-crossed lovers Thérèse and Laurent think they've gotten away with murder after Thérèse's weakling husband "falls" from a speeding train. But when forced to contend with a blackmailer's demands and the mute accusations of Thérèse's mother-in-law, it's only a matter of time before the law, their passion or blind chance trips them up.

Recently fired and facing eviction, a new dad has his life turned upside down when he meets a wealthy couple who offer a path to financial security... but at a price.

Revolves around Castro, who was once a very famous TV host, but as he grows old, his popularity is dwindling.

In the middle of a performance of the play "Le Cocu", a bad boulevard comedy at a Parisian theatre, Yannick gets up and interrupts the show to take the evening back in hand.

A detective decides to go undercover and set up a group of robbers, but he may be getting too caught up in the task at hand.

While on a joyride with the headlights turned off, two men hit and kill another man carrying a satchel full of money. The two men decide to take the money and throw the body into a pond and bury the money in a coal hill. The next morning the police discover the body of a kidnapped 12-year blind girl, Melody, in a warehouse near the site of the hit-and-run. They determine that the kidnapper saw the girl's father bringing the ransom to him and also witnessed the hit-and-run and the men stealing the ransom.

Near the end of WWII, a young bootlegger and his nightclub-singing girlfriend assemble a ragtag team for an dangerous heist: to steal Mussolini's treasure right from his headquarters.

A captured architect designs an ingenious plan to ensure the impregnability of the tomb of a self-absorbed Pharaoh, obsessed with the security of his next life.

From petty theft on the benches of Belleville to the over-publicised hold-ups of the large Parisian banks, this is the spectacular rise of Simon and his gang. They are capable of emptying a series of safes under the very nose of the police who are bewildered by the calm audacity shown by the group.

An out-of-town heist becomes a nightmare for a crew of French burglars when they mistakenly rob the head of the Chicago mafia. Unaccustomed to the ways of the American underworld, it is not long before they have the mafia, the FBI and a couple of street gangs on their backs as they attempt to make their way back to Paris.

An Irish undertaker profits when outlaws take over a peaceful town, but his own family come under threat as the death toll increases dramatically.

Threatened by creditors, a newly unemployed man agrees to work for a debt collector, but soon discovers his deal with the devil has unexpected costs.

Two, very different, brothers are reunited for their father's funeral. But, when they arrive at the crematorium nobody is there, not even the corpse, except for Chloe who introduces herself as their sister.

Eugene, a young nobleman, asks two penniless idlers to impersonate his noble relatives to help him marry Gemma, the daughter of an enriched cook.

Out of prison after a five-year stretch, jewel thief Tony turns down a quick job his friend Jo offers him, until he discovers that his old girlfriend Mado has become the lover of local gangster Pierre Grutter during Tony's absence. Expanding a minor smash-and-grab into a full-scale jewel heist, Tony and his crew appear to get away clean, but their actions after the job is completed threaten the lives of everyone involved.

The protagonist is Carmen X, a sexy female member of a terrorist gang. She asks her uncle Jean, a washed-up film director if she can borrow his beachside house to make a film with some friends, but they are in fact planning to rob a bank. During the robbery she falls in love with a security guard. The film intercuts between Carmen's escape with the guard, her uncle's attempt to make a comeback film, and a string quartet attempting to perform Beethoven.

Lucretia is a killer for hire. Specialised in poisoning and passionate about opera, she'll have to fulfill a difficult contract in the heart of the Swiss alps. Posing as a singer, Lucretia will have to appear on the scene of the higly exclusive Festival d'Ermeux and try to kill one of her partners: British bariton Alexander Child. Having recently acquired a Scottish distillery, he remains the only obstacle to a strategic pipeline project with considerable economic stakes; having recently won a tough legal battle against British Oil, their last resort is to eliminate him. Complicating everything is Rico, sent by the French contra-espionage, who tries to infiltrate the orchestra and stop the plot against Alexander Child.

A no-nonsense cop has a flair for fashion and a celebrity takes revenge on the paparazzi in a collection of comedic sketches.

In czarist Russia, a neurotic soldier and his distant cousin formulate a plot to assassinate Napoleon.

An up-and-coming stand-up comic moves to L.A. to pursue a film career after video clips of his act make him an online sensation.

Alex, Ivo and Pacifico three Sicilian twin brothers are reunited for their father's funeral.

Brilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.

A man's obsession with owning the designer deerskin jacket of his dreams leads him to turn his back on his humdrum life in the suburbs, blow his life savings, and even turn him to crime.

A young woman thinks she’s found a path to internet stardom when she starts making YouTube videos with a charismatic stranger – until the dark side of viral celebrity threatens to ruin them both.

Arthur and Anatole are two little robbers. They want to rob money, money that will travel in a special train from Paris to Bruxelles. They don't know that other people have planned to do the same thing.

Edmond Dantès becomes the target of a sinister plot and is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he did not commit. After 14 years in the island prison of Château d’If, he manages a daring escape. Now rich beyond his dreams, he assumes the identity of the Count of Monte-Cristo and exacts his revenge on the three men who betrayed him.


