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table started by Freebase Data Team for the Film Commons
The Film Genre type defines a finite set of topics that are used to classify films. Films can have multiple Film Genres. more
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x Cult Santa Claus Conquers the Martians Kiss Me Deadly
A cult film (also known as a cult movie/picture or a cult classic) is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside of the small fanbases; however, there have been...
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
Valley of the Dolls
Quadrophenia
Short Cuts
more
x Drama American Beauty won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Picture Pi
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek: δράμα, dráma), which is derived from "to do" (Classical Greek: δράω, dráō). The enactment of drama in theatre,...
Detective Story
Airport 1975
Hamlet
American Beauty
more
x Film noir BigComboTrailer Miller's Crossing
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the...
Touch of Evil
Croupier
Gattaca
The French Connection
more
x Historical drama   Apollo 13
The historical drama is a film genre in which stories are based upon historical events and famous persons. Some historical dramas attempt to accurately portray a historical event or biography, to the degree that the available historical research...
Seven Samurai
Gladiator
Russian Ark
Eklavya: The Royal Guard
more
x Martial arts   Kill and Kill Again
Martial arts film is a film genre. A sub-genre of the action film, martial arts films are characterized by extensive fighting scenes featuring specific martial arts, often following the training and progress of the protagonist in training a specific...
Giant Robo
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Marked for Death
Hard to Kill
more
x Musical Marilyn Monroe dans la bande-annonce de Les hommes préfèrent les blondes, 1953 An American in Paris
The musical film is a film genre in which several songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative. The songs are usually used to advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but some musical films (e.g.Down Argentine Way) simply...
Chicago
West Side Story
The Pajama Game
42nd Street
more
x Romantic comedy   What Women Want
Romantic comedy is a hybrid genre of fiction, especially motion pictures, in which a story about romance is presented in a comedic style. Works in this genre are generally considered light-hearted, and are sometimes associated with the vaguely...
As Good as It Gets
Hitch
Can't Hardly Wait
She's All That
more
x Screwball comedy   Weekend at Bernie's
The screwball comedy is a subgenre of the comedy film genre. It has proven to be one of the most popular and enduring film genres. It first gained prominence in 1934 with It Happened One Night, and, although many film scholars would agree that its...
His Girl Friday
You, Me and Dupree
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
x War   Heartbreak Ridge
War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military...
Flags of Our Fathers
Apocalypse Now
Platoon
A Bridge Too Far
more
x Zombie A participant in a zombie walk in Calgary Resident Evil: Apocalypse
A zombie is a creature that appears in folklore and popular culture typically as a reanimated corpse or a mindless human being. Stories of zombies originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodou, which told of the people being...
I Am Legend
Vampires Vs. Zombies
Shaun of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead
more
x Spy   Sabotage
The spy film genre deals with the subject of fictional espionage, either in a realistic way or as a basis for fantasy. Many novels in the spy fiction genre have been adapted as films, although in many cases (such as James Bond) the overall tone is...
The Lady Vanishes
Johnny English
The Man Who Knew Too Little
Spy Hard
more
x Western Great train robbery still The Iron Horse
The Western is a fiction genre seen in film, television, radio, literature, painting and other visual arts. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in what became the Western United States (known...
Tumbleweeds
Cimarron
Dodge City
Go West
more
x Family   My Neighbor Totoro
A family film is a film genre that is designed to appeal to a variety of age groups and, thus, families. To attract these diverse audiences, film makers often create works that operate simultaneously on several levels of appeal. Comic songs might...
Mei and the Kittenbus
Night at the Museum
Parenthood
Millions
more
x B-movie B-movie The Raven
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture conceived neither as an arthouse film nor as pornography. In its original usage, during the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as...
Cornman: American Vegetable Hero
The Naked Monster
Prison-A-Go-Go!
Anus Magillicutty
more
x Slasher Michael Myers peers over the stairs from the original Halloween film Dressed to Kill
Slasher film is a sub-genre of the horror film genre typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a chainsaw or scythe. Although the term ...
Psycho
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Hellraiser
Scream
more
x Slapstick   Garfield
Slapstick films are a type of comedy film that employ slapstick comedy with five main conventions: Slapstick films include:
Home Alone
Mousehunt
Problem Child
Zorro, The Gay Blade
x Thriller vertigo.jpg The Conversation
Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, television, and gaming that includes numerous and often overlapping sub-genres. Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more...
.45
Absolute Power
The River Wild
The Silence of the Lambs
more
x Indie Scarletrose-poolshot The Birth of a Nation
In the United States, an independent film, or indie film, is a film that is produced mostly outside of a major film studio. The term is also refers to art films which differ markedly from most mass marketed films. In addition to being produced by...
Blue Velvet
Dressed to Kill
Escape from New York
Heathers
more
x Teen Jugendfilm High School Musical
Teen films (also called teen movie or teenpic) is a film genre targeted at teenagers and young adults in which the plot is based upon the special interests of teenagers, such as coming of age, first love, rebellion, conflict with parents, teen angst...
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Pretty in Pink
John Tucker Must Die
Superbad
more
x Chick flick    
Chick flick is slang for a film designed to appeal to a female target audience. The term was first used in 1992. Although many types of films may be directed toward the female gender, "chick flick" is typically used only in reference to films that...
x Romance film Tyrone power alice faye ragtime6 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
While most films have some aspect of romance between characters (at least as a subplot) a romance film can be loosely defined as any film in which the central plot (the premise of the story) revolves around the romantic involvement of the story's...
Xanadu
Loverboy
Titanic
Revolutionary Girl Utena
more
x Mystery The Maltese Falcon is a classic black-and-white era detective film The Conversation
Mystery film is a sub-genre of the more general category of crime film. It focuses on the efforts of the Detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of a crime by means of clues, investigation, and clever...
The 4400
Gossip
The Usual Suspects
Vertigo
more
x Biographical Poster for Man on the Moon (1999), a biopic A Beautiful Mind
A biographical motion picture—often shortened to biopic—is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people. They differ from films “based on a true story” or “historical films” in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a person’s...
Raging Bull
The Life of Emile Zola
The Great Ziegfeld
Reds
more
x Adventure Poster for Raiders of the Lost Ark, designed by Richard Amsel. Tremors
Adventure films are a genre of film. The adventure film reached its peak of popularity in 1930s and 1940s Hollywood, when films such as Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Mark of Zorro were regularly made with major stars, notably...
Spider-Man 3
Sunshine
War of the Worlds
Ghost Rider
more
x Road movie   The Getaway
A road film is a film genre in which the film's plot takes place during a journey. The genre has its roots in spoken and written tales of epic journeys, such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid. The road film is a standard plot employed by screenwriters....
Eldorado
The Mexican
Bondi Tsunami
The Go-Getter
more
x Educational   Technology of Lewis & Clark
An educational film is a film or movie whose primary purpose is to educate. Educational films have been used in classrooms as an alternative to other teaching methods. Many educational films shown in schools are part of long series - for example,...
The Commies Are Coming, the Commies Are Coming
Treasures of the British Crown
Coup D'État: The Week that Changed the World
x Buddy film   Kangaroo Jack
A buddy film, according to The Complete Film Dictionary, is "a film that features the friendship of two males as the major relationship". Ira Konigsberg, author of the dictionary, further defines the genre: "Such films extol the virtues of male...
Friday
Toy Story
Midnight Run
The Hard Way
more
x Romantic drama   Persuasion
A romantic drama film is a film that seriously studies the romantic nature of relationships between people. Common themes include the characters making decisions based on a newly-found romantic attraction. The questions, "What am I living for?" or ...
Going Shopping
Far from the Madding Crowd
Moulin Rouge!
Linger
more
x Epic   Ben-Hur
An epic is a genre of film which places emphasis on human drama on a grand scale. They are more ambitious in scope than other genres which helps to differentiate them from similar genres such as the period piece or adventure film. This often entails...
Quo Vadis
Spartacus
300
Dances with Wolves
more
x Amateur Sony Mavica FD 5.  
Amateur Film is the low-budget hobbyist art of film practiced for passion and enjoyment and not for business purposes. The international organization for amateur film makers is UNICA (Union International du Cinema Non Professionel); in the United...
x Children's Filmklappe Rigoletto
A children's film is a film aimed for children as its audience. As opposed to a family film, no special effort is made to make the film attractive for other audiences. The film may or may not be about children. In Unshrinking the Kids: Children's...
The Goonies
Cadet Kelly
Spy Kids
DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp
more
x Disaster /wikipedia/images/en_id/1807478 Gray Lady Down
A disaster film is a film genre that has an impending or ongoing disaster (such as a damaged airliner, fire, shipwreck, or an asteroid collision) as its subject. These films typically feature large casts of well-known actors and multiple plotlines,...
The Concorde...Airport '79
World Trade Center
Volcano
The Perfect Storm
more
x Black comedy Hopscotch to oblivion Lolita
Black comedy is a sub-genre of comedy and satire in which topics and events that are usually regarded as taboo are treated in a satirical or humorous manner while retaining their seriousness. Synonyms include dark comedy, black humor, dark humor,...
Catch-22
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Happiness
Prizzi's Honor
more
x Anime The main cast of the anime Cowboy Bebop (1998) (L to R: Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Ed Tivrusky, Faye Valentine, and Ein the dog) Patlabor the Movie
Anime (アニメ, an abbreviated pronunciation in Japanese of "animation", pronounced [aꜜnime]  ( listen) in Japanese, but typically /ˈænəˌmeɪ/ (help·info) or /ˈænəˌmə/ in English) is animation originating in Japan. The world outside Japan regards anime...
Akira
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Steamboy
Barefoot Gen
more
x Wuxia   New One-Armed Swordsman
Wuxia or Wǔxiá (simplified Chinese: 武侠; traditional Chinese: 武俠 Wǔxiá, Mandarin: [ùɕjǎ]; Cantonese Pinyin: Mou5 Hap6: Taiwanese/Hokkien: Bu Kiap) is a broad genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists set in ancient China....
One-Armed Swordsman
The Swordsman
Seven Swords
Kung Fu Hustle
more
x Superhero /wikipedia/images/en_id/2059947 Spider-Man 3
A superhero film, superhero movie, or superhero motion picture is an action, fantasy or science fiction film that is focused on the actions of one or more superheroes, individuals who usually possess superhuman abilities relative to a normal person....
Night-Wolf
Spider-Man 4
The Avengers
x Erotic Science Fiction   Barbarella  
Flesh Gordon
x Mockumentary   To Kill a Mockumentary
Mockumentary (also known as a mock documentary) is a genre of film and television in which fictitious events are presented in a non-fiction or documentary format; the term can also refer to an individual work within the genre. Such works are often...
Zelig
Fear of a Black Hat
CB4
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
more
x Parody Parody of 'Back to the Future' Airplane!
A parody film is a comedy that satirizes other film genres or films. The main conventions for this genre are:
Best in Show
Spaceballs
Scary Movie
A Mighty Wind
more
x Silent film Scenery art from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (Germany, 1927) Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially spoken dialogue. In entertainment silent films the acting and dialogue is commuted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards. The idea of combining motion pictures with...
Great Expectations
Ramona
Ramona
Ramona
more
x Pornographic movie Johann Schwarzer movies about 1906 Debbie Does Dallas
Pornographic films are motion pictures with the purpose of promoting sexual arousal in the viewer, often featuring depictions of sexual activity. They appeared shortly after the creation of the motion picture in the early 1900s. Pornographic films...
World's Biggest Gang Bang
The Opening of Misty Beethoven
The Devil in Miss Jones
Flesh Gordon
more
x French New Wave Breathless-Screenshot-01 Breathless
The New Wave (French: La Nouvelle Vague) was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement...
The 400 Blows
x sports   The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
A sports film is a film genre that uses sport as the theme of a film. For a list of sports films refer to the List of sports films *
Breaking Away
The Pride of the Yankees
Ali
Fear Strikes Out
more
x Gross-out film   National Lampoon's Animal House
Gross-out is a sub-genre of comedy movies in which the makers employ humour that is willfully "tasteless" or even downright disgusting, although the latter isn't truly requisite. Typical elements include fast pace, toilet humour, slapstick,...
A Good Old Fashioned Orgy
x Social commentary   Damul
Social commentary is the act of rebelling against an individual, or a group of people by rhetorical means. This is most often done with the idea of implementing or promoting change by informing the general populace about a given problem and...
x Short film   Meat Love
Short film is a technical description originally coined in the Indian film industry and used in the North American film industry in the early period of cinema. The description is now used almost interchangeably with short subject. Either term is...
La Jetée
Steamboat Willie
Developing
The Battle of San Pietro
more
x Melodrama Perilsofpauline East Lynne
The theatrical genre of melodrama uses theme-music to manipulate the spectator's emotional response and to denote character types. The term combines "melody" (from the Greek "melōidía", meaning "song") and "drama" (Classical Greek: δράμα, dráma;...
Love Is All That Matters
A Blind River
Katalin Varga
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
more
x Musical comedy   The Love Parade  
Bye Bye Birdie
The Life of the Party
Side Show
Hi'ya, Chum
more
x Bollywood /guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000004a5ade3 Bollywood/Hollywood
Bollywood (Hindi: बॉलीवुड) is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the Indian film industry....
Koi... Mil Gaya
Bunty Aur Babli
Black
Pukar
more
x Cyberpunk The hacker as hero: Lain from the cyberpunk anime series "Serial Experiments Lain". Ghost in the Shell
Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life". The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk", published in 1983. It...
Blade Runner
Tron
Johnny Mnemonic
Cyberpunk Educator
x Religious Film   Ben-Hur  
The Testaments: Of One Fold and One Shepherd
Late One Night
x Sword and Sandal Griffith-intolerance Ben-Hur
Sword and sandal films, or pepla (singular peplum) are a class of Italian-made adventure or fantasy films that have subjects set in Biblical or classical antiquity, often with contrived plots based very loosely on mythology or Greco-Roman history,...
Demetrius and the Gladiators
The Robe
Alexander the Great
Colossus and the Headhunters
more
x Steampunk A rocket lands on the moon in Le Voyage dans la Lune, the film adaptation of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Steampunk is a sub-genre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian...
Steamboy
Things to Come
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
more
x Surrealism Indefinite Divisibility I ♥ Huckabees
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members. Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many...
De Noorderlingen
Porky in Wackyland
Un chien andalou
Last Year at Marienbad
more
x Political fiction Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz Wag the Dog
Political fiction is a subgenre of fiction that deals with political affairs. Political fiction has often used narrative to provide commentary on political events, systems and theories. Works of political fiction often "directly criticize an...
Advise and Consent
x Yuri Utena and Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena, a popular shoujo-ai couple Revolutionary Girl Utena
Yuri (百合), also known by the wasei-eigo construction Girls Love (ガールズラブ, gāruzu rabu), is a Japanese jargon term for content and a genre involving love between women in manga, anime, and related Japanese media. Yuri can focus either on the sexual or...
x Shōjo Garakame 11 024 4-592-88011-0 Revolutionary Girl Utena
The term Shōjo, shojo, or shoujo manga (少女漫画, shōjo manga) refers to manga marketed to a female audience roughly between the ages of 10 and 18. The name romanizes the Japanese 少女 (shōjo), literally: "young girl". Shōjo manga covers many subjects in...
x Opera Arena di Verona Carmen
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (called a libretto) and musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such...
Don Giovanni
La traviata
Aida
Aida
more
x Family Drama   Terms of Endearment
Family Drama concerns itself with interpersonal relationships and conflicts amongst the members of family structure within a society. Topics can consist of incest, abuse, status, conflicts between members of a family or the family and society or...
Fanny and Alexander
The Magnificent Ambersons
Little Women
Little Women
more
x Coming of age   Ordinary People
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as...
Breaking Away
Fucking Åmål
Heathers
The Graduate
more
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