http://mppl.org/books-movies-more/lists-and-suggestions/?category=movies+%26+tv+&list=2025+Movie+Bingo%3A+Set+in+the+Midwest
List: 2025 Movie Bingo: Set in the Midwest
The Bikeriders
After a chance encounter at a local bar, strong-willed Kathy is inextricably drawn to Benny, the newest member of Midwestern motorcycle club, the Vandals led by the enigmatic Johnny. Much like the country around it, the club begins to evolve, transforming from a gathering place for local outsiders into a dangerous underworld of violence, forcing Benny to choose between Kathy and his loyalty to the club.
Checking status…
Breaking Away
The Academy Award winning comedy about an idealistic young man and his friends and their pursuit to find jobs and a purpose to life in their hometown of Bloomington, Indiana.
Checking status…
Brightburn
What if a child from another world crash-landed on Earth, but instead of becoming a hero to humanity, he proved to be something far more sinister?
Checking status…
Fargo
A midwestern policewoman investigates a series of brutal and interconnected crimes. Steadily, she tightens the net on the killers and their accomplices in a kidnapping scheme gone wildly wrong.
Checking status…
Field of Dreams
An Iowa farmer hears a voice that instructs him to plow down his crops and construct a baseball field. After doing so, the field is inhabited by spirits of dead baseball players.
Checking status…
Flag Day
Jennifer Vogel's father John taught her so much about love and joy, but he also happened to be the most notorious counterfeiter in U.S. history. Directed by Sean Penn, the film stars Penn and his daughter Dylan Penn in an intimate family portrait of a young woman who struggles to rise above the wreckage of her past while reconciling the inescapable bond between a daughter and her father.
Checking status…
The Fugitive
A Chicago surgeon falsely convicted of killing his wife is determined to prove his innocence by leading his pursuers to the one-armed man who actually committed the crime.
Checking status…
Give Me Liberty
Medical transport driver Vic is late, but it's not his fault. Roads are closed for a protest, and no one else can shuttle his Russian grandfather and emigre friends to a funeral. The new route uproots his scheduled clients, particularly Tracy, a vibrant young woman with ALS. As the day goes from hectic to off-the-rails, their collective ride becomes a hilarious, compassionate, and intersectional portrait of American dreams.
Checking status…
Gone Girl
On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne reports that his wife, Amy, has gone missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick's portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his lies, deceits, and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question. Did Nick Dunne kill his wife?
Checking status…
Gran Torino
Walt Kowalski is a widower who holds onto his prejudices despite the changes in his Michigan neighborhood and the world around him. Walt is a grumpy, tough-minded, unhappy old man whose prized possession is a 1972 Gran Torino he keeps in mint condition. When his neighbor, Thao, a young Hmong teenager, becomes pressured by his gang member cousin to steal Walt's Gran Torino, Kowalski sets out to reform the youth. Drawn against his will into the life of Thao's family, Walt is soon taking steps to protect them from the gangs that infest their neighborhood.
Checking status…
Holler
In a forgotten pocket of Southern Ohio where American manufacturing and opportunity are drying up, a determined young woman finds a ticket out when she is accepted to college. Alongside her older brother, Ruth Avery joins a dangerous scrap metal crew in order to pay her way. Together, they spend one brutal winter working the scrap yards during the day and stealing metal from the once thriving factories at night. With her goal in sight, Ruth sees that the ultimate cost for an education for a girl like her may be more than she bargained for.
Checking status…
Hoosiers
A basketball coach with a checkered past leads him to a last-chance position with a last-chance team.
Checking status…
Irresistible
A Democratic strategist assists a retired veteran run for mayor in a small, conservative Midwest town.
Checking status…
Jerry & Marge Go Large
When retiree Jerry Selbee discovers a mathematical loophole in the Massachusetts lottery, he and his wife Marge go on an exciting multi-million dollar winning spree to revive their small Michigan town. But when a selfish college student cheats the system, Jerry must find a way to make the game fair for all.
Checking status…
Kin
Chased by a vengeful criminal, the feds, and a gang of otherworldly soldiers, a recently released ex-con and his adopted teenage brother are forced to go on the run with a weapon of mysterious origin as their only protection.
Checking status…
Lars and the Real Girl
Lars is a sweet but quirky guy who thinks he's found the girl of his dreams in a life-sized doll named Bianca. He is content with his artificial girlfriend until he develops feelings for Margo, an attractive co-worker. Now Lars finds himself in a unique love triangle, hoping to somehow discover the real meaning of true love.
Checking status…
Let Him Go
Following the loss of their son, retired sheriff George Blackledge and his wife Margaret leave their Montana ranch to rescue their young grandson from the clutches of a dangerous family living off the grid in the Dakotas, headed by matriarch Blanche Weboy. When they discover the Weboys have no intention of letting the child go, George and Margaret are left with no choice but to fight for their family.
Checking status…
Little Woods
Ollie is barely getting by in an economically depressed fracking boomtown in North Dakota. She has left her days of illegally running prescription pills over the Canadian border behind, eyeing a potential new job that would finally break her out of the small town. But when her mother dies, she is reunited with her estranged sister Deb, who faces a mounting crisis: the combined effect of an unplanned pregnancy and a deadbeat ex.
Checking status…
Minding the Gap
Compiling over 12 years of footage shot in his hometown of Rockford, Illinois, Bing Liu searches for correlations between his skateboarder friends' turbulent upbringings and the complexities of modern-day masculinity. Weaves a story of skateboarding, friendship, and fathers and sons into a coming-of-age journey of courageous vulnerability.
Checking status…
Nebraska
After receiving a sweepstakes letter in the mail, a cantankerous father thinks he's struck it rich and wrangles his estranged son into taking a road trip to claim the fortune. Getting waylaid in the father's hometown in Nebraska, the son tries to reconnect with his impenetrable father.
Checking status…
North Country
Josey Aimes needs a job and goes to work at a Minnesota steel mine after splitting with her violent husband. But the job proves to be almost as harrowing as her marriage. The male miners are resentful of women taking their jobs, so the men verbally abuse and play humiliating pranks on the female miners. After being physically assaulted by a coworker, Josey tries to fight against the harassment, but none of the other women will join her case for fear that things will only get worse.
Checking status…
The Overnighters
An intimate portrait of job-seekers desperately chasing the broken American Dream to the tiny oil boom town of Williston, North Dakota. With the town lacking the infrastructure to house the overflow of migrants, a local pastor starts the controversial "overnighters" program, allowing down-and-out workers a place to sleep at the church. His well-meaning project immediately runs into resistance with his community, forcing the clergyman to make a decision which leads to profound consequences.
Checking status…
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
A Chicago businessman faces disaster after disaster as he tries to get back home in time for his family's Thanksgiving dinner, with a lovable oaf of a shower-curtain-ring salesman as his only companion.
Checking status…
A Prairie Home Companion
A look at what goes on backstage during the last broadcast of America's most celebrated radio show, where singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, a country music siren, and a host of others hold court. The popular radio program has somehow managed to survive the television age to entertain its audience every Saturday night from the stage of the historic Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. A new owner has bought the theater and is going to tear it down. There is still plenty of fun and mystery to be had at the old Fitzgerald before the final curtain falls.
Checking status…
Prey
Naru, a skilled warrior of the Comanche Nation, fights to protect her tribe against one of the first highly-evolved Predators to land on Earth.
Checking status…
Public Enemies
No one could stop Dillinger and his gang. No jail could hold him. His charm and audacious jailbreaks endeared him to almost everyone, from his girlfriend Billie Frechette to an American public who had no sympathy for the banks that had plunged the country into the Depression. But while the adventures of Dillinger's gang thrilled many, Hoover made Dillinger America's first Public Enemy Number One.
Checking status…
A Raisin in the Sun
Following the death of their patriarch, the Youngers await a life insurance check they hope will change their circumstances, but tensions arise over how best to use the money.
Checking status…
Rampage
Primatologist Davis shares an unshakable bond with George, the extraordinarily intelligent, silverback gorilla who has been in his care since birth. When a greed-fueled corporation's genetic experiment goes awry, George and other animals across the country are mutated into aggressive super creatures that rampage the city. In an adrenaline-filled ride, Davis tries to find an antidote to not only halt a global catastrophe, but to also save the fearsome creature that was once his friend.
Checking status…
Road to Perdition
Michael Sullivan works as an enforcer for his adopted father, Irish gangster John Rooney. When Sullivan's son, Mike Jr., witnesses one of his father's killings on Rooney's behalf, the gangster decides that his ward and his family are liabilities that must be removed. Sullivan tries to safeguard his son and get even with the man who betrayed him, while his son focuses on bonding with his emotionally distant father.
Checking status…
Roger & Me
A documentary about Flint, Michigan native Michael Moore and his efforts to meet with General Motors' president Roger Smith in order to persuade the executive to visit Flint, a city which is economically depressed due to the closure of a General Motors plant.
Checking status…
Sting
A mysterious object crashes into a rundown apartment building, and a little spider emerges from within. When young Charlotte finds the strange little creature, she names her secret friend STING, but she quickly realizes her new pet grows at a monstrous rate. With an insatiable appetite for blood, neighbors' pets start to vanish-and then the neighbors.
Checking status…
Super 8
In the summer of 1979, a group of friends in a small Ohio town witnesses a catastrophic train crash while making a super 8 movie and soon they suspect that it was not an accident. Shortly after, unusual disappearances and inexplicable events begin to take place in town, and the local deputy tries to uncover the truth, something more terrifying than any of them could have imagined.
Checking status…
Sweet Land: A Love Story
Inge is a feisty German mail-order bride who has come to Minnesota to marry Olaf, a young Norwegian immigrant farmer of few words. But in a post-WWI, anti-German climate, the local minister openly forbids the marriage. Inge and Olaf fall in love despite the town's disapproval. But when the town banker attempts to foreclose on the farm of his friend Frandsen, Olaf takes a stand.
Checking status…
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby, the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon, an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.
Checking status…
The Untouchables
A fierce, larger-than-life depiction of the mob warlord who ruled Prohibition-era Chicago and the law enforcer who vowed to bring him down.
Checking status…
Widows
Four women with nothing in common except a debt left by their dead husbands' criminal acts conspire to take fate into their own hands.
Checking status…