Hollywood has kept away from producing movies with the plot revolving around crystal meth addiction. The total list is under 30 and most of them are independent films or documentaries except for a few big budget films from main stream directors like Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, There Will Be Blood) and Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Milk).
Even with the lack of films dealing with the subject, there are a few great projects that depict crystal meth and the struggle that comes with it. Here are my favorite movies about crystal meth and drug addiction.
Requiem for a Dream
Summary
Imaginatively evoking the inner landscape of human beings longing to connect, to love and feel loved, the film is a parable of happiness gloriously found and tragically lost. “Requiem for a Dream” tells parallel stories that are linked by the relationship between the lonely, widowed Sara Goldfarb and her sweet but aimless son, Harry. The plump Sara, galvanized by the prospect of appearing on a TV game show, has started on a dangerous diet regimen to beautify herself for a national audience.
Boogie Nights
Summary
In the San Fernando Valley in 1977, teenage busboy Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) gets discovered by porn director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), who transforms him into adult-film sensation Dirk Diggler. Brought into a supportive circle of friends, including fellow actors Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), Rollergirl (Heather Graham) and Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), Dirk fulfills all his ambitions, but a toxic combination of drugs and egotism threatens to take him back down.
Winter’s Bone
Summary
Faced with an unresponsive mother and a criminal father, Ozark teenager Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) does what she can to manage the household and take care of her two younger siblings. Informed by the sheriff (Garret Dillahunt) that their father put their home up for bond and then disappeared, Ree sets out on a dangerous quest to find him.
Her entire family’s fate now in her hands, Ree challenges her outlaw kin’s code of silence and risks her life to learn her father’s fate.
Drugstore Cowboy
Summary
Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon) is the leader of a “family” of drug addicts consisting of his wife, Dianne (Kelly Lynch), and another couple who feed their habit by robbing drug stores as they travel across the country. After a tragedy befalls a member of his group, Bob decides he must leave his dysfunctional clan and go straight.
Parting ways with his junkie past proves more difficult than expected when Bob is stalked by an old acquaintance looking to score drugs at any price.
Wonderland
Summary
In this fact-based film, John Holmes (Val Kilmer) is one of the most successful porn stars of all time. But, when his rampant drug abuse forces him into prostitution, both his disapproving wife, Sharon (Lisa Kudrow), and his 16-year-old girlfriend, Dawn (Kate Bosworth), are on the verge of leaving him.
As John sinks lower and lower into Hollywood, Calif.’s criminal underworld, he meets a seedy drug lord (Eric Bogosian) and finds himself caught up in a tragic chain of events.
