Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble. Settled into a job at a grocery store and an ongoing affair with local woman Betty Carver, Gilbert finally has his life shaken up by the free-spirited Becky.
Ray Kinsella is an Iowa farmer who hears a mysterious voice telling him to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond. He does, but the voice's directions don't stop -- even after the spirits of deceased ballplayers turn up to play.
The solo actor in Shimmer tells the story by becoming each character in turn. The play takes place in 1956, in a harsh Midwestern juvenile detention center, where two boys befriend each other.
A young woman fakes her own death in an attempt to escape her nightmarish marriage, but discovers it is impossible to elude her controlling husband.
Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.
A retired farmer and widower in his seventies named Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. He then has the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.
An adopted girl discovers her talent for butter carving and finds herself pitted against an ambitious local woman in their Iowa town's annual contest.
The Midwest USA is invaded by stingray-shaped alien slugs that ride on people's backs and control their minds in order to spread their dominion. Government agency reps Sam Givens, Andrew Nivens, and Mary Sefton must stop the aliens.
King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.
A naive Midwesterner insurance salesman travels to a big-city convention in an effort to save the jobs of his co-workers.
Alexis is on top of the world until a tragic accident dashes her hopes and dreams of becoming a world-class figure skater. Only with the help of those who love her can she prove to the world — and herself — that she still has the potential to realize her dreams.
Traveling con artist Harold Hill targets the naïve residents of a small town in 1910s Iowa by posing as a boys' bandleader to raise money before he can skip town.
The lives of an Iowa farmer's three daughters are shattered when he suddenly decides to bequeath them the family's fertile farm.
On his family's farm in rural Iowa, young Jack Gudmanson is wrestling with his sexual identity, not an easy thing to do in the macho world of the Midwest. But things become clearer for him when he discovers via a rusty old lunch box filled with gay magazines that his father, killed in Vietnam, led a double life down on the farm. But as liberating as the discovery is for Jack, it is painful for his grandfather and mother, who have tried for years to keep it a family secret. Now Jack must decide whether to share this new information with his younger sister or allow it to remain buried a while longer.
Farm boy Daryl Cage's parents ship him off to the big city to live with his brother, hoping he will have a better life there. After a baggage mixup at the airport, Daryl finds himself in possession of a drug cache, which a ruthless drug dealer wants back. The dealer murders Daryl's brother and the small town boy ends up all alone in the big city, being pursued by both the drug dealer and the police, who suspect him of the murder.
A woman returns to her hometown for her father's funeral. A couple strike a deal with her to help her fund the funeral service.
Jeff Towne revisited four years after the release of the original film.
Reverend Brooks leads his small Iowa town in a contest to stop smoking for a month. But some tobacco executives don't want them to win, and try everything they can to make them smoke. If townspeople don't go nuts from wanting a cigarette, or kill each other from irritation and frustration, they will win a huge prize.
It's the end of the summer of 1994 and life is about to change for two boys on a farm.
When Rachel’s husband disappears, the police have one suspect: her. While trying to prove her innocence, she uncovers many secrets about the man she married.
Pickers like Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz are on a mission to recycle America, even if it means diving into countless piles of grimy junk or getting chased off a gun-wielding homeowner’s land. Hitting back roads from coast to coast, the two men earn a living by restoring forgotten relics to their former glory, transforming one person’s trash into another’s treasure.
The story of Iowa's legendary Blazing Saddle and the community that built it.
Dives into the haunting 2012 double abduction of two cousins, 10-year-old Lyric Cook-Morrissey and 8-year-old Elizabeth Collins, in Evansdale, Iowa. With over seven years of exclusive access and insider interviews.
