Crime

  • Fritz Lang – M [Universum, 80th Anniversary Edition] (1931)

    1931-1940Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtClassicsCrimeFritz LangGermany

    Quote:
    The horror of the faces: That is the overwhelming image that remains from a recent viewing of the restored version of “M,” Fritz Lang’s famous 1931 film about a child murderer in Germany. In my memory it was a film that centered on the killer, the creepy little Franz Becker, played by Peter Lorre. But Becker has relatively limited screen time, and only one consequential speech–although it’s a haunting one. Most of the film is devoted to the search for Becker, by both the police and the underworld, and many of these scenes are played in closeup. In searching for words to describe the faces of the actors, I fall hopelessly upon “piglike.”Read More »

  • Romain Gavras – Le monde est à toi AKA The World Is Yours (2018)

    2011-2020ComedyCrimeFranceRomain Gavras

    Synopsis:
    A small-time dealer dreams of another life but can’t afford it. To escape, he must accept one last job involving Spain, drugs, the Illuminati and his overbearing mother.Read More »

  • Charles Barton – Smooth as Silk (1946)

    1941-1950Charles BartonCrimeFilm NoirUSA

    Lawyer Kent Taylor (Mark) helps writer John Litel (Steve) by defending his relative Danny Morton (Don) in a drink-driving case where he is guilty. Taylor manipulates witness accounts so that Morton goes free and he does this on the understanding that Litel will give his girlfriend Virginia Grey (Paula), the lead role in his new play. Well, after the court case, Litel goes back on his word and, understandably, Taylor is not happy, especially when Grey’s true character begins to reveal herself as she ruthlessly pushes her self-interest. Time for a murder……Read More »

  • Michael Cimino – Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) (HD)

    1971-1980ActionCrimeMichael CiminoUSA

    Plot Synopsis [AMG]
    As much an eccentric character study as a road movie, Michael Cimino’s directorial debut follows the adventures of a quartet of misfits in their life of crime. Retired thief Thunderbolt (Clint Eastwood) and sweet drifter Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) meet cute when Thunderbolt jumps into Lightfoot’s stolen car to escape a gunman. The pair embarks on an oddball journey to get Thunderbolt’s loot from an old robbery before his former associates, the sadistic Red (George Kennedy) and cretinous Goody (Geoffrey Lewis), get to it first, but all four are too late; the one-room schoolhouse hiding place has apparently vanished. So instead, the four play house and work legit jobs while they plot to rob the same place Thunderbolt and Red hit before. Read More »

  • Nagisa Ôshima – Kôshikei AKA Death by Hanging (1968)

    1961-1970CrimeDramaJapanNagisa Oshima

    Quote:

    A clinically presented series of stark white, unembellished placards illustrates the sobering statistical data for the overwhelming public sentiment against the abolition of the death penalty as an off-screen narrator (Nagisa Oshima) provides a snide, but impassioned rebuttal to popular opinion by presenting a objective documentary of the austere and impersonal milieu associated with the methodical process of carrying out a state execution through the specific example of the appointed hanging of a convicted rapist and murderer known only as ‘R’ (Do-yun Yu): an empty, minimalist sitting room that provides an illusive, parting glimpse of a semblance of home for the condemned prisoner as he makes his way into the execution room, an assembly of unnamed official guests waiting in a segregated viewing room to witness the macabre ceremony, a procedural rehearsal of the chamber’s fail-safe sequence as the prisoner is blindfold and fitted with a noose, the actuation of trap door, the median measured time of 18 minutes before the heart completely stops and a staff physician (Rokko Toura) is able to record the official time of death. Read More »

  • Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie – Good Time (2017)

    2011-2020CrimeDramaJosh and Benny SafdieUSA

    Quote:
    After a heist goes awry, a bank robber tries to free his brother from Rikers Island, all in one night.Read More »

  • Terence Fisher – Wings of Danger (1952)

    USA1951-1960CrimeFilm NoirHammer FilmsTerence Fisher

    Quote:
    “A former pilot suffering from blackouts discovers that a fellow flyer is suspected of being mixed up with a web of smugglers. While searching for his missing buddy, he unwittingly becomes entangled in a morass of suspicion!”Read More »

  • Alan Clarke – Scum (1979)

    1971-1980Alan ClarkeCrimeDramaQueer Cinema(s)United Kingdom

    Quote:
    Alan Clarke first released Scum in 1977 as a BBC TV-film, yet the BBC disapproved of the film due to the amount of raw, harrowing realism which had been packed into a short running-time. Therefore the BBC banned the version, and it was not until fifteen years later that the TV-version was aired on the UK’s Channel 4. Though, to get around not being able to release the TV version of Scum Alan Clarke opted in for developing a remade, feature-length version to be aired at cinemas, this was released in 1979. The film sent shockwaves through cinemas across Britain, causing huge controversy from the media, government and British public. Some people saw the film as a “visceral image of a flawed system”, while others saw the film as “exploitive trash in the form of a documentary”.Read More »

  • Edgar G. Ulmer – Detour (1945)

    1941-1950CrimeEdgar G. UlmerFilm NoirUSA

    Review
    “Detour” is a movie so filled with imperfections that it would not earn the director a passing grade in film school. This movie from Hollywood’s poverty row, shot in six days, filled with technical errors and ham-handed narrative, starring a man who can only pout and a woman who can only sneer, should have faded from sight soon after it was released in 1945. And yet it lives on, haunting and creepy, an embodiment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has easily forgotten it.Read More »

Back to top button