Storyline
An honest union official named Blane is framed for the murder of another union official. Thus off the hook, the crime syndicate actually responsible for the crime is free to continue its activities. However, State’s Attorney Jim Fremont begins to suspect that Blane has been set up. Fremont launches a new investigation.Read More »
Beyond Caligari: The Films of Robert Wiene (Uli Jung, Walter Schatzberg), pp 166 ff.
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Panik in Chicago was an enormous success in all major cities in Germany, as reported in the press. “The D.L.S. branches in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt a.M. had such record bookings for the film Panik in Chicago during the following two weeks that several new copies had to be distributed in these districts because the available subsidiary copies could not fulfill the demand for screenings. Other reports refer to the unusual popular acclaim the film enjoyed in Leipzig, Halle, Munich, and Stuttgart.Read More »
Australia’s most infamous crime story.
Sixteen-year-old Jamie lives with his mother, Elizabeth, and two younger brothers, Alex and Nicholas, in a housing trust home in Adelaide’s northern suburbs. Their home is but one of many sun-starved houses crammed together to cater for a disenfranchised society.
Jamie longs for an escape from the violence and hopelessness that surrounds him and his salvation arrives in the form of John, a charismatic man who unexpectedly comes to his aid.
As John spends more and more time with Jamie’s family, Elizabeth and her boys begin to experience a stability and sense of family that they have never known.Read More »
Plot / Synopsis
Tul is about to see his world turned upside down. When we first meet him, he’s been sent a package of photos and data, which he examines and then promptly puts through the shredder. He shaves his head, dons a monk’s robes, and walks onto the gated estate belonging to the man in the photos. Tul then takes a pistol and fires a bullet into the man’s neck. More shots are fired, one of them hitting Tul in the head. Everything turns black. When Tul wakes up three months later, all that he sees is inverted. Is it some bizarre brain injury, or some form of karmic retribution? In the disorienting world of Headshot, such questions linger, and draw us closer to its violence and mystery.Read More »
IMDB:
The plot of this near-noir is very convoluted, but the director keeps a steady pace and there is enough incidental interest to avoid confusion or boredom. When a Hollywood secretary is found murdered, Tom Alder (Janssen), a “finder of missing persons”, is hired to investigate the murder, but quickly sees a link between the secretary and a the long-missing daughter of a wealthy family. Complications involve some colorful characters: Leroy Dane (Brad Dexter), a big movie star, Mrs Delaney (Agnes Moorehead) the missing girl’s mother, Jacques Pleschette (Jacques Aubuchon) a shady figure who tries to hire Tom to find his missing brother. All these actors give top drawer performances, with Moorehead a standout for the way she takes complete control of her single scene with Janssen. Excellent too is Dina Merrill as Nikki (her Tokyo-set flashback with Janssen is quite impressive). Also fine in the cast are Jeanne Crain, Robert Strauss, and William Demarest, doing a convincing turn as a down-and-out drunken newspaper man.Read More »
Chicago, 1963. As head of the police department’s Major Crime Unit, Lieutenant Michael Torello must deal with the city’s most dangerous criminals. And possibly the most dangerous of all is Ray Luca, a young ambitious street hood who’s out to gain wealth and power by whatever means – including theft, threats, extortion and murder. As Luca begins his ruthless climb up the ladder of organized crime, leaving a growing number of victims in his wake, Torello becomes more and more determined to bring him down.Read More »
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Brass-balled, Bronx-born auteur Abel Ferrara is one of those two-fisted screen bards that always follows through on each sucker punch, his heart beating with Sam Fuller’s blood. His scorching morality plays and tainted-psyche humanizations are raw nerves exposed and chewed through, like a naked tornado called Hyde to Scorsese’s more calculated risk-taker Jekyll. However, what makes an Abel Ferrara film for me isn’t plot or casts of meaty, dilemma-torn characters. It’s in the gritty city itself, a filmmaking toybox for tones, textures, sounds, music and aesthetic. When Ferrara looks at New York City, he knows its tourist-trap beauty is bullshit and the lurid truth is in the blackened gum on the bottom of the postcard rack. He’s the director who would probably kick my pasty ass all the way to Chinatown if he heard this flowery praise.Read More »
winner of the Golden Bear 2008 for International Short Film
quote:
This harrowing short film — winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival — follows the trail of a trio of young sociopaths as they pick up a young woman they find at the side of the road and take her to the beach for a day of amoral pursuits. Not for the squeamish.
“The compelling story, sparingly told, of three juvenile delinquents who break out of prison. The beach beckons. Violence is nothing but a game. And the wedding is celebrated in handcuffs.“ (Maike Mia Höhne)Read More »
Review:
A telephone rings in the dark—three times, pauses, then rings three times again. A fully-clothed figure lights a cigarette before rising from bed, dons a raincoat, then sets out into the night. Another figure emerges from the shadows, lights a cigarette, then discards a crumpled cigarette pack, which the first picks up and carries home. Back in his room, the first man places the refuse on his desk, paces apprehensively about his apartment before he finally removes the inner foil and examines it. After letting what it reveals sink in, he sets it on fire, and a cold look comes over his face…Read More »