Crime

Nearly two decades after scripting the Infernal Affairs trilogy which has been liberally remade and borrowed from, Felix Chong’s new crime thriller does some pilfering and copying of its own. Spotting Project Gutenberg’s high-profile, largely Hollywood influences isn’t difficult, but derivation is rarely as entertaining as this slick Hong Kong effort about a high-stakes counterfeiting operation — and rarely comes with such compelling and engaging performances from the starry likes of Chow Yun-Fat and Aaron Kwok.Read More »

FULL SYNOPSIS
In the desert resort town of Glorietta Springs, near Los Angeles, farm laborer Brad Clifton arrives at the Webb Ranch, looking for work. Mrs. Webb, the farmer’s wife, directs Clifton to the lemon groves, but there, he encounters Nick Foster and Pete Kimmel with Webb’s body. They order him to claim that he saw a drunken Webb fall off the tractor. When Clifton tries to get away, they shove money at him and threaten to tell the police that he murdered the man. Clifton does as he is told, and a coroner’s jury determines that Webb died as the result of an accident.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
Pier 23 was one of three hour-long mysteries produced by Lippert Productions for both TV and theatrical release. Each of the three films was evenly divided into two half-hour “episodes,” and each starred Hugh Beaumont as San Francisco-based amateur sleuth Dennis O’Brien. In Pier 23, O’Brien first tackles the case of a wrestler who has died of a suspicious heart attack after refusing to lose a match. He then agrees to help a priest talk an escaped criminal into returning to prison. The film’s two-part structure leads to repetition and predictability, but it’s fun to watch TV’s “Ward Cleaver” making like Philip Marlowe.Read More »

Quote:
Lars, a male nurse from Saarbrucken, moves with his lover Roland, a sweet-spirited musician with a lilting voice, to the bustling Berlin. They renovate an apartment with the intention of finally living together. For Roland, their happiness seems almost complete. What he doesn’t know, however, is that while secretly checking out Berlin’s nightlife, Lars is experimenting with a deadly poison – an obsession that will lead to a horrific outcome for the couple.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
How could anyone dislike a film with the title Lady and the Mob? Sweet Fay Bainter stars as eccentric dowager Hattie Leonard, who takes it upon herself to smash a dry-cleaning racket. When the crooks and the cops laugh at her efforts, the resourceful Hattie sets about to organize her own mob, consisting of such soft-hearted yeggs as Warren Hymer and Joe Sawyer. With the help of her Runyonesque stooges-not to mention her grandson Jeff (Lee Bowman) and his sweetheart Lila (Ida Lupino)-Hattie manages to strike a blow for The American Way, bringing the villains to their knees. The supporting cast includes the ineffable Henry Armetta and versatile radio actor Tommy Mack, of “I’m not excited! WHO’S excited?” fame.Read More »

Plot Synopsis:
For a studio specializing in glossy soap operas, costume pictures and musicals, MGM made an inordinate number of “B”-grade crime thrillers in 1937. The first on the docket that year was Under Cover of Night, starring Edmund Lowe as intrepid sleuth Christopher Cross. This time the killer is an overachieving psychopath who strikes only at night, and is unaware that he is a murderer. Thus, the question here is not “who done it,” but rather — when will Christopher Cross catch on to what the audience knows almost from the beginning. The best performance is rendered by Henry Daniell as the respectable college professor who literally moonlights as the killer. MGM would resurrect the “Christopher Cross” character as a female private eye (played by Joyce Compton) in 1939’s Sky Murder. by Hal EricksonRead More »

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Armin Mueller-Stahl plays Hungarian family man Mike Laszlo, whose American citizenship is suddenly threatened when reports unearthed from a UN basement link him to horrific war crimes as part of an SS Death Squad.

He immediately turns to his daughter, defense lawyer Ann Talbot (Jessica Lange) who dismisses the charge, assuming it to be a simple case of mistaken identity. When the case progresses quickly to court, Ann goes against the advice of her peers and represents her father to defend him against the onslaught of allegations thrown at him by the prosecution (Frederic Forrest). Read More »

Plot synopsis:
Lloyd Hopkins (Woods) is a hard-boiled American police detective on the trail of a mass murderer who is victimizing women in Los Angeles. The pursuit leads him through a world that has become his own natural habitat – a nasty world of crime, drugs, prostitution and male hustlers where “innocence kills” and continued exposure corrupts.Read More »

Synopsis:
Andreas is a car thief. The cars he steals he turns over to people with whom he has minimal relations. His only friends are a prostitute who helps him in his jobs and a fisherman with whom he once did time in jail. One day he has a chance encounter with Ismini who lures him into a dangerous game.

U-turn was screened in the “Greek Film Noir” section of the 48th Thessaloniki International Festival.Read More »