Crime

Synopsis:
There is a problem with foreign nationals using Cuba as a convenient jumping off point for illegal entry into the United States. So U.S. Immigration Service Agent Peter Karczag (John Hodiak) is sent to Havana posing as a Hungarian frustrated with the legal immigration process and open to an alternative. By this means he uncovers the human smuggling ring run by Palinov (George Macready). He also meets concentration-camp refugee Marianne Lorress (Hedy Lamarr), a Viennese working in a nightclub and one who has paid to be smuggled into the United States. When Karczag falls in love with her, he becomes conflicted, not wanting her to be among those he plans to have captured in his operation. So he tries to persuade her to stay in Cuba instead of being secretly flown to the United States. Will he succeed? What if his cover is blown? Read More »

Colors is a 1988 American police procedural crime film starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall, and directed by Dennis Hopper. The story takes place in South Central, North West and East Los Angeles, and centers on Bob Hodges (Duvall), an experienced Los Angeles Police Department CRASH Police Officer III, and his rookie partner, Danny McGavin (Penn) who try to mitigate the gang violence between the Bloods, the Crips, and the Hispanic street gangs. Colors relaunched Hopper as a director 18 years after Easy Rider and inspired discussion over its depiction of gang life and gang violence.Read More »

Quote:
Crusading publisher Austin Spenser (Sidney Blackmer) wants to prove a point about the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence. Spencer talks his prospective son-in-law Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews) into participating in a hoax, the better to expose the alleged ineptitude of conviction-happy DA (Philip Bourneuf). Tom will plant clues indicating that he is the murderer of a nightclub dancer, then stand trial for murder; just as the jury reaches its inevitable guilty verdict, Spencer will step forth to reveal the set-up and humiliate the DA. Somewhat surprisingly, Tom eagerly agrees to this subterfuge. Unfortunately, an unforeseen event renders their perfectly formed scheme useless. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was the last American film of director Fritz Lang.Read More »

A teenager who witnesses the murder of his father vows to exact revenge on the four mobsters involved in the killing.

Letterboxd reviews
★★★★★ Watched by Joe 14 Jun 2017

CLEAN SPORTS MAKE FOR A CLEAN AMERICA

Peak Fuller nightmare-noir, with a plot that’s jagged and fast like a lightning bolt. The straight world is a million miles away from everything that happens in this movie.Read More »

Quote:
The Executioner’s Song is one of the best films about crime and punishment ever made. Far from being lurid or simpleminded, it paints a stark picture of how it must have been to live around Gilmore during that time. It doesn’t glamorize him or turn him into a cardboard villain, but instead depicts him as a man whose inability to handle his growing rage and alienation led him to destroy his life and the lives of those around him. It’s smart enough to know that there can never be a definitive answer as to why someone would commit murder, but that it’s also important to try to understand those reasons nonetheless. It’s also a vital film whatever your views on the issue of capital punishment, as it renders many clichés on the subject useless (and predates the more acclaimed Dead Man Walking by a good thirteen years). Add one of the finest performances of Tommy Lee Jones’ career, and The Executioner’s Song is highly recommended for anyone interested in a thoughtful crime drama.Read More »

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Kenji is a small thief who likes drinking and fighting. When he falls in love with sweet and simple Yazue, and she finds out what kind of guy he really is, she leaves him ‘until he becomes an honest person’. But it is not easy to get rid of one’s past…Read More »

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Spanish: Tráiganme la cabeza de Alfredo García) is a 1974 American cult action film directed by Sam Peckinpah and featuring Warren Oates.

Made in Mexico on a low budget after the commercial failure of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Peckinpah claimed that, of all his films, Alfredo García was the only one released as he had intended. The film was a box-office and critical failure at the time, but has gained a new following and stature in the decades since.

There are two audio commentaries with this posting:
1) with Writer-Producer Gordon Dawson and Film Historian Nick Redman
2) with Film Historians Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons, David Weddle, and Nick Redman

SYNOPSIS:
An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.Read More »

Quote:
Samuel Fuller’s throat-grabbing exposé on American racism was misunderstood and withheld from release when it was made in the early eighties; today, the notorious film is lauded for its daring metaphor and gripping pulp filmmaking. Kristy McNichol stars as a young actress who adopts a lost German shepherd, only to discover through a series of horrifying incidents that the dog has been trained to attack black people, and Paul Winfield plays the animal trainer who tries to cure him. A snarling, uncompromising vision, White Dog is a tragic portrait of the evil done by that most corruptible of animals: the human being.Read More »

In Osaka’s slum, youth without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the buying and selling of identity cards and of blood. Alliances constantly shift. Tatsu and Takeshi, friends since boyhood, reluctantly join Shin’s gang. Shin’s an upstart and moves his gang often to avoid the local kingpin. Hanoko is a young woman with ambitions: first she’s in the blood business with her father, then she joins forces with Shin. She soon breaks off that partnership, even though she’s taken the sensitive Takeshi under her wing. Double crosses multiply. Those with the closest bonds become each others’ murderers…Read More »