Crime

An honest New York cop named Frank Serpico blows the whistle on rampant corruption in the force only to have his comrades turn against him.Read More »

Down-on-his-luck John Ellman is framed for a judge’s murder. After he’s convicted and sentenced to death, witnesses come forth and prove his innocence. But it was too late for a stay to be granted and Ellman is executed. A doctor uses an experimental procedure to restore him to life, though the full outcome is other than expected.Read More »

Jacques Becker’s (Le Trou) Touchez Pas Au Grisbi occupies a significant part in French cinema history; it exerted a huge influence on subsequent directors such as Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Doulos), Henri Verneuil (The Sicilian Clan) and Claude Sautet (Classe Tous Risques). Max (Jean Gabin, Port of Shadows) is an aging gangster who manages to pull off his final heist, a spectacular gold bullion robbery at Orly airport. All is well until Max’s former girlfriend Josy (Jeanne Moreau, Viva Maria!) tips off a rival gangster, Angelo (Lino Ventura, Razzia Sur La Chnouf). Angelo kidnaps Max’s partner and best friend and threatens to kill him unless Max hands over the loot from his robbery. Touchez Pas Au Grisbi was the birth the French policier, a European transposition of the fantastic American gangster films and film noirs of the 1940s. Based on a book by Albert Simonin (Cold Sweat) and beautifully shot in striking black-and-white by Pierre Montazel (Hi-Jack Highway).Read More »

A 19-year-old girl Hiroko Terasawa working in a matching agency promises her client Masakazu Sekine that she’ll pose as his fiancée for a remarkable cash reward. Hiroko moves to Sekine’s mansion and prepares to attend the family’s meeting. However, this only turns out to be a prelude of a bloody fight over the family’s legacy.Read More »

Masumura’s 44th film capitalizes on the student unrest of the late sixties as background for a story about a ‘liberated’ woman. Cruelly nymphomaniac, Michi is described as an ‘independent child of the times’, with no family obligations, no taste for housekeeping, and no need of a man to support her. Her sex mania and Nobuyuki’s masochism become less than plausible, and the other characters are all too superficially delineated to be engaging.Read More »

When two men break out of prison, they join up with another and restart their criminal ways, robbing banks across the South.Read More »

When a man’s best friend is shot in cold blood by two corrupt policemen, he must track down the only eyewitnesses, who have been deported to Mali.Read More »

Zou Zou tries to help her childhood friend prove his innocence after he’s accused of murder.Read More »

Quote:
A former bank clerk conceives a one-man robbery at the bank he works. He had before established an alibi for himself pretending and declaring him legally dead. Further complications ensue when he rejoins his estranged wife.Read More »