Crime

  • Yûsuke Watanabe – Han gyakû no tabi AKA Rebellious Journey (1976)

    1971-1980ActionCrimeJapanYûsuke Watanabe
    Han gyakû no tabi (1976)
    Han gyakû no tabi (1976)

    Hiroshi kakurai killed the village of political Goro. His killing was perfect and he did not leave any clue again. He lived in the mammoth estate, and he was a child favorite ordinary man whose career was a designer of toys. Kakurai was thinking of “killing” a little tired of the nerve work and washing his feet. It was his dream to buy a land in the island of the Seto Inland Sea, and to live there and to die quietly. Kakurai had a request for a new killing.Read More »

  • Claudio Giovannesi – La paranza dei bambini AKA Piranhas (2019)

    2011-2020Claudio GiovannesiCrimeDramaItaly
    La paranza dei bambini (2019)
    La paranza dei bambini (2019)

    Quote:
    Based on the novel by Roberto Saviano (“Gomorrah”), Piranhas follows fifteen year-old Nicola (newcomer Francesco Di Napoli) who lives with his mother and younger brother in the Sanità neighborhood of Naples, a place that has been controlled by the Camorra mafia for centuries.

    Dreaming of a life lush with designer clothing and elite nightclub bottle service, Nicola and his naive group of friends begin selling drugs, an entryway into the violent, power-hungry world of crime that begins to threaten their innocence, relationships, and safety of their families.Read More »

  • John Herzfeld – 2 Days in the Valley (1996)

    1991-2000CrimeDramaJohn HerzfeldUSA
    2 Days in the Valley (1996)
    2 Days in the Valley (1996)

    by Mark Deming
    A variety of crooks, losers, and working stiffs living in the shadow of Hollywood find their various personal crises overlapping in this intricately woven melodrama. Lee Woods (James Spader) is a cold-blooded hit man and Dosmo Pizzo (Danny Aiello) a soft-at-heart gangster; they’ve been sent to murder Roy Foxx (Peter Horton), the former husband of also-ran Olympic skier Becky Foxx (Teri Hatcher). Lee’s girlfriend Helga (Charlize Theron) is unhappy about his habit of killing people, and she attracts the attention of Alvin (Jeff Daniels) and Wes (Eric Stoltz), two cops who’ve been put on vice detail but don’t have the heart to bust the prostitute they’ve been trailing. Read More »

  • Lana Wachowski & Lilly Wachowski – Bound (1996)

    Lana Wachowski1991-2000CrimeLilly WachowskiQueer Cinema(s)ThrillerUSA
    Bound (1996)
    Bound (1996)

    Tough ex-con Corky and her lover Violet concoct a scheme to steal millions of stashed mob money and pin the blame on Violet’s crooked boyfriend Caesar.Read More »

  • Gillies MacKinnon – Small Faces (1996)

    Gillies MacKinnon1991-2000CrimeDramaUnited Kingdom
    Small Faces (1996)
    Small Faces (1996)

    Quote:
    Life in the tough end of Glasgow in the late 1960s is delightfully and sometimes painfully presented here. This is clearly a work of well-observed autobiography by the Mackinnon family – Billy the writer/producer and Gillies the director.

    At the centre of the film is the Maclean family – widowed mother with sons Bobby (none too bright), Alan (budding artist in spite of being brought up in the tough end of Govan) and narrator Lex, only 13 and still not sure what life is all about. Iain Robertson’s performance as Lex is so good that it is barely credible that he has not reappeared in anything more worthy of his acting talent.Read More »

  • Carl Franklin – One False Move (1992)

    1991-2000Carl FranklinCrimeDramaUSA
    One False Move (1992)
    One False Move (1992)

    Carl Franklin made his directorial bow with the story of three LA drug dealers who, after committing a rather messy murder, hide out in a rural Arkansas town. Assuming that the local “rubes” will offer them little interference, the criminals have not reckoned with sheriff “Hurricane” Dixon (Bill Paxton). Despite the arrogance of the LAPD agents sent to Arkansas to collar the crooks, it is down-home Dixon who puts the final bloody showdown into motion (the fact that the thieves have been falling out throughout the film doesn’t hurt things either). Carl Franklin knows where he’s going in every frenetic frame of One False Move, and his movie was one of the most acclaimed independent releases of 1991.Read More »

  • Constantine Giannaris – Apo tin akri tis polis AKA From the Edge of the City (1998)

    Constantine Giannaris1991-2000CrimeDramaGreeceQueer Cinema(s)
    Apo tin akri tis polis (1998)
    Apo tin akri tis polis (1998)

    A group of Pontian Greek immigrant teenage dreamers dwelling marginalised in the notorious and lustreless wild suburbia, witness the city’s repulsive face and an unrelenting world defined by prostitution, drugs, and inevitably, loss.Read More »

  • James Foley – At Close Range (1986)

    James Foley1981-1990CrimeDramaUSA

    Synopsis
    One of the overlooked films of the 1980s, perhaps because it is such a downbeat tale of an amoral family. Sean Penn plays a kid whose small-time criminal impulses are stoked to a new level when he falls in with his father (Christopher Walken), a vicious career criminal for whom no problem is so large that it can’t be solved by a murder. At first exhilarated by the attention from his father (and the jobs he gives him to do), he gradually catches on to just what a bad guy Dad really is. But when he tries to extricate himself, he discovers that Dad now has him squarely in his sights. Penn is terrific in a role of emotional complexity, while Walken, king of the creeps, is positively frightening as this soft-spoken but highly lethal patriarch. Read More »

  • Ulli Lommel – B.T.K. Killer (2005)

    Ulli Lommel2001-2010CrimeDramaUSA

    The B.T.K. killer harasses a news reporter with threatening letters as he ponders about the murders he committed 30 years ago.Read More »

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