Crime

  • Brian Desmond Hurst – Prison Without Bars (1938)

    1931-1940Brian Desmond HurstCrimeDramaUnited Kingdom

    Suzanne, Renee, Nina and Marta all hate being in prison, being slapped and treated badly, and so all the girls are trying to escape. Madame Appel just causes chaos all the time, with her harsh manners. When Yvonne with her free-thinking ways is put in charge of the school for misbehaving girls, and asks them to tell her their complaints, they don’t believe her at first. Yvonne is in love and about to marry the establishment’s doctor, and it does not help that one teenage girl falls for him – and is corresponded. It’s a hard life for the girls, and for the new female warden.Read More »

  • Jirí Menzel – Zlocin v santánu aka Crime in the Night Club (1968)

    1961-1970CrimeCzech RepublicJirí MenzelMusical

    Quote:
    The charming singer Clara Regina has many admirers. Even the minister of justice fights for her favour, especially enchanted by Clara’s lullaby. Clara’s successes with men are watched with displeasure by her jealous husband, Ikaro Volante. The minister sends a bouquet and a pearl necklace to the singer. The juggler Piterman steals the pearls but frames her shy assistant Pepícek, who, along with inexperienced defence lawyer Vilém Bojanovský, falls victim to blind justice in an unfair world full of intrigue… The form of this outwardly noncommittal crime musical, featuring the songs of Šlitr and Suchý, is influenced by the dark atmosphere that pervaded society after the Prague Spring efforts at reform were crushed in August 1968: the two convicts, performed by this duo from Prague’s Semafor theatre, can now do nothing but sing.Read More »

  • John Dahl – The Last Seduction (1994)

    John Dahl1991-2000CrimeFilm NoirUSA

    Quote:
    Director John Dahl’s The Last Seduction is an updated film noir centering around a seductive, cheerfully lethal femme fatale. Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) talks her gullible, easily manipulated, doctor-husband Clay (Bill Pullman) into pulling off a $700,000 drug deal to pay off his gambling debts. But while Clay is in the shower, Bridget quietly leaves with the money. She ends up in a bar in a small town where she meets Mike (Peter Berg) and uses him to further her scheme to keep the money and get rid of her inconvenient husband. Linda Fiorentino was championed by many critics for a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, but neither she nor the movie could be nominated since the film had made its debut on cable television.Read More »

  • Filippos Tsitos – Adikos kosmos AKA Unfair World (2011)

    2011-2020ComedyCrimeFilippos TsitosGreece

    Sotiris is a police investigator in Athens who lives by a strict moral code. An honest man, he carries himself as though held down by the weight of the world. Dora is a cleaning lady, struggling to get by any way she can. Dealt a rough hand in life, she has developed a rich layer of cynicism and mistrust that informs her every action. When a man Sotiris believes is innocent is arrested for a brutal crime, his attempt to uncover the truth results in a grave mistake. Finding himself on the other side of the law for the first time, he places his fate in Dora, the only witness to his malfeasance and the only person who can help him, for better or for worse.
    Read More »

  • Akira Kurosawa – Shûbun AKA Scandal (1950)

    1941-1950Akira KurosawaCrimeDramaJapan

    A handsome, suave Toshiro Mifune lights up the screen as painter Ichiro, whose circumstantial meeting with a famous singer (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) is twisted by the tabloid press into a torrid affair. Ichiro files a lawsuit against the seedy gossip magazine, but his lawyer, Hiruta (Kurosawa stalwart Takashi Shimura), is playing both sides. A portrait of cultural moral decline, Scandal is also a compelling courtroom drama and a moving tale of human redemption.Read More »

  • Denys Arcand – Gina (1975)

    1971-1980CanadaCrimeDenys ArcandDrama

    Quote:
    Gina (Céline Lomez), a Montreal striptease dancer, is sent by her agency to small-town Louisville to give a show at a local hotel. Also arriving in Louisville that same day are Bob Sauvageau (Claude Blanchard), leader of a gang of snowmobilers known as “Les Pinguins,” and a director (Gabriel Arcand) and a small crew of filmmakers from the Office National du Cinéma who are making a film on the oppressive working conditions at the local textile factory (a reference to Arcand’s own NFB-banned documentary On est au coton). The friendly relationship that is established between Gina and the filmmakers upsets the snowmobilers, while the filmmakers, having persuaded the manager of the factory to allow them to film, are discovering a long history of alienation and submission among the workers.Read More »

  • Ray Milland – The Safecracker (1958)

    Crime1951-1960Ray MillandUnited KingdomWar

    Ray Milland plays a safe-cracker sprung from jail when England needs him to crack a Nazi safe containing spy secrets.
    (Black and White, 1958)Read More »

  • Steno – Arrriva Dorellik AKA How to Kill 400 Duponts (1967)

    1961-1970ComedyCrimeItalySteno

    Dorellik, an Italian contract killer that lives on the French Riviera, accepts a job to kill everyone with the surname Dupont that lives in France for a rich customer which supposedly would allow him to obtain a large inheritance.Read More »

  • Sidney Lanfield – The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

    1931-1940CrimeMysterySidney LanfieldUSA

    Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson investigate the legend of a supernatural hound, a beast that may be stalking a young heir on the fog-shrouded moorland that makes up his estate.

    ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ (1939) is the most well-known cinematic adaptation of the book, and is often regarded as one of the better film versions of it. It differs somewhat, but not as much as the 1959 film version.Read More »

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