Crack-Up (1946)
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This unusual and worthwhile black-and-white film noir was one of the first movies to deal with issues of anti-Semitism.
Rose Loomis and her older, gloomier husband, George, are vacationing at a cabin in Niagara Falls, N.Y. The couple befriend Polly and Ray Cutler, who are honeymooning in the area. Polly begins to suspect that something is amiss between Rose and George, and her suspicions grow when she sees Rose in the arms of another man. While Ray initially thinks Polly is overreacting, things between George and Rose soon take a shockingly dark turn.
No-nonsense San Francisco industrial whiz Walter Williams's two-timing wife and her lover plot to do her husband in, but Williams survives the "accident" and the lover is burned beyond recognition while driving Williams's car. Half-dazed, Williams stumbles into a moving van that takes him to idyllic Larkspur, Idaho, where newspaper stories of his "death" jog his memory. While recuperating and plotting his eventual return and revenge, Williams falls in love with Marsha, an auto mechanic. But when Williams finally gets back to San Francisco, he's charged with the lover's murder.
England, at the start of World War Two. Mysterious wireless broadcasts, apparently from Nazi Germany are heard over the BBC. They warn of acts of terror in England, just before they take place. Baffled, the Defence Committee call in Holmes ...
The Naked City portrays the police investigation that follows the murder of a young model. A veteran cop is placed in charge of the case and he sets about, with the help of other beat cops and detectives, finding the girl's killer.
Jeff Bailey seems to be a mundane gas station owner in remote Bridgeport, CA. He is dating local girl Ann Miller and lives a quiet life. But Jeff has a secret past, and when a mysterious stranger arrives in town, Jeff is forced to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.
Unsuspecting Mr. Dietrichson becomes increasingly accident prone after his icily calculating wife encourages him to sign a double indemnity policy proposed by a smooth-talking insurance agent. Against a backdrop of distinctly California settings, the partners in crime plan the perfect murder to collect the insurance. Perfect until a claims manager gets a familiar feeling of foul play and pursues the matter relentlessly.
The gruesome death of a prostitute brings suspicion on one of her clients, James Wayland, a brilliant, self-destructive and epileptic heir to a textile fortune. So detectives Braxton and Kennesaw take Wayland in for questioning, thinking they can break the man. But despite his troubles, Wayland is a master of manipulation, and during the interrogation, he begins to turn the tables on the investigators, forcing them to reveal their own sinister sides.
Private Detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love.
A murder mystery set in the world of illegal teenage gambling. A 17-year old must find his best friends' killer before the game is exposed.
After her cheating husband leaves her, Mildred Pierce proves she can become independent and successful, but can't win the approval of her spoiled daughter.
One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.
Dixon 'Dix' Steele, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter needs to adapt a trashy novel. At a night club, the hat-check girl, Mildred Atkinson is engrossed reading it. Too tired to read the novel, he asks Mildred to go home with him, to explain the plot. Later that night, Mildred is murdered and Steele is a prime suspect, his record of violence when angry goes against him.
Two professional killers invade a small town and kill a gas station attendant, "the Swede," who's expecting them. Insurance investigator Reardon pursues the case against the orders of his boss, who considers it trivial. Weaving together threads of the Swede's life, Reardon uncovers a complex tale of treachery and crime, all linked with gorgeous, mysterious Kitty Collins.
Two carefree young travellers make the mistake of their lives when they pick up a mysterious, and slightly psychotic, hitch-hiker who never closes his right eye -- even when he sleeps!
Two orphans, Polly and Doug, live with their stepmother Lynn; Polly collapses with the same mystery symptoms that killed her father. The kids' visiting uncle, Whitney Sargent, is warned that the symptoms match strychnine poisoning, but that poisoners are seldom detected and rarely convicted. Sure enough, no case can be made against the obvious suspect; so what can he do to save the next victim?
A down-and-out restaurateur and his neighbor hatch a plan to lure luminaries to their small Newfoundland town.
A drunk cop investigates the murder of a sexy blonde. The policeman -who can't remember the night before - starts getting worried when all fingers began pointing at him.
A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.
An artist suffering from mental problems from his experiences during the war goes to Acapulco on his honeymoon. Soon young women are turning up dead in the area, and the ex-GI comes to believe he might be responsible, as he has long stretches where he can't remember anything.
Ex con turned private investigator Bradford Galt (Mark Stevens) suspects someone is following him and maybe even trying to kill him. With the assistance of his spunky secretary, Lucille Ball, he dives deep into a mystery in search of answers.
Danny Haley's bookie operation is shut down, so he and his pals need money; when Danny meets Arthur Winant, a sucker from out of town, he decoys him into a series of poker games where eventually Winant loses $5000 that isn't his... then hangs himself. But it seems Winant had a shadowy, protective elder brother who believes in personal revenge.
Orson Welles plays an escaped Nazi war criminal. After the war, he fled to the United States and assumed the name of Charles Rankin. Engaged to the unsuspecting daughter of a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and posing as a college professor, he had the perfect cover. No one would think to look for a notorious Nazi war criminal in the sacred precincts of the Harper's School...
A harrowing and frightening thriller about a man who has everything he's ever loved stripped away from him; and to earn his life and family back, he must face obstacles of mystical origins, endure countless tests of his faith, struggle with his own sanity, and explore the depth and the power of his soul.
A big-city cop is reassigned to the country after his superiors find him too angry to be an effective policeman. While on his temporary assignment he assists in a manhunt of a suspected murderer.
Connie Doyle is eighteen and pregnant her boyfriend has kicked her out. She accidentaly ends up on a train where she meets Hugh Winterbourne and his wife Patricia who is pregnant. The train wrecks and she wakes up in the hosptial to find out that it's been assumed that she's Patricia. Hugh's mother takes her in and she falls in love with Hugh's brother Bill. Just when she thinks everything is going her way, her ex-boyfriend shows up.
The pilots of a Royal Air Force squadron in World War I face not only physical but mental dangers in their struggle to survive while fighting the enemy.
After workaholic Kevin has a drunken one night stand with the beautiful train-wreck Madeline, he's horrified to discover that she's actually his boss' jilted ex-mistress. When she takes a bottle of sleeping pills, Kevin is forced to keep her awake... and over the course of the night the two begin to fall for each other.
Night and the City (1950) is a film noir based on the novel by Gerald Kersh, directed by Jules Dassin, and starring Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney. Shot on location in London, the plot evolves around an ambitious hustler whose plans keep going wrong.
Bogey's on the lam and Bacall's at his side in Dark Passage, Delmer Daves' stylish film-noir thriller that's the third of four films Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together. Bogart is Vincent Parry who, framed for murder, escapes San Quentin and soon emerges from plastic surgery with a new face. Bacall is Irene Jansen, Vincent's lone ally. In a supporting role, Agnes Moorehead portrays Madge, a venomous harpy who finds pleasure in the unhappiness of others. The chemistry of the leads is undeniable, and they augment it here with exceptional tenderness. Exceptional too are the atmospheric San Francisco locations and the imaginative camera work that shows Vincent's point of view - but not his face - until the bandages are removed. Lest Irene get ideas, the post-surgery Vincent tells her: "Don't change yours. I like it just as it is."
Set in the bleak aftermath and devastation of the World War I, a recently demobbed soldier, Timosh, returns to his hometown Kiev, after having survived a train wreck. His arrival coincides with a national celebration of Ukrainian freedom, but the festivities are not to last as a disenchanted.
This film noir stars Alan Ladd as a war veteran framed for the murder of his own wife and follows his search for the real murderer. Veronica Lake plays the sultry femme fatale who provides unexpected help.
The Horatio Alger parable gets the film noir treatment with the redoubtable Edmund OâBrien as a whip-smart telephone technician who moves up the ladder of a Syndicate gambling empire in Southern California until distracted by an inconveniently married Joanne Dru and his own greed. Ripped from the headlines of the 1950 Kevaufer Organized Crime Hearings, this fast-moving picture is laden with location sequences shot in Los Angeles, the Hoover Dam and Palm Springs including the famous Doll House watering hole on North Palm Canyon Drive!
Broke, jobless and chronically depressed, oldest son Keri returns to the family home for Christmas, where he must face the emotional train-wreck that is his family: his exhausted parents, two messed-up sisters and a gay younger brother. A warts-and-all black comedic look at the horrors of suburbia, the awfulness of the holiday season and the ties that bind.
An orphaned girl is taken in by a snobbish family at the insistence of their rich, crotchety uncle, even as her devoted aviator godfather fights for custody.
The story of acerbic 1960s comic Lenny Bruce, whose groundbreaking, no-holds-barred style and social commentary was often deemed by the Establisment as too obscene for the public.
A WWII Coast Guard veteran, Lt. Scott Burnett (Robert Ryan), is plagued by nightmares of his combat days. One day, he meets a woman, Peggy Butler (Joan Bennett), walking on a beach, picking up pieces of wood. Butler is married to a grumpy, blind painter, Ted Butler (Charles Bickford). Despite his affections for his fiancée Eve (Nan Leslie), whose father is a boat builder, Scott falls in love with Peggy and soon breaks off the engagement. Peggy reveals that she blinded her husband years earlier by throwing a glass at him during an ugly spat, ruining his career and her own ambitions to be an upper-class socialite. Scott fears that Ted is suspicious that he is having an affair with Peggy and becomes so paranoid that he begins to believe that Ted is faking his blindness â and sets out to prove it. This was the fifth and final American film by the great French writer-director Jean Renoir.
After a fundraiser for a black politician is robbed, Detroit police put two detectives, one white and one black, on the case, who try to work together under boiling political pressure.
Flicka and Toby help out a struggling stable owner and her teenage daughter.
Because of the actions of her irresponsible parents, a young girl is left alone on a decrepit country estate and survives inside her fantastic imagination.
Illicit lovers plot to kill the woman's older husband.
Forced to move to a boring backwater town, a teenager embarks on affairs with a teacher (Josh Lucas) and a stoner classmate.
Set in "Barrytown", a fictitious working-class quarter of Dublin. "Bimbo" Reeves gets laid off from his job. With his redundancy, he buys a van and sells fish and chips with his buddy Larry. Due to Ireland's surprising success at the 1990 FIFA World Cup, their business starts off well, but the relationship between the two friends soon becomes strained as Bimbo behaves more like a typical boss.
Army Lieutenant Halliday, accused of stealing the Army payroll, pursues the real thief on a frantic chase through Mexico aided by the thief's ex-girlfriend and is in turned being chased by his accuser, Capt. Blake.
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
A small circle of friends suffering from post-collegiate blues must confront the hard truth about life, love and the pursuit of gainful employment. As they struggle to map out survival guides for the future, the Gen-X quartet soon begins to realize that reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Famous motor-racing champion Joe Greer returns to his hometown to compete in a local race. He discovers his younger brother has aspirations to become a racing champion and during the race Joe loses his nerve when another driver his killed, leaving his brother to win. Joe's luck takes a plunge whilst his brother rises to height of fame.
A man on the run in the Far East is mistaken for an undercover cop.
Located in the US Rust Belt, Charlestown is home of the hapless Chiefs, a losing Federal League hockey team whose games are poorly attended. To make money, the team's unknown owner makes its manager, Joe McGrath, do cheesy publicity much to the players' chagrin. Rumors abound among the players that if the local mill closes, the team will fold. Just before the official announcement is made, the team's aging player/coach, Reggie Dunlop, does get wind that the mill is indeed closing and that this season will be the team's last. Beyond efforts to reconcile with his wife Francine, who loves Reggie but doesn't love his career, Reggie begins to focus on how to renew interest in the team for a possible sale as he knows if the team folds, his hockey career is over. Without telling anyone of his plan, he begins a rumor that the owner is negotiating a sale with a city in Florida.
Based on an attraction at Disneyland, the Country Bear Jamboree, "The Country Bears" is one in a long line of live action Disney family films. A satirical, behind-the-music look at rock & roll bands. Beary, a young bear raised by a human family in a world where humans and talking bears coexist, attempts to trace his roots. He meets up with the Country Bears, a long-since broken-up band.
After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
Frank Johnson, sole witness to a gangland murder, goes into hiding and is trailed by Police Inspector Ferris, on the theory that Frank is trying to escape from possible retaliation. Frank's wife, Eleanor, suspects he is actually running away from their unsuccessful marriage. Aided by a newspaperman, Danny Leggett, Eleanor sets out to locate her husband. The killer is also looking for him, and keeps close tabs on Eleanor.
A teen movie star attempts to overcome her addition to alcohol and salvage what's left of her career after passing out on the red carpet at her big Hollywood premiere and being sent to recover with her upbeat aunt in Indiana. Morgan Carter (Jo Jo) is only seventeen years old, but she's already on top of the world. But so much fame so early in life can yield unpredictable consequences, and when Morgan is sent to the hospital with alcohol poisoning, it's clear that she isn't ready to deal with the pressures of stardom. Whisked away to rehab as the paparazzi clamors for a picture and the press predicts her downfall, Morgan is sent by her mother and concerned manager to Indiana, far away from the temptations of Hollywood. Once there, the troubled starlet reluctantly starts to reconnect with her quirky Aunt Trudy (Valerie Bertinelli), who offers just the kind of unconditional support that the young girl needs to get her life - and career - back on track.
A mystery woman is a murder suspect's only alibi for the night of his wife's death. Based on a story by noir scribe Cornell Woolrich.
Pete Sandidge (Tracy), a daredevil bomber pilot, dies when he crashes his plane into a German aircraft carrier, leaving his devoted girlfriend, Dorinda (Irene Dunne), who is also a pilot, heartbroken. In heaven, Pete receives a new assignment: he is to become the guardian angel for Ted Randall (Van Johnson), a young Army flyer. Invisibly, Pete guides Ted through flight school and into combat, but the ectoplasmic mentor's tolerance is tested when Ted falls for Dorinda. Ultimately, however, Pete not only comes to terms with their relationship but also acts as Dorinda's copilot when she undertakes a dangerous bombing raid, so that Ted won't have to. Remade by Steven Speilberg in 1989 as ALWAYS
James Cagney directs this remake of the film noir classic This Gun for Hire.
Thriller about Guy Luthan (Hugh Grant), a British doctor working at a hospital in New York who starts making unwanted enquiries when the body of a man who died in his emergency room disappears. The trail leads Luthan to the door of the eminent surgeon Dr Lawrence Myrick (Gene Hackman), but Luthan soon finds himself under in danger from people who want the hospital's secret to remain undiscovered.
The feature-film debut of famed director Louis Malle is an interesting, modern film noir with the classic theme of lovers plotting to kill the husband and make it look like suicide (reminiscent of The Postman Always Rings Twice). Jeanne Moreau gives an astonishing performance, perverse but naive as she leads her young lover down a path that can only lead to doom for both of them.
World War II drama where the action centers around a single maneuver by a squad of GIs in retaliation against the force of the German Siegfried line. Reese joins a group of weary GIs unexpectedly ordered back into the line when on their way to a rest area. While most of the men withdraw from their positions facing a German pillbox at the far side of a mine-field, half a dozen men are left to protect a wide front. By various ruses, they manage to convince the Germans that a large force is still holding the position. Then Reese leads two of the men in an unauthorized and unsuccessful attack on the pillbox, in which the other two are killed; and when the main platoon returns, he is threatened with court-martial. Rather that face the disgrace, and in an attempt to show he was right, he makes a one-man attack on the pillbox.
Tough NYC police detective Dixon misses out on a promotion because of his record of roughing up suspects. When accidentally kills a suspect in a murder case he plants clues to absolve himself. But when the father of a woman he recently fell in love is accused of the crime his plan looks like back firing.
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