Write to Kill (1991)
Similar movies
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.
"This is an entirely imaginary story about the writer Dashiell Hammett, who... in the words of one of his most gifted contemporaries... helped get murder out of the vicar's rose garden and back to the people who are really good at it. The detective story has not been the same since." So begins Hammett, the atmospheric and exciting tale of a young mystery writer who really lives the hard-boiled life he writes about -- and learns to dig beneath the surface of his characters to reveal their deeper, darker motivations.
A seedy writer of sleazy pulp novels is recruited by a quirky, reclusive ex-actor to help him write his biography at his house in Malta.
Two misunderstood suburban kids challenge society and run from the police while documenting all of their deeds with a digital camera.
At the request of his old war time colleague Ailsa Brimley, George Smiley agrees to look into the murder of Stella Rode. Brimley had only just received a letter from her saying she feared for her life at her husband's hand. The husband, Stanley Rode teaches at Carne School, but Smiley is doubtful that he had anything to do with his wife's death. As Smiley investigates, he learns that Stella was a nosy busybody who loved to learn other's little secrets and then gossip about them - or possibly blackmail them. When a student is killed and Smiley unearths a secret, he has the evidence to name the killer.Based on John Le Carré's 1962 thriller (his first) in which George Smiley is brought out of spy retirement to solve a murder in a British public school. The setting is based on Le Carre"s own schooldays in Sherborne and his brief experience teaching at Eton.
In real life, mystery writer Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days in December 1926. To this day, no one knows the details of what she did during that time. The film gives a fictional account of Christie's time away, showing her as a woman fleeing her own life after the death of her mother and the announcement from her husband that he is leaving her. She flees to a spa in Harrogate. With the whole country looking for her, an American reporter finds her and ultimately tries to help her.
The Words follows young writer Rory Jansen who finally achieves long sought after literary success after publishing the next great American novel. There's only one catch - he didn't write it. As the past comes back to haunt him and his literary star continues to rise, Jansen is forced to confront the steep price that must be paid for stealing another man's work, and for placing ambition and success above life's most fundamental three words.
Every choice has a consequence. But what if the flip of a coin could trigger two separate but parallel destinies? Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Kate (Lynn Collins) are a young New York couple at a crossroads whose lives are about to take very different directions. A seemingly ordinary July 4th is cleaved in two by the flip of a coin. One path leads them to gentle discoveries about family, loss and each other on a visit to Brooklyn, and the other plunges them into an urban nightmare of pursuit, suspense and murder in Manhattan.
Three bad girls (a down-and-out stripper, a drug-running killer and a corporate powerbroker) arrive at a remote desert hideaway to extort and steal $200 Million in diamonds from a ruthless underworld kingpin.
A precocious and obsessive teenager develops a crush on a naive writer with harrowing consequences.
After living all his chilhood in the street, a young boy notices rapidly that crime doesn't paye and that´s why he decides to become a policeman. One day,one of his best friends go in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Immediately the policeman tries his best to release him and prove his innocence.
Frederick Manion, an Army lieutenant, is arrested for the murder of bartender Barney Quill. In his defense, he claims that Quill raped and beat up his wife Laura. Although Laura supports her husband's story, the police surgeon cannot find evidence of rape. Manion is defended by Paul Biegler, a humble small-town lawyer. During the course of interviews, Biegler discovers that Manion is violently possessive and jealous, and that his wife has a reputation for giving her favors to other men. Biegler realizes that the prosecution will try to make the court believe that Laura was the lover of the bartender and that Manion killed him and beat her up when he discovered them together. Manion pleads "not guilty" and Biegler, who knows that his case is weak, sets his assistants to try to find a witness who will save Manion.
Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, an alien place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A Stalker, one of only a handful who have the mental gifts (and who risk imprisonment) to lead people into the Zone is tasked with reaching the Room, said to be a place where one's secret hopes come true. His clients are a burned out popular writer, cynical, and questioning his talent; and a quiet scientist more concerned about his knapsack than the journey. In the deserted Zone, the approach to the Room must be indirect. As they draw near, the rules seem to change and the stalker faces a crisis. The film is loosely based on the novel "Roadside Picnic" by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky
U.S. Secret Service agent Peter Novak goes undercover with Scotland Yard officer Thompson to halt a murderous gang of counterfeiters known as the Golden Goose. Although Peter is unsure about John's loyalties, the two infiltrate the gang and win the trust of thug Nick "The Owl" Harrison before enduring a series of double-crosses.
When troubled teen boy Stevie (Cameron Van Hoy) and his girlfriend, Rocky (Mischa Barton), attempt to rob a bank without any forethought, the situation rapidly deteriorates. Soon the young couple is holding bank customers and employees hostage, while law enforcement gathers outside. Daniel Bender (Burt Reynolds), a veteran negotiator for the FBI, is charged with assessing the crime scene and ending the standoff as quickly as possible, but Stevie's short fuse considerably complicates matters.
A gorgeous young automobile fanatic--and front to the hottest unsigned band on the West coast--finds herself caught up in illegal drag-racing competitions organized by exotic car fanatics
Sophie Jacobs is going through the most difficult time of her life. Now, she just has to find out if it's real.
A Hong Kong-set mystery centered on a detective who has been framed for a series of gruesome murders.
U.S. Treasury Department agents go after a ring of counterfeiters.
Stranded student Pete (Ron Eldard) gets a lift from racist trucker Zack and repays the favor by inviting him in for dinner with his roommates, Jude (Cameron Diaz), Luke (Courtney B. Vance), Marc (Jonathan Penner) and Paulie (Annabeth Gish). When Zack praises Hitler and pulls a knife at the table, the roommates kill him. Rationalizing their actions as a favor to humanity, they bury Zack in the yard and begin to invite other offensive types to a string of similarly murderous meals.
A psychotic child murderer stalks a city. Despite an exhaustive investigation fueled by public hysteria and outcry, the police have been unable to find him. The police crackdown makes it nearly impossible for the organized criminal underground to operate. The criminals decide that the only way to get the police off their backs is to catch the murderer themselves.
Julie Styron thinks she is going to be fired, but instead discovers that she is being promoted. Trapped in an airport hotel, she wants to celebrate but finds only the company of her young assistant, Paula Murphy. As the night progresses, the two women get to know each other. They flirt, they drink, they lie; personal flaws are revealed and exposed. But at the end of the night their relationship turns and becomes a complex battle of power, authority, and wit.
The successful novelist Judith Ralitzer is interrogated in the police station about the disappearance of her ghost-writer. A serial-killer escapes from a prison in Paris. A missing school teacher leaves his wife and children. In the road, the annoying and stressed hairdresser Hughette is left in a gas station by her fiancé Paul while driving to the poor farm of her family in the country. A mysterious man offers a ride to her and she invites him to assume the identity of Paul during 24 hours to not disappoint her mother. Who might be the unknown man and what is real and what is fiction?
Heera Bhatti, an American-Sikh, runs a corner store in Los Angeles with the help of her son, Vikram, and Gulu. She does not approve of Vikram's Caucasian girlfriend, Lillian, and would prefer that Vikram marry a Punjabi girl, but Vikram has made up his mind. Then the lives of all Californians are turned upside down when one morning eight people are dead after drinking contaminated tap water.
A 19 year old Brooklyn boy who is torn between two worlds when his photography portfolio wins him a partial scholarship to NYU. He must figure out how to balance his Italian neighborhood roots with the expansive, sophisticated world on the other side of the East River. Based on Tim McLoughlin's novel "Heart of the Old Country".
A woman framed for her husband's murder suspects he is still alive; as she has already been tried for the crime, she can't be re-prosecuted if she finds and kills him.
Philo Vance, accompanied by his prize-losing Scottish terrier, investigates the locked-room murder of a prominent and much-hated collector whose broken Chinese vase provides an important clue.
Kaspar Carr is a professional burglar who lives and works in Chicago. Carr loves his job and is good at it, and two documentary filmmakers are granted access to his private world when he agrees to let them make a film about him.
Following the murder of hotel heir Ben Novack Jr., police focus their investigation on his wife, Narcy.
A father, who is a failed former television reporter tries to mount a documentary about violence and sex among youths. He proceeds to have sex with his daughter who is now a prostitute and films his son being humiliated and hit by classmates. "Q", a perfect stranger somehow gets involved and enter the bizzare family who's son beats his mom, who in turn is also a prostitute and a heroin addict
A champagne tycoon's (Furneaux) partner (Ronet) suspects his partner's gigolo husband (Perkins) of murders he's been framed for.
On the afternoon of July 1, 1981, Los Angeles police responded to a distress call on Wonderland Avenue and discovered a grisly quadruple homicide. The police investigation that followed uncovered two versions of the events leading up to the brutal murders - both involving legendary porn actor John Holmes. You're about to experience both versions.
When a prisoner barely survives a lynch mob attack and is presumed dead, he vindictively decides to frame the mob for his murder.
On a flight to London, a note is found stating that there will be murders taking place on the airliner before it lands.
In post-Katrina New Orleans, a disgraced detective encounters the ghost of a murdered woman who wants to help him identify her killer.
A serial killer named Shin-Hyun gives himself up to police. He is imprisoned, awaiting the death sentence for his crimes. Yet the killings do not stop. They continue with all the same characteristics trademarks of the Shin-Hyun serial killings. Detective Mi Yun, and her newly appointed partner, Detective Kang, are assigned to the case. Mi Yun and Kang have difficulty working with each other. Detective Kang follows a new suspect, Huh, and eventually catches him in the act of brutally murdering a woman in a crowded techno bar. Huh is taken into custody after Kang shoots and wounds him at the scene of the crime. Yet the murders continue in copy-cat style. The police desperately hunt for new leads. They start an in-depth investigation of a Doctor Chu, who is Shin-Hyun's psychiatrist. But progress is frustrated when Dr Chu becomes a victim of the copy-cat killings herself. The murdered psychiatrist's former boyfriend quickly becomes the prime suspect, a fanatical character named Choi.
An American journalist played by George Clooney arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover played by Cate Blanchett.
Hit man Cleve approaches writer/cop Dennis about a story for his next book: How Cleve made a living, working for one of the most powerful politicians in the country. To get the story right, they travel around the country to gather statements and evidence, while strong forces use any means they can to keep the story untold.
In "An Amish Murder", the peaceful Amish farming community of Painterâs Mill, Ohio, is shattered when a series of brutal murders leaves the town with a sense of frailty and loss of innocence. Among the most affected by the tragedy was Kate Burkholder (Campbell), a young girl who survived the terror and, as a result, left the Amish life behind. Fifteen years later, Kate returns to Painterâs Mill as its Chief of Police. Certain sheâs come to terms with her past, Kateâs renewed life in her hometown is shattered when a murder investigation triggers deep-seated emotions from her childhood and exposes a dark secret that could destroy her.
An autistic boy witnesses his parents' double murder. Richard Dreyfuss as a controversial therapist, seeks to probe the child's mind in order to solve the case.
Recently paroled after serving a long stretch for his wife's murder, Joey One-Way aligns himself with a producer who has optioned the play he wrote in prison. As he sets about adapting his work for the big screen, Joey falls for his new pal's ex-con wife, and enters into a doomed affair.
A struggling, unemployed young writer takes to following strangers around the streets of London, ostensibly to find inspiration for his new novel.
In an urban Indian city, A struggling actor battles for his career, but his friend who loses money in a scam deal commits an action that puts both of their lives in danger. The three last days before the incident follows the struggling actor, an ambitious filmmaker, a wannabe hustler, an opportunist, a lover and two cinephile thugs, through an inter-twining vignette of their lives.
A satire about desperate hustling, pop philosophy and big money.
An American attorney on business in China, ends up wrongfully on trial for murder and his only key to innocence is a female defense lawyer from the country.
Steve Grey, reporter for the Daily Star, has a habit of scooping all the other papers in town. When Henry Mander is investigated for the murder of his shady business partner, Grey is one step ahead of the police to the extent that he often dictates his story in advance of its actual occurrence. He leads the police through an 'open and shut' case resulting in Mander being tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Columnist Mary Shannon is in love with Steve but she sees him struggle greatly with his last story before Mander's execution. When she starts typing out the story from his recorded dictation, she realizes why.
Jack Manfred is an aspiring writer who to make ends meet, takes a job as a croupier. Jack remains an observer, knowing that everything in life is a gamble and that gamblers are born to lose. Inevitably, he gets sucked into the world of the casino which takes its toll on his relationships and the novel he is writing.
The story of Martha Moxley, 15 year old girl murdered in Greenwich in the 1970's, her murder going unsolved for 25 years.
A call girl goes to a priest to confess a sin she hasn't committed yet: she plans to kill herself on her next birthday. Then she disappears and he goes looking for her, enlisting the help of an ad hoc congregation of troubled souls along the way. A story about forgiveness.
Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.
Jesse Stone is a former L.A. homicide detective who left behind the big city and an ex-wife to become the police chief of the quiet New England fishing town of Paradise. Stone's old habits die hard as he continues to indulge his two favorite things--scotch and women. When a series of murders takes place and a high school girl is raped, he's forced to face his own demons in order to solve the crimes. And, since these are the first murders to occur in Paradise, Jesse must also train his inexperienced staff of police officers to assist in the investigation to find the killers and the rapist before they can strike again.
Small-time police chief and struggling alcoholic Jesse Stone looks into the murder of a teen-age girl whose body is found floating in a local lake. The case brings the former LAPD cop up against the Boston mob and into the affluent world of a bestselling writer who exploits troubled teens.
ARRANGED centers on the friendship between an Orthodox Jewish woman and a Muslim woman who meet as first-year teachers at a public school in Brooklyn. Over the course of the year they learn they share much in common - not least of which is that they are both going through the process of arranged marriages.
Unconventional narrative about the interactions amongst a group of people in a small town in Alaska, each of whom has guards a secret.
While researching his book In Cold Blood, writer Truman Capote develops a close relationship with convicted murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.
When Harry Levine, an aging, unsuccessful Greenwich Village writer is fired from his job as restaurant doorman, he calls on friend and mentor Jake, ostensibly to collect a long-standing debt. Harry solicits his opinion on his latest manuscript, a work of semi-fiction based on their longtime friendship. Although he initially denies having read it, Jake later attacks it on aesthetic grounds, and deep-seated feelings of betrayal and jealousy surface and lead to a traumatic confrontation.
Film about filmmaking. It takes place during one day on set of non-budget movie. Ultimate tribute to all independent filmmakers.
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
A horrific triple child murder leads to an indictment and trial of three nonconformist boys based on questionable evidence.
A love-lorn script writer grows increasingly desperate in his quest to adapt the book 'The Orchid Thief'.
© Valossa 2015–2024