A bomb attack in a cinema in Palermo kills all the fellows of Attardi’s clan a part from Cocchi. He immediately understands that the author of the bomb attack is Daniello from Don Corrasco’s clan. Cocchi is determined to revenge. His actions, including the Corrasco’s daughter kidnap, in a Palermo in which also the police is corrupted, will soon destroy the old equilibrium giving the way to an escalation of violence that won’t save anyone. If Cocchi will survive to the mafia war he will be the new boss for sure.
Synopsis: Luc Merenda gives the performance of his career as a highly regarded police detective who is taking syndicate money in exchange for departmental favors. His father, a simple man, also works for the department but on a lower rung; he isn’t jealous of his son, but rather proud of him, little knowing that he’s a crooked cop. A series of events leads the young detective to ask his father for a favor (he wants a certain police report that is desired by the syndicate) and it doesn’t take long for the detective’s father to realize his son is on the take… which leads to numerous complications.
Synopsis: While investigating a high-profile murder case, a savvy but unorthodox veteran police inspector has to cope with a bad conscience, bad health, an overzealous partner, a timid superior and interference from political interests. This is an existential whodunit, but a good one, and like any good whodunit, ends with a very surprising conclusion, which will be spoiled for you if you read much of anything at all about the movie.
Robert Cannon (Jack Kelly), Fred Vitale (Ray Danton) and Alan Nichols (Andrew Duggan), three men vital to America’s missile program, are en route to Cape Canaveral when a bomb is discovered in a suitcase. Defused by Vitale, the device is turned over to the FBI, which takes charge of the investigation. Assigned to determine if it’s a case of sabotage or attempted murder, Inspector Leroy Gifford (Philip Carey) and his squad race to track down the bomber before he can strike again.
Originally shot as a TV pilot, FBI Code 98 was based on a book by the film’s writer/producer, former police reporter Stanley Niss. Produced with the cooperation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Code 98 was released in theaters instead, making its U.S. debut one year before Warner Bros. revisited the premise with the long-running TV series The F.B.I., which aired on ABC from 1965 to 1974.
Synopsis: At the end of 1972, con artist and thief Simon receives a remission to celebrate the New Year outside La Santé Prison. While heading to his apartment in Paris to meet his mistress Françoise, Simon notices that a car is chasing his cab. In the apartment, Simon leans that Françoise has a lover and he leaves the place without being noticed. Simon recalls the Christmas of 1966, when he travels out-season to Cannes with his partner and friend Charlot to heist the jewellers Van Cleef and Arpels. While plotting a scheme to rob the jewellers, Simon meets the intellectual antique dealer Françoise whose shop is the next-door neighbor of the target and he falls in love with her. But his scheme does not work as planned and Simon is arrested.
from VARIETY.COM Nicolas Cage makes an unusual but pleasantly haunting debut behind the camera with “Sonny,” the tale of a young man groomed as a gigolo by his Southern momma from age 12. Distinguished by affecting performances, commercial prospects seem modest but honorable in light of the semi-sordid storyline. However, anyone who gives “Sonny” a spin is unlikely to quickly forget it.
Pic made trade headlines prior to its Deauville world preem when Robert Dellinger filed suit against Cage and assorted production companies for failing to give him screen credit as co-writer. Dellinger claimed he and credited scripter John Carlen co-wrote a handful of screenplays when both were incarcerated in the ’70s, and “Sonny” borrows much from those texts.
Per production notes, Cage considered playing the lead himself in the mid-’80s and, later, never having forgotten the unusual material, dug up the script for his directing bow.
Besides “Midnight Cowboy” and “American Gigolo,” there aren’t many mainstream movies centered on straight male prostitutes. “Sonny” is a worthy, if indie-style, addition to the list, with James Franco (“James Dean”) making a lead as special as Jon Voight or Richard Gere in the aforementioned films.
Pic is set in New Orleans over the course of a few weeks in 1981. Fresh out of the Army, Sonny (Franco), who never knew his father and whose mother, Jewel (Brenda Blethyn), is a whore past her prime, returns to the house on Bourbon Street where Jewel lives with her cordial loser of a companion, Henry (Harry Dean Stanton).
Jewel made no provision for her retirement and Henry’s main source of income is petty theft. Jewel’s only cash is brought in by her lone “employee,” Carol (Mena Suvari), a fresh-faced call-girl she rescued from a hospital and put to work.
So Jewel is delighted Sonny is back, handsome as ever at age 26. But Sonny has no intention of returning to the gigolo biz, especially as an army buddy (Scott Caan) has promised him a job at a bookstore in Texas.
While encouraging Sonny to strive for the “square” life, Henry warns him that normal existence is also fraught with pitfalls, especially for someone whose sexual talents are considerable but whose social skills were channeled into a commercially expedient direction.
Indeed, the job promised by Sonny’s army pal doesn’t pan out, and a date with what Sonny believes to be a typical girl ends in (an impressively staged) crisis.
Sonny returns to New Orleans, and he and Carol begin working as a duo servicing bored couples. However, the couple Carol most yearns to form is a real one.
Movie is full of meaty scenes played to the hilt, the atmosphere a cousin to Tennessee Williams sans the florid dialogue. Set at the tail-end of an AIDS-free universe — with just a passing reference to a “new virus” in a men’s brothel — pic makes sex a forthright commodity, almost in the manner of a public service.
As Sonny’s mom, Blethyn is a whirlwind of broad emotion, while Franco makes the title character a paragon of boyish understatement, his occasional outbursts all the more effective. Suvari, as Carol, convinces as a pretty young thing who deserves better but can’t find a way to reach the feelings that were mostly bred out of Sonny by formative years devoted to the skilled lies of the hustler’s trade.
Stanton is a perfect blend of inherent dignity and pathos. Meanwhile, Cage, almost unrecognizable, casts himself as Acid Yellow, a coke-addled queen complete with frilly yellow suit (which belonged to Liberace and Cage bought at an auction years ago) and walking stick.
A selection of middle-aged thesps are marvelous as women of stature with basic needs they pay Sonny to fill. These include Brenda Vacarro, who enjoyed the ministrations of Joe Buck in “Midnight Cowboy,” here portraying an appreciative and pragmatic matron.
Cage’s approach to the material is unfailingly adult and non-judgmental. Sex scenes are convincing but never crass, with some older breasts and Franco’s handsome derriere on show.
Lensing makes good use of locations and imparts a refreshingly polished look to settings whose seediness others may have been tempted to underline. Scoring is mostly thoughtful, as is source music from Bach to disco.
Quote: An experienced detective managed to unravel a difficult matter, while exposing the criminals and perpetrators of the crime. Not far from the village there is an ancient fortress, called Kara-Tahir. It is the abode of silence, all kinds of secrets, and many snakes. No one disturbs her peace, except for one person, Mirzaev’s serpent. But it is there, in the fortress of Kara-Tahr, the thread of the crime.
The morning settlement is alarmed by rumors: in the coastal reeds the corpse of the director of the local school Grigoriev was found. And the chain of riddles begins, as befits a detective. The plot quickly accumulates new, ominous details. In the evening, in the dusk, the fortress seems even more dangerous. A young man and a girl walk along its dungeons, lighting a wall with a flashlight – they want to uncover the secret themselves…
Synopsis: Two-fisted New York police detective Edward G. Robinson is so volatile that he manages to get himself thrown off the force in disgrace. The local gangsters are delighted, in that Robinson had been breathing down their necks. When Robinson goes to crime boss Barton MacLaine insisting that he’s through with law enforcement and wants to switch to the other side, MacLaine’s chief henchmen Humphrey Bogart doesn’t buy the story, but has to go along since he doesn’t want to incur the wrath of MacLaine. Robinson offers to show his former enemies how to circumvent the law, making him an invaluable participant in gang activities. Actually, Robinson hasn’t gone crooked at all; he’s operating undercover, with the full knowledge of the city police inspector, in hopes of locating the “big boys” who’ve been financing the mob. His diligence costs him his life, but Robinson, with the help of bad-girl-gone-good Joan Blondell, busts the rackets wide open. Former crime reporter Martin Mooney was responsible for the story upon which Bullets or Ballots was based.
Veteran gangster Gustave (Lino Ventura) escapes from prison to find his sister is being blackmailed by some petty thugs in this crime thriller. He plans one last caper to steal enough money in hopes of retiring to a tropical paradise. He and his gang are sought by a detective (Paul Meurisse), the cop who plays by the book and avoids the sadistic torture practiced by his less-honorable cohorts. Soon Gustave is caught between the police and the double-crossing gangsters and discovers too late that there is no honor among thieves.
A tough guy with a habit of calling other men sweetheart, accidentally shoots a man who tries to prevent him fleeing a robbery, then forces his two accomplices to go on the run with him. While all over the news reports, they hide out as labourers on a smallholding, and in true film style one instantly falls for the owner’s daughter. But ringleader Eddie doesn’t care for anything, and has become trigger-happy to the point of delirium.
Based on the story by Edgar Wallace, this engrossing suspenser follows a Scotland Yard detective as he investigates a string of drug-related murders involving several women and gangsters. Searching for a mysterious man with a glass eye who may hold the answers to the killings, he encounters backstabbing thugs and plenty of excitement.
Synopsis by Britmovie: This low-budget suspenseful British crime story stars Jimmy Hanley fresh from his success in The Blue Lamp (1950) and is competently directed by Vernon Sewell.
Fred, a safecracking ex-con, decides to go straight after a spell behind bars and turns to cab driving in London. After an anonymous poison-pen letter arrives at the radio cab office identifying Fred is a jailbird, the police deduce it was sent by a criminal gang hoping to recruit the cabbie for his unique skills. The police persuade Fred’s boss to feign firing him – and sure enough, the unemployed cabbie is allowed to infiltrate a gang preparing to pull off a bank robbery. After successfully pulling off the raid, the gang, discover Fred’s deception and attempt to murder him by locking him in a deep-freeze.
Lon Chaney — the Man of a Thousand Faces — used his makeup skills, astonishing physicality and profound empathy to create Quasimodo, the Phantom of the Opera and more of the Silent Era’s greatest horror roles. In this hypnotic mix of creepiness and crime, he plays a ventriloquist who dons a granny disguise to team with a strongman and a little person in a bizarre robbery scheme that ends in murder. The film marks an even more fateful alliance than that of the Unholy Three: the collaboration between Chaney and director Tod Browning, who would helm seven more Chaney movies before making Sound Era horror history with Dracula and Freaks.
Quote: A young man is forced to shoot a few thugs in self defence. Following the advice of his lawyer, he surrenders to the police and ends up in a mental institution. From there he escapes but his path soon becomes littered with corpses.
This film is also known as “The Girl Game” and “Saga of the Flying Hostesses”. The film takes place during Carnival Time in Rio De Janeiro. As unconfined joy wafts its way through the streets, the lives of several fabulously wealthy visitors and a group of voluptuous stewardesses intersect, sometimes with startling results. Sylvia Koscina and Mylene Demongeot are among the visual delights of this garish romp. Featuring the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Quote: Playwright Jean Anouilh was the guiding force behind the unorthodox murder mystery. During a provincial theatre production of Macbeth, several tragedies occur. The actors attribute these calamities to the “curse” supposedly hanging over the Shakespeare play, but police inspector Jean Brochard doesn’t buy this…
Synopsis: Inspector Maigret returns to his home town and is reminiscing over his past when he receives a call for help from the Duchess of Saint-Fiacre. She has just received an anonymous letter informing her that she will soon die. A short while later she does indeed die, from a heart attack. Convinced that she was murdered, Maigret begins his investigation… – Films de France
