The Panic Room is a thriller in which the criminals seek to steal millions of dollars from a safe in a house in New York City recently purchased by Meg Altman (played by Jodie Foster). The house is quite large, with an elevator to get up three stories, and with a special room designed to protect […]
Le bossu (given the English title On Guard!), directed by Phillipe de Broca, features swordplay, court intrigue, horses dashing through the French countryside from Nice to Paris, all to the accompaniment of the music of Cavalleria Rusticana and based on an 1857 novel by Paul Féval. The story takes place at the turn of the seventeenth
A cop has been killed, and the cop killer is at large. That is the premise for Narc, directed and written by Joe Carnahan. Henry Oak (played by Ray Liotta) was on duty at the time of the killing, and he claims to know who did the foul deed. Eighteen months earlier, Nick Tellis (played
In 1933, two domestic servants in Le Mans, France, were convicted of brutally murdering their employer and her daughter in a one-day trial. Despite the possibility that they were mentally deranged, no psychiatric defense was allowed. The crime, believed to be the most heinous case of women murdering women in the world, shocked the French
What motivates a stalker? That question is posed in One Hour Photo, directed and written by Mark Romanek. When the film begins, a timid Seymore (“Sy”) Parrish (played by Robin Williams) is in a police interrogation room. A police officer asks him, “What did you have against the Yorkin family?” Instead of answering, Sy asks
Monsoon Wedding is about a gala wedding in New Delhi. Directed by Mira Nair, the purpose of the story is to show Indian traditions at their finest, with dance, music, and costuming that will impress filmviewers around the world. The story involves the arrival and participation of members of an extended family in the days prior
Politicians, according to political scientist Harold Lasswell, solve personal problems in choosing their occupation. In Murder by Numbers, directed by Barbet Schroeder, the same thesis is applied to police, albeit in a subplot of the story. Police officer Cassie Mayweather (played by Sandra Bullock) was terrorized as a teenager by her abusive husband, who is
In Minority Report director Stephen Spielberg brings to the screen a 1956 sci-fi short story by Philip K. Dick that is his what he calls his “ugliest, dirtiest movie.” The year is 2054, six years into an elaborate experimental program operated in the District of Columbia to fight violent crime before murders are committed, using the
Although Low Heights (aka Low Altitude and Ertefae Past in Farsi), directed by Ebrahim Hatamikia, is about the hijacking of an airplane, the drama enables filmviewers to assess conditions in contemporary Iran. Based on a true story, Ghaseem (played by Hamid Farokhnejad) has given up hope of ever finding happiness in his native Iran. Although he has funds to migrate to
Sociopathic personalities try to manipulate others out of fear that they will otherwise be manipulated themselves. In Merci pour le Chocolat, Marie-Clair “Mika” Müller-Polonksi (played by Isabelle Huppert) is a wealthy but alienated president of a Swiss chocolate manufacturing company. Although the story does not explain how she rose to her position, the Müller family
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