The January Man initially feels like a thriller, opening with a woman being strangled to death, which segues to the mayor of New York City discussing the murder, the eleventh in as many months committed by a serial killer who uses a blue tape to suffocate his victims, with the police commissioner. That the mayor and the commissioner are played respectively by Rod Steiger and Harvet Keitel only stresses the gravity of the situation. However, the discerning moviegoer will be able to anticipate the true nature of the film as soon as they observe that it follows the Kevin Kline Mustache Principle, according to which Kline always wears facial hair when playing comedic roles, but shaves for serious roles. Nick Starkey (Kline), a brilliant former detective who has been exiled to the fire department because of an oft-mentioned but never-explained scandal. His brother Frank, the aforementioned police commissioner, reinstates him per the mayor's suggestion/order. This is bad news for police captain Alcoa (Danny Aiello). Aiello stands out in the usually thankless job of 'straight man', to the point that his best scene, and arguably the best in the film, is not among those he shares with Steiger and Keitel, or with Kline and Alan Rickman, but the one wherein he reacts with increasing bewilderment when a subordinate attempts to explain why Nick turned down the office that was assigned to him. Rickman plays Ed, a painter/computer whiz. Nick and Ed discover that the location of the buildings where the victims lived, when viewed on a map of Manhattan, form the constellation Virgo. They also realize that all of the rooms in which the murders occurred have windows on the front of the building, and that when the exterior location of the windows are aligned based on the floor they are on, they correlate with eleven notes in the chorus of the song “Calendar Girl”. That the occupant of the apartment is always a woman who is always home alone the night of the attack (the killer acts on dates that are prime numbers) is arguably the least of all the coincidences in the movie, but then The January Man has not the slightest interest in creating a plausible villain, and that in an all-star cast, also including Susan Sarandon and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, the anonymous killer is played by a stunt double, tells us everything we need to know about the importance this character had for the filmmakers.
This is one of those rare films about a serial killer that isn't so much about the killer himself as it is how the law enforcement officer tracks him down and arrests him. And that perspective is always welcome, especially here because it took the gambit of really not focusing on the killer at all. It was a bit like Manhunter in its approach. And the fact that an actor with great comedic timing was cast as the lead and supported by Alan Rickman in a nearly unrecognizable role made it even better. It's a rare gem of a film that stands out from everything else on so many levels. It's also, however, a film that far too many people have forgotten about.
When beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.
London is terrorized by a vicious sex killer known as The Necktie Murderer. Following the brutal slaying of his ex-wife, down-on-his-luck Richard Blaney is suspected by the police of being the killer. He goes on the run, determined to prove his innocence.
Held in an L.A. interrogation room, Verbal Kint attempts to convince the feds that a mythic crime lord, Keyser Soze, not only exists, but was also responsible for drawing him and his four partners into a multi-million dollar heist that ended with an explosion in San Pedro harbor – leaving few survivors. Verbal lures his interrogators with an incredible story of the crime lord's almost supernatural prowess.
A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.
Do You Like My Basement? tracks how one man's creative frustration bore a need to make the perfect horror film. Stanley Farmer was rejected universally by the film world. His frustration provoked a darker side and soon cunning, guile, devilish charm and a sociopath's streak compelled him to produce a home-made magnum opus. A film that blurs the lines between reality and fiction and demands the attention of the very world that spurned him.
May Munro is a woman obsessed with getting revenge on the people who murdered her parents when she was still a girl. She hires Ray Quick, a retired explosives expert to kill her parent's killers. When Ned Trent, embittered ex-partner of Quick's is assigned to protect one of Quick's potential victims, a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues.
A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun and run by beings with telekinetic powers who seek the souls of humans.
When a naive policeman falls in love with a prostitute, he doesn’t want her seeing other men and creates an alter ego who’s to be her only customer.
Amid a tense political climate, the opposition leader is killed in an apparent accident. When a prosecutor smells a cover-up, witnesses get targeted. A thinly veiled dramatization of the assassination of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis and its aftermath, “Z” captures the outrage at the US-backed junta that ruled Greece at the time of its release.
When Eastern European criminals Oleg and Emil come to New York City to pick up their share of a heist score, Oleg steals a video camera and starts filming their activities, both legal and illegal. When they learn how the American media circus can make a remorseless killer look like the victim and make them rich, they target media-savvy NYPD Homicide Detective Eddie Flemming and media-naive FDNY Fire Marshal Jordy Warsaw, the cops investigating their murder and torching of their former criminal partner, filming everything to sell to the local tabloid TV show "Top Story."
London. A mysterious serial killer brutally murders young blond women by stalking them in the night fog. One foggy, sinister night, a young man who claims his name is Jonathan Drew arrives at the guest house run by the Bunting family and rents a room.