Subgenre Sampler

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Ace Attorney (2012): Dir. Takashi Miike
Feat. Hiroki Narimiya, Takumi Saito; Takashi Miike churns out this preposterous video game adaptation, about a cocksure lawyer who agrees to defend his courtroom rival in a murder trial,…
Black's Game (2012): Dir. Óskar Thór Axelsson
Feat. Thor Kristjansson, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson; A young opportunist is drawn into Reykjavik's underworld of gangsters and drug pushers in this hardcore Scandi–crime, an eye–catching if…
Bullet Vanishes, The (2012): Dir. Chi-Leung Law
Feat. Nicholas Tse, Lau Ching-wan; In 1930s China, two eccentric detectives are summoned to solve a series of murders caused by a phantom killer in a bullet factory. A superb Holmesian…
Fourth State, The (2012): Dir. Dennis Gansel
Feat. Moritz Bleibtreu, Kasia Smutniak, Max Riemelt…; A journalist gets caught up in a terrorist plot in Moscow while investigating the Russian secret service.
Last Dragon Master, The (The Last Tycoon) (2012): Dir. Wong Jing
Feat. Chow Yun-Fat, Samo Hung, Francis Ng; Chow Yun–Fat lends his charismatic presence to this sumptuous gangster picture detailing the rise of a legendary Shanghai mobster at the turn…
Last Will (Nobel's Last Will) (2012): Dir. Peter Flinth
Feat. Malin Crepin, Bjorn Kellman, Leif Andree…; Based on the novel by Liza Marklund, this brisk addition to the "Scandi–crime" canon has unfortunate journalist Annika Bengtzon witnessing a…
Nightfall (2012): Dir. Roy Chow
Feat. Simon Yam, Nick Cheung, Janice Man; Grisly thriller with a celebrity found brutally murdered, a recently paroled rapist becomes the leading suspect.
Silent War, The (2012): Dir. Felix Chong, Alan Mak
Feat. Tony Leung (Chiu-wai), Xun Zhou, Mavis Fan…; Engaging espionage thriller with Tony Leung as a blind piano tuner for a spy mission because of his exceptional hearing.
Taste of Money, The (2012): Dir. Sang-soo Im
Feat. Kang-woo Kim, Yoon-sik Baek, Yuh-jung Youn; The dir. of THE HOUSEMAID buffs this heady class critique of Korea's impudent elite to a high sheen, with the lust and corruption of a wealthy family…
Bridge, The (TV Series) (Bron/Broen) (2011): Feat. Sofia Helin, Kim Bodnia, Dag Malmberg; The Scandi–crime wave continues with this steely Danish–Swedish murder mystery, centred on the discovery of a body straddling the…
Dum Maaro Dum (2011): Dir. Rohan Sippy
Feat. Abhishek Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Bipasha Basu…; "Gritty" Bollywood policier with a corrupt cop given permission to clean up drug–infested Goa however he sees fit. Sluggish plot and insipid…
Greetings to the Devil (2011): Dir. Juan Felipe Orozco
Feat. Édgar Ramírez, Ricardo Vélez, Carolina Gómez; Fast and aggressive Colombian thriller stars the charismatic Édgar Ramírez, fresh off CARLOS, as a former guerrilla forced to hunt down and kill his…
Headhunters (2011): Dir. Morten Tyldum
Feat. Aksel Hennie, Synnove Macody Lund, Nikolaj Waldau…; Jo Nesbo's blockbusting crime novel about a corporate headhunter moonlighting as an art thief gets an appropriately energetic treatment, and with its…
Headshot (2011): Dir. Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Feat. Nopachai Chaiyanam; Thai new waver Pen–ek Ratanaruang directs this zen–like "Buddist noir" about a hitman who seeks enlightenment after a bullet to the head…
Jackpot (Jo Nesbo's Jackpot) (2011): Dir. Magnus Martens
Feat. Kyrre Hellum, Mads Ousdal, Henrik Mestad…; This second helping of Jo Nesbo's blackly comic tales has the hapless sole survivor of a strip club massacre taken in for questioning where his…
Life Without Principle (2011): Dir. Johnnie To
Feat. Lau Ching-wan, Terence Yin, Richie Ren; Hong Kong's master of suspense crafts this swirling triumvirate of stories centred on unraveling lives amidst the global financial crisis. Combing…
Man from Beijing, The (2011): Dir. Peter Keglevic
Feat. Michael Nyqvist, Suzanne von Borsody; A straightforward Scandi–thriller with a German accent, about the mystery behind the massacre of 18 people in a small Swedish town –…
Miss Bala (2011): Dir. Gerardo Naranjo
Feat. Stephanie Sigman, Irene Azuela, Jose Yenque; A beauty pageant contestant becomes entangled in a Tijuana drug cartel killing spree in this electric Mexican thriller.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011): Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Feat. Muhammet Uzuner, Firat Tanis, Yilmaz Erdogan; Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan directs this masterful long–haul road movie about a convoy of policemen searching for a body on the…
Polisse (2011): Dir. Maïwenn
Feat. Karin Viard, Marina Fois, Nicolas Duvauchelle …; A tough, unglamorous insight into the police work of a Parisian Juvenile Protection Unit, whose officers grapple with the moral and personal dilemmas…
Rebellion (2011): Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz
Feat. Mathieu Kassovitz, Iabe Lapacas, Malik Zidi…; A proficient, airtight geopolitical thriller from dir. Kassovitz, who also stars as the captain of a counterterrorist division sent to New Caledonia…
Skin I Live In, The (2011): Dir. Pedro Almodovar
Feat. Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes…; Over twenty years after their last collaboration, a gracefully middle–aged Antonio Banderas returns for Spanish maestro Pedro Almodovar to play…
Sleepless Night (2011): Dir. Frederic Jardin
Feat. Tomer Sisley, Serge Riaboukine, Julien Boisselier…; A stonking, white–knuckle French action picture, smartly and tightly wound around a cop's frantic search for a stolen drug stash in order to…
Woman in the Fifth, The (2011): Dir. Pawel Pawlikowski
Feat. Ethan Hawke, Kristin Scott Thomas; Intriguing, if ultimately baffling Parisian thriller about a struggling American writer (Ethan Hawke) who embarks on a passionate affair with an…
Angels of Evil (2010): Dir. Michele Placido
Feat. Kim Rossi Stuart, Filippo Timi, Valeria Solarino…; Taking a leaf from MESRINE's rap sheet, Italy simultaneously glorifies and moralises the story of its own criminal rock star, Renato…
Big Picture, The (2010): Dir. Eric Lartigau
Feat. Romain Duris, Marina Fois, Niels Arestrup…; Romain Duris plays a well–off, happily married lawyer whose life is turned upside down with the discovery that his wife is having an affair…
Black Heaven (L'autre monde) (2010): Dir. Gilles Marchand
Feat. Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Louise Bourgoin, Melvil Poupaud; An innocent young man becomes entangled with a suicidal beauty and is lured into a "Black Hole" – an eerie cyberworld of avatars with deadly…
Carlos (Carlos the Jackal) (2010): Dir. Olivier Assayas
Feat. Édgar Ramírez, Nora von Waldstätten, Alexander Scheer; An explosive, globe–trotting biopic of Venezuelan terrorist and fugitive Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – aka Carlos the Jackal – whose exploits in the…
City Under Siege (2010): Dir. Benny Chan
Feat. Aaron Kwok, Colin Chou, Wu Jing…; One–of–a–kind Hong Kong mash–up has a group of criminals gaining super powers after being infected with a biological weapon,…
Door, The (2010): Dir. Anno Saul
Feat. Mads Mikkelsen, Jessica Schwarz, Heike Makatsch…; Ethereal time–travel drama with Mikkelsen as a grieving father who discovers a tunnel that leads him back to the day his daughter died and a…
Easy Money (Snabba Cash) (2010): Dir. Daniel Espinosa
Feat. Joel Kinnaman, Matias Varela, Dragomir Mrsic…; High–flying Swedish thriller centres on a Stockholm business student who moonlights as a drug runner in order to maintain the illusion of…
Housemaid, The (2010): Dir. Sang-soo Im
Feat. Do-yeon Jeon, Jung-Jae Lee, Seo Woo; A sleek, sexual thriller of manipulation and revenge, centred on the consequences of a torrid affair between a wealthy industrialist and his newly…
How I Ended This Summer (2010): Dir. Aleksey Popogrebskiy
Feat. Grigoriy Dobrygin, Sergey Puskepalis; Two Russian meteorologists isolated at polar station on the Arctic fringes put each other in jeopardy in this tense, slow–burn adventure. An…
Hunter, The (Shekarchi) (2010): Dir. Rafi Pitts
Feat. Rafi Pitts; Spare, lyrical drama with a low–paid security guard on the run from authorities after gunning down two police officers. Unfolding against the…
Kidnapped (Secuestrados) (2010): Dir. Miguel Ángel Vivas; Brutally authentic Spanish horror in which three hooded criminals break into a family home in a gated community, holding the others hostage whilst…
Love Crime (2010): Dir. Alain Corneau
Feat. Kristin Scott Thomas, Ludivine Sagnier; Kristin Scott–Thomas sinks her teeth into the bitchiest role of her career as a ruthless, high–flying executive whose attempts at…
Outrage (2010): Dir. Takeshi Kitano
Feat. Takeshi Kitano, Renji Ishibashi, Ryo Kase; Aging Japanese hard–man Takeshi Kitano returns to the turf of his international film celebrity – the minimalist Yakuza movie – in…
Outside the Law (2010): Dir. Rachid Bouchareb
Feat. Sami Bouajila, Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem; Dir. Bouchareb (DAYS OF GLORY) re–frames the revolutionary tactics of Algerian nationalists against the French post–WWII as a…
Point Blank (2010): Dir. Fred Cavaye
Feat. Gilles Lellouche, Roschdy Zem, Gerard Lanvin…; Heart–stopping, thrill–a–minute French action centred on the exploits of a nurse who becomes entangled with a wounded gunman on the…
Revenge (Shadow Boxing 2) (2010): Dir. Anton Megerdichev
Feat. Denis Nikiforov, Andrey Panin, Victor Lopez…; Punchy crime thriller with a Russian boxer taking on a Mexican mafia boss after mortally injuring his son in the ring. Leave your brain parked in…
Revenge: A Love Story (2010): Dir. Ching-po Wong; 'Hammer and tong' serial killer potboiler centres on a lowly store clerk who begins murdering policemen (and their pregnant wives) after his…
Viva Riva (2010): Dir. Djo Munga
Feat. Patsha Bay, Manie Malone, Diplome Amekindra; Torrid, violent thriller with a small–time hustler discovering a stockpile of gasoline during a fuel crisis, and struggling to stay alive long…
A Million (2009): Dir. Min-Ho Cho
Feat. Hae-il Park, Min-Ah Shin, Min-Ki Lee; Slavishly entertaining Reality TV spin–off pits eight Korean contestants against each other and the Australian Outback in a race for the…
A Prophet (Un Prophet) (2009): Dir. Jacques Audiard
Feat. Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif…; Dir. Jacques Audiard betters the accomplished storytelling of THE BEAT MY HEART SKIPPED, situating an immersive world of cloistered gangsters and…
Accident (Yi ngoi) (2009): Dir. Pou-Soi Cheang
Feat. Louis Koo, Richie Ren, Shui-Fan Fung; A number of skillfully choreographed set–pieces are at the centre of this top–notch Hong Kong thriller, about a league of assassins who…
Double Hour, The (La Doppia Ora) (2009): Dir. Giuseppe Capotondi
Feat. Kseniya Rappoport, Filippo Timi, Antonia Truppo…; A high–concept, twisty Euro–thriller plays out after a chambermaid and an ex–cop meet at a speed dating event. As is par for the…
Farewell (2009): Dir. Christian Carion
Feat. Guillaume Canet, Emir Kusturica, Gary Lewis…; This riveting Cold War yarn from the dir. of JOYEUX NOEL brings to light the little–known true story of a disillusioned KGB colonel (played by…
Fortapasc (Fort Apache) (2009): Dir. Marco Risi
Feat. Libero de Rienzo, Valentina Lodovini, Michele Riondino…; Poignant account of the last days in the life of a young Italian journalist who's investigations into the Neapolitan Mafia resulted in his murder.
Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, The (2009): Dir. Daniel Alfredson
Feat. Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre; Satisfying conclusion to the trilogy features some lengthy courtroom scenes as Salander and Nyqvist fight to clear her name and unravel the…
Girl Who Played with Fire, The (2009): Dir. Daniel Alfredson
Feat. Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre; Part two of Stieg Larsson's 'Millennium Trilogy' sees the return of touch–as–nails Lisbeth Salander, who must clear her name of murder…
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The (2009): Dir. Niels Arden Oplev
Feat. Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre; One of the highest–grossing foreign language hits at the NZ box office, this riveting, full–bodied Swedish thriller follows an escalating…
Killing, The - Series 2 (TV Series) (Forbrydelsen) (2009): Feat. Sofie Gråbøl, Søren Malling; Further episodes from the ripping, immensely popular Danish homicide serial weaves a secondary plot of intrigue, corruption, and bureaucracy…
Lebanon (2009): Dir. Samuel Maoz
Feat. Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen…; Intense, multi–faceted battle thriller set during the height of the Israeli–Lebanon conflict in 1982 in which four young soldiers sent by…
Lulu and the Bank Robber (TV Mini-Series) (2009): Feat. Lene Maria Christensen, Lars Brygmann, Nicole Johansen; An independent mother and small business owner is drawn into the dodging dealings of her habitual criminal husband in this pulpy Danish crime…
Message, The (2009): Dir. Kuo-fu Chen, Qunshu Gao
Feat. Bingbing Li, Xun Zhou, Zhiwen Wang…; Sino–Japanese tensions are foregrounded in this enthralling cat and mouse thriller, set in a clifftop mansion during the height of World War…
Mother (2009): Dir. Joon-ho Bong
Feat. Hye-ja Kim, Won Bin, Ku Jin; Cavalier Korean dir. Bong Joon–ho (THE HOST) contorts a regulation murder mystery, centred on a mother's campaign to clear her deadbeat son's…
Murderer (2009): Dir. Roy Chow
Feat. Aaron Kwok, Ning Chang, Tam Chun Yat; Serial killer convention receives an enjoyable, shameless workout with this Hong Kong policier, centred on a police investigator framed for a series…
Overheard (Qie ting feng yun) (2009): Dir. Felix Chong, Alan Mak
Feat. Lau Ching-wan, Louis Koo, Daniel Wu; The directors of INFERNAL AFFAIRS reel in their sleek, sprawling urbane sensibility, changing tack with this compact character study about three…
Secret in Their Eyes, The (El Secreto de sus Ojos) (2009): Dir. Juan José Campanella
Feat. Ricardo Darín, Soledad Villamil, Carla Quevedo; Arresting, well–rounded Argentine crime drama sees a retired court employee become obsessed with a 25–year–old murder case that he…
Shinjuku Incident (San suk si gin) (2009): Dir. Derek Yee
Feat. Jackie Chan, Naoto Takenaka, Daniel Wu; Jackie Chan turns serious for this gritty, nocturnal gangland drama centered around a Chinese immigrant who is unintentionally drawn into Tokyo’s…
Storm (2009): Dir. Hans-Christian Schmid
Feat. Kerry Fox, Anamaria Marinca, Stephen Dillane; Accomplished international courtroom drama sees a determined prosecutor (Fox) risk life and limb in order to prove that the former commander of the…
Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop, A (2009): Dir. Zhang Yimou
Feat. Honglei Sun, Shen-Yang Xiao, Ni Yan; Dir. Zhang Yimou weaves a tale of adultery and revenge in 19th century China, based on the Coen brothers' classic neo–noir, BLOOD SIMPLE.
25 Carat (25 Kilates) (2008): Dir. Patxi Amezcua
Feat. Francesc Garrido, Aida Folch, Manuel Moron…; Relentless thriller set in the Barcelona underworld where a loan enforcer and a car thief pair up for a particularly dangerous heist.…
Anything for Her (Pour Elle) (2008): Dir. Fred Cavaye
Feat. Vincent Lindon, Diane Kruger, Lancelot Roch…; Cracking French thriller sees a happy couple's marriage torn apart when the wife is sent to prison for murder. Convinced of her innocence, her…
Baader Meinhof Complex, The (2008): Dir. Uli Edel
Feat. Marina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek…; A big–budget, pulse–pounding account of terrorism and political protest in 1960s and 70s Germany, centred on the notorious Red Army…
Chaser, The (Chugyeogja) (2008): Dir. Hong-jin Na
Feat. Yun-seok Kim, Jung-woo Ha, Yeong-hie Seo; As much concerned with criticizing the police force as it is deftly juggling plot twists, murders, and other serial killer conventions, this Korean…
Flame and Citron (2008): Dir. Ole Christian Madsen
Feat. Thure Lindhardt, Mads Mikkelsen, Stine Stengade…; Lavishly–appointed wartime thriller based on the true story of contrasting Danish resistance fighters as they take vengeance on the occupying…
Fred Vargas Collection (TV Series) (Neptune's Thunder, The Chalk Circle Man, Seeking Whom He May Devour, A Dubious Place) (2008-2010): Dir. Josee Dayan
Feat. Jean-Hugues Anglade, Helene Fillieres, Charlotte Rampling; Four excellent French TV adaptations of crime fiction novelist Fred Vargas' popular policiers, with her famous protagonist, Detective Adamsberg, a…
Go Fast (2008): Dir. Olivier Van Hoofstadt
Feat. Roschdy Zem, Olivier Gourmet; An exciting, if standard issue Gallic policier set around the high–stakes world of narcotics, where an Arab police officer goes undercover to…
Jerusalema (2008): Dir. Ralph Ziman
Feat. Daniel Buckland, Robert Hobbs; A punchy, gun–toting gangland epic following the rise to two Soweto teenagers seduced by crime and violence in South Africa. Although…
Mesrine (Killer Instinct, Public Enemy Number 1) (2008): Dir. Jean-François Richet
Feat. Vincent Cassel, Cecile De France, Gerard Depardieu…; Effective, if at times highly sensationalised biopic of career criminal Jacques Mesrine – France’s ‘Public Enemy #1’ throughout the 1960s and 70s –…
MR 73 (The Last Deadly Mission) (2008): Dir. Olivier Marchal
Feat. Daniel Auteuil, Olivia Bonamy, Philippe Nahon; Rock solid policier stars Daniel Auteuil as a drunken, burnt–out cop whose shot at redemption comes in the form of a woman requiring protection…
North Face (Nordwand) (2008): Dir. Philipp Stölzl
Feat. Benno Fürmann, Florian Lukas; Exceptionally vivid, nerve–wracking mountaineering thriller in which two novice climbers attempt to be the first to scale the treacherous north…
Protectors, The (TV Series) (2008): Feat. Cecilie Stenspil, Søren Vejby, André Babikian; Stellar Danish production centred on a group of professional bodyguards assigned to protect VIPs, politicians, and heads of state out of Copenhagen.…
Revanche (2008): Dir. Gotz Spielmann
Feat. Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko, Andreas Lust; A botched bank robbery resulting in the death of a prostitute compels an embittered ex–con to contemplate revenge in this steely, impressive…
Sin Nombre (Without Name) (2008): Dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga
Feat. Paulina Gaitan, Edgar Flores; Honduran teenagers brave Mexican gangs and border patrols as they attempt to illegally emigrate to the US in this superbly mounted,…
Three Monkeys (2008): Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Feat. Yavuz Bingol, Hatice Aslan, Ahmet Rifat Sungar…; A brooding detective story from Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, about a wealthy businessman who bribes one of his underlings to take the wrap for a…
Tony Manero (2008): Dir. Pablo Larrain
Feat. Alfredo Castro, Paola Lattus, Héctor Morales; Unsettling drama set against the Pinochet regime in Chile in 1978, where a psychopathic disco fan steals and kills in an effort to become the…
Wave, The (Die Welle) (2008): Dir. Dennis Gansel
Feat. Jürgen Vogel, Frederick Lau, Max Riemelt…; Based on a true incident in the US in the early 1970's to practically illustrate the machinations of Nazi propaganda, a school teacher's unorthodox…
What No One Knows (Det som ingen ved) (2008): Dir. Søren Kragh-Jacobsen
Feat. Anders W. Berthelsen, Maria Bonnevie, Ghita Norby; Knife–edged political thriller sees a middle–aged family man uncover his father’s shady involvement in military intelligence after his…
City of Men (Cidade dos Homens) (2007): Dir. Paulo Morelli
Feat. Douglas Silva, Darlan Cunha; Salty Rio back–blocks melodrama from the producers of CITY OF GOD revolving around two orphaned street kids on the brink of adulthood faced…
Concrete Romance (Cemento armato) (2007): Dir. Marco Martani
Feat. Nicolas Vaporidis, Giorgio Faletti, Carolina Crescentini; Brutal Italian thriller focused on a young petty crim unwittingly caught up in a deadly revenge plot by a Mafia kingpin after damaging his…
Counterfeiters, The (Die Fälscher) (2007): Dir. Stefan Ruzowitzky
Feat. Karl Markovics, Devid Striesow; An Oscar–winner for Best Foreign Language film, this taut German thriller reconstructs the story of a Jewish fraudster forced to assist the…
Debt, The (Ha Hov) (2007): Dir. Assaf Bernstein
Feat. Gila Almagor, Yuriy Chepurnov, Oleg Drach; Unsettling thriller with a retired Mossad agent, whose Nazi–hunting past comes back to haunt her and her fellow agents.
Exodus (Cheut ai kup gei) (2007): Dir. Pang Ho-Cheung
Feat. Simon Yam, Nick Cheung, Annie Liu; An indifferent Hong Kong detective slowly becomes convinced that women are conspiring to kill off the entire male species in this curious melange of…
Fermat's Room (La Habitación de Fermat) (2007): Feat. Frederico Luppi; Four top mathematicians must solve a complex riddle in order to avoid being crushed to death by a shrinking room in this claustrophobic Spanish…
Girl by the Lake, The (La ragazza del lago) (2007): Dir. Andrea Molaioli
Feat. Toni Servillo, Denis Fasolo, Nello Mascia…; It swept Italy's Academy Awards, won the Venice Film Festival s top acting prize for star Toni Servillo (IL DIVO, GOMORRA) and remains one of the…
Invisible Target (Naam yi boon sik) (2007): Dir. Benny Chan
Feat. Nicholas Tse, Jaycee Chan, Shawn Yue…; Unyielding martial arts thriller rumbles with a group of detectives commissioned to take out a local Hong Kong mercenary gang. The expected ass…
Just Another Love Story (2007): Dir. Ole Bornedal
Feat. Anders W. Berthelsen, Rebecka Hemse, Nikolaj Lie Kaas; An enjoyably overwrought Danish thriller with noir–ish aspirations, whose story revolves around a bored married man who assumes the identity of…
Killing, The - Series 1 (TV Series) (Forbrydelsen) (2007): Dir. Birger Larsen
Feat. Sofie Gråbøl, Søren Malling; A ripping Danish homicide serial in the long–form tradition of THE WIRE, which weaves a plot of intrigue, corruption, and bureaucracy around a…
King of the Hill (El Rey de la montaña) (2007): Dir. Gonzalo López-Gallego
Feat. Leonardo Sbaraglia, Maria Valverde; A well–crafted, believable take on the lost–in–the–woods genre, about a man who follows an attractive stranger into the…
La Zona (2007): Dir. Rodrigo Plá
Feat. Daniel Giménez Cacho, Carlos Bardem, Daniel Tovar…; Award winning, intensely scripted and thought provoking drama set in a wealthy Mexican compound where the residents have formed a vigilante group to…
Lust, Caution (Se, Jie) (2007): Dir. Ang Lee
Feat. Tony Leung (Chiu-wai), Joan Chen, Wei Tang…; Dir. Ang Lee (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN) returns to the mainland to present a slow–burn, psychologically dense and provocative spy thriller, based on…
Man from London, The (2007): Dir. Bela Tarr
Feat. Miroslav Krobot, Tilda Swinton; Bela Tarr's dense, mesmeric imagery is married to the traditions of film noir in this strikingly opaque detective story, set on the weathered…
Night Bus (Notturno Bus) (2007): Dir. Davide Marengo
Feat. Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Valerio Mastandrea; Fast paced comedy/thriller follows the misadventures of a petty thief, who gets more than she bargained for when she comes into possession of a…
Roman De Gare (Crossed Tracks) (2007): Dir. Claude Lelouch
Feat. Audrey Dana, Dominique Pinon, Fanny Ardant; Playfully pulpy French thriller from veteran director Claude Lelouch (A MAN AND A WOMAN) depicts the intersecting lives of two strangers oddly…
Rush Hour (The Trial Begins) (2007): Dir. Vincenzo Marra
Feat. Michelle Lastella, Fanny Ardant, Giulia Bevilacqua…; Tightly directed drama about the temptation of amoral manipulation. Italian tax official Filippo makes himself guilty of fraud and bribery to join…
Yella (2007): Dir. Christian Petzold
Feat. Nina Hoss; Engrossing metaphysical thriller set in a predatory corporate world in which a divorcee accountant (Hoss) decides to leave behind her redundant life…
Black Book (Zwartboek) (2006): Dir. Paul Verhoeven
Feat. Carice Van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman; A Jewish singer goes deep undercover for the Dutch resistance in this splashy, larger–than–life WWII yarn set in Nazi–occupied…
Chronicle of an Escape (Buenos Aires 1977) (2006): Dir. Adrián Caetano
Feat. Rodrigo De la Serna; An Argentinian goalkeeper is kidnapped and falsely imprisoned as a revolutionary in this gripping account of the “Buenos Aires, 1977”…
Confession of Pain (Seung sing) (2006): Dir. Siu Fai Mak, Wai Keung Lau
Feat. Tony Leung (Chiu-wai), Takeshi Kaneshiro, Shu Qi; The directorial duo behind INFERNAL AFFAIRS eek out this morose and melancholic policier about two troubled detectives tracking down a killer in…
Dark Sea (Mare Nero) (2006): Dir. Roberta Torre
Feat. Luigi Lo Cascio, Anna Mouglalis; Ice cold policier charts a lone cops descent into the sex underworld after the murder of a sexually adventurous teenager. Full of Lynchian…
Death Note / Death Note - The Last Note (2006): Dir. Shusuke Kaneko
Feat. Tatsuya Fujiwara, Ken'ichi Matsuyama, Erika Toda…; High–concept and precocious in attitude, this absurdly drawn battle–of–wits, based on a cult Manga, concerns the discovery of an…
Don (2006): Dir. Farhan Akhtar
Feat. Shahrukh Khan, Om Puri; Far–fetched story of a Mumbai man recruited by police to masquerade as the ruthless head of the Malaysian drug mafia, known as "the Don". When…
Election 2 (Triad Election) (2006): Dir. Johnny To
Feat. Simon Yam, Nick Cheung, Louis Koo; Genre exponent Johnny To logically extends the gangland politics of his original film in this punchy, no–nonsense sequel concerning a fresh…
Exit (2006): Dir. Peter Lindmark
Feat. Mads Mikkelsen, Alexander Skarsgard; Gripping Swedish corporate thriller stars the angular Mads Mikkelsen (CASINO ROYALE) as a family man on the run after he becomes the main suspect in…
Few Days in September, A (Quelques jours en septembre) (2006): Dir. Santiago Amigorena
Feat. Juliette Binoche, John Turturro, Nick Nolte…; Pre–September 11 spy–thriller dramatising events leading up to the fatal terrorist attack, with former spy (Binoche) being stalked…
Four Minutes (Vier Minuten) (2006): Dir. Chris Kraus
Feat. Monika Bliebtreu, Hannah Herzsprung; Unrelentingly gritty German drama of redemption details the hostile relationship between an incarcerated piano player and her emotionally chilly…
Invisible Waves (2006): Dir. Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Feat. Tadanobu Asano; Moody and sophisticated dream–noir from the dir. of LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE again casts Japanese star Tadanobu Asano, here in the role of a…
Jar City (Mýrin) (2006): Dir. Baltasar Kormakur
Feat. Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson, Agusta Eva Erlendsdóttir, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson; With dirt under its fingernails and ice on its breath, this forensic thriller harnesses the harsh, otherworldly elements of its Icelandic setting to…
Lives of Others, The (2006): Dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Feat. Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Marina Gedeck…; Compelling dramatisation of the political tensions between artists and authorities in 80's East Germany, this widely celebrated arthouse hit won the…
Tell No One (Ne le dis à Personne) (2006): Dir. Guillaume Canet
Feat. Francois Cluzet, Marie-Josee Croze, Andre Dussollier…; Convoluted yet propulsive French thriller about a man whose deceased wife contacts him eight years after her supposed murder, triggering a quest to…
Vengeance (Phairii phinaat paa mawrana) (2006): Dir. Preaw Sirisuwan; Fast–paced jungle fantasy horror has a young man and his friends in pursuit of an escaped prisoner inside a fantastical forest populated by…
13 Tzameti (2005): Dir. Géla Babluani
Feat. Aurelien Recoing, Georges Babluani; Coolly disturbing noir thriller tracks the fate of a struggling immigrant labourer who intercepts a package with instructions that lead him into a…
Aura, The (2005): Dir. Fabian Bielinsky
Feat. Ricardo Darín; A taxidermist indulges his criminal fantasies in this brooding, atmospheric wilderness thriller from the late dir. of NINE QUEENS. Unfolding as a…
Ax, The (Le Couperet) (2005): Dir. Costa-Gavras
Feat. Jose Garcia, Karin Viard, Olivier Gourmet; Dastardly satire from the always–edgy Costa Gavras plumbs the depths of a corporate downsizing victim (Garcia) who resorts to murderous ways in…
Beat My Heart Skipped, The (De battre mon coeur s'est arrete) (2005): Dir. Jacques Audiard
Feat. Romain Duris, Niels Arestrup, Jonathan Zaccai…; A star–turn by Romain Duris invigorates this deft remake of James Toback's 1978 thriller FINGERS, playing a reluctant young thug with a…
Bystanders (Diary of June) (2005): Dir. Kyung-Soo Im
Feat. Yunjin Kim; Proficient Korean thriller grapples with a murder mystery of cryptic diary notes left inside the bodies of murder victims; the handwriting matched to…
Crime Novel (Romanzo criminale) (2005): Feat. Kim Rossi Stuart, Pierfrancesco Favino, Claudio Santamaria…; Novel–based Italian crime drama concerning a group of small–town crims who went on to become Rome's most merciless crime family and a…
Election (2005): Dir. Johnnie To
Feat. Simon Yam, Tony Leung (Kar-fai); A terrific gangland power tussle from genre exponent Johnnie To, this combative suspenser embarks on the shady underworld of triad politics in…
Have No Fear (Non aver paura) (2005): Dir. Angelo Longoni
Feat. Laura Morante, Alessio Boni; Isolating Italian thriller focused on a recent divorcee trying to make ends meet while fighting a custody battle and dealing with a persistent…
Hidden (Cache) (2005): Dir. Michael Haneke
Feat. Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Benichou…; A disquieting modern thriller that pulls no punches, depositing a climate of terrorism and fear onto the lives of two French professionals and their…
Murder Take One (The Big Scene) (2005): Dir. Jin Jang
Feat. Ha-kyun Shin, Seung-Won Cha; Thwarted by a television agreement consigning an ongoing homicide investigation to the prying eyes of a Reality TV show, prosecutor Choi (Cha) must…
Paradise Now (2005): Dir. Hany Abu-Assad
Feat. Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal; This extraordinarily brave film shadows the martyrdom of two Palestinian friends recruited by an extremist group to perpetrate a suicide bombing in…
Princess Aurora (Orora gongju) (2005): Dir. Eun-jin Bang
Feat. Jeong-hwa Eom; Korean revenge film concerns a scorned woman who commits a series of murders as part of an elaborate revenge scheme. Far–fetched in that…
Pusher III (I'm The Angel Of Death: Pusher III) (2005): Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn
Feat. Marinela Dekic, Zlatko Buric; Third instalment of the thoroughly gripping Pusher trilogy closes in on the Sisyphean struggle of drug kingpin Milo (Buric) as he desperately battles…
Quo Vadis, Baby? (2005): Dir. Gabriele Salvatores
Feat. Angela Baraldi; Oscar–winning–director Gabriele Salvatore's haughty thriller depicting a desperate private investigator who decides to re–examine…
Secuestro Express (2005): Dir. Jonathan Jakubowicz
Feat. Mia Maestro, Ruben Blades; Venezuela comes off second best in this exploitative thriller peddling the country's professional kidnapping trade, where a couple of wealthy young…
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Chinjeolhan geumjassi) (2005): Dir. Park Chan-Wook
Feat. Young-ae Lee, Min-sik Choi; A visually dynamic endpoint to Park Chan–wook's feted vengeance trilogy, this final chapter in the saga emerges from a female perspective, and…
Tsotsi (2005): Dir. Gavin Hood
Feat. Presley Chweneyagae; Deserved winner of the 2006 Foreign Language Oscar, this gripping tale of a young homicidal street–thug ('tsotsi') in post–apartheid…
Wallander (TV Series) (2005): Feat. Krister Henriksson, Johanna Sällström; Suspenseful Scandinavian procedural finds drama within the inner–workings of a police force in southern Sweden, chiefly between the series’…
36 Quai Des Orfevres (2004): Dir. Olivier Marchal
Feat. Gerard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil; Gerard Depardieu and Daniel Auteuil partner again for this straight–faced policier as two veteran cops who compete for the top job while trying…
Eagle, The (TV Series) (A Crime Odyssey) (2004): Feat. Jens Albinus; An expert Danish thriller dealing in international terrorism and cross–border crime, this involves the usual task force machinations of special…
Fida (2004): Dir. Ken Ghosh
Feat. Kareena Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Fardeen Khan; Typically likeable Bollywood item that intercrosses two love stories with the tale of an online bank heist. Treading lightly through the genre…
Khakee (2004): Dir. Rajkumar Santoshi
Feat. Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgan; A Bollywood offering in which the song count is low but the body count is high, this twist–filled, often violent drama centres on the police…
Koma (2004): Dir. Chi-Leung Law
Feat. Angelica Lee; The attractive Lee plays a feckless young woman with kidney problems who gets caught up in a scandal involving a gang of organ thieves. This…
Matando Cabos (2004): Dir. Alejandro Lozano
Feat. Tony Dalton, Ana Claudia Talancon, Pedro Jr. Armendariz; Energetic Mexican 'farce of errors' in which two teenagers kidnap a coldly ruthless businessman, not realising he is also a coveted prize for a…
Old Boy (2004): Dir. Park Chan-Wook
Feat. Min-sik Choi, Ji-tae Yoo; Wowing audiences wherever it's played (including being nominated for the Palm D'Or at Cannes), this achingly intense thriller from Korea raises the…
One Night in Mongkok (Wong gok hak yau) (2004): Dir. Derek Yee
Feat. Daniel Wu, Cecilia Cheung; A bespectacled 'Mainland' Chinese man is recruited for the assassination of a triad boss in the lusciously seedy Hong Kong district of Mongkok, but…
Operation Valkyrie (Stauffenberg) (2004): Dir. Jo Baier
Feat. Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur, Hardy Kruger…; Highly credible Germanic take on the failed 'Valkyrie' plot to assassinate Hitler favors sobering realism over Hollywood heroism. Made for German…
Ordeal, The (Calvaire) (2004): Dir. Fabrice du Welz
Feat. Laurent Lucas; Less gruelling than its title suggests, this is a macabre, blackly humorous slice of "redneck gothic" from Belgium, in which a cabaret singer's…
Pusher II (With Blood on my Hands) (2004): Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn
Feat. Mads Mikkelsen; Number two in the Danish thriller PUSHER series tracks a muddled Copenhagen thug fresh from prison who faces the scorn of his gangster father, past…
Red Lights (Feux Rouges) (2004): Dir. Cedric Kahn
Feat. Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Carole Bouquet; A married couple bicker in a holiday traffic–jam, fueled by the husband's drunken irritability and his wife's haughty disregard, leading them…
Walk on Water (2004): Dir. Eytan Fox; An arresting drama based on the obsessive efforts of an Israeli Mossad hitman –in grieving over his wife's suicide – to search for and…
World Without Thieves, A (Tian xia wu zei) (2004): Dir. Feng Xiaoning
Feat. Andy Lau, Rene Liu; Two thieves resolve to go straight, only to become entangled in high–stakes plot aboard a long haul train. Starring the ever–watchable…
As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me (2003): Dir. Hardy Martins; Based on the novel by Josef Martin Bauer, this film recounts the harrowing true story of Clemens Forell, the German POW who escaped a Siberian labour…
Carandiru (2003): Dir. Hector Babenco; An expressionist series of tales set within the notorious titular prison in Sao Paolo, Brazil, as seen through the eyes of a benevolent doctor and…
Dot The I (El Punto sobre la I) (2003): Dir. Matthew Parkhill
Feat. Gael Garcia Bernal, James D'Arcy, Natalia Verbeke; A skillfully moody London romance, in which the relationship of an engaged couple is disturbed by a pre–wedding ritual in which Verbeke must…
Ginji The Slasher (2003): Dir. Takeshi Miyasaka
Feat. Riki Takeuchi; Low profile suspenser, set around a recalcitrant swordsman who goes on the rampage in post–WW2 Japan and 50 years later is released to start…
Good Morning, Night (2003): Dir. Marco Bellocchio; A dramatisation of events surrounding the kidnapping and murder of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 by The Red Brigades, as seen through the…
I'm Not Scared (Io Non Ho Paura) (2003): Dir. Gabriele Salvatores
Feat. Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Dino Abbrescia, Giorgio Careccia…; Atmospheric thriller from dir. Gabriele Salvatores that deftly conveys a foreboding childhood experience during a long, hot summer in the country,…
Infernal Affairs 3 (Mou gaan dou III) (2003): Dir. Wai Keung Lau, Siu Fai Mak
Feat. Andy Lau, Tony Leung (Chiu-wai), Leon Lai…; Actual sequel to the hit Hong Kong gangland–cop thriller attempts valiantly to tie up loose ends, both picking up where corrupt cop Ming (Lau)…
Memories of Murder (Salinui chueok) (2003): Dir. Joon-ho Bong
Feat. Kang-ho Song, Sang-kyung Kim, Roe-ha Kim; A darkly lyrical thriller, set around the true–life hunt for South Korea's first documented serial killer in 1986, during the years of Chun…
Return, The (Vozvrashcheniye) (2003): Dir. Andrei Zvyagintsev
Feat. Ivan Dobronravov, Vladimir Garin, Konstantin Lavronenko…; A surprise arthouse hit about a couple of teenage brothers who are taken on a mysterious trip by their estranged and rather surly father, with his…
Swimming Pool (2003): Dir. Francois Ozon
Feat. Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance; A beguiling psychological thriller, in which a British mystery–novelist (Rampling) travels to her publisher's holiday house in rural France for…
Tais Toi! (Ruby and Quentin) (2003): Dir. Francis Veber
Feat. Gerard Depardieu, Jean Reno, Andre Dussollier…; Another reliable entertainment from the writer–director of THE CLOSET and THE DINNER GAME, this screwball crime comedy boasts a central comic…
And Now Ladies and Gentlemen (2002): Dir. Claude Lelouch
Feat. Jeremy Irons, Patricia Kaas, Thierry Lhermitte…; A smooth exercise in self–satire from dir. Lelouch, with Jeremy Irons playing a shifty jewel–thief who hooks up with lounge–singer…
Angela (2002): Dir. Roberta Torre
Feat. Donatella Finocchiaro; A solid, if oblique drama depicting the doings of the 1980s Sicilian Mafia as seen through the eyes of mob–wife Finocchiaro. Although…
Chaos (2002): Dir. Coline Serreau
Feat. Vincent Lindon, Catherine Frot; A witty French thriller where, through a chance meeting, a middle–class woman comes to the rescue of an Algerian–born prostitute who is…
City of God (Cidade de Deus) (2002): Dir. Fernando Mierelles
Feat. Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmano da Hora, Phellipe Haagensen; An incendiary Brazilian drama depicting two decades of blood–drenched rivalry between two youth gangs who control a slum area of Rio De…
Code, The (La Mentale) (2002): Dir. Manuel Boursinhac
Feat. Samuel Le Bihan; Convincingly gritty crime drama set in the drab outer zone of Paris' apartment estates and trailer parks, with a recently paroled hood (Le Bihan)…
Demonlover (2002): Dir. Olivier Assayas
Feat. Connie Neilsen, Charles Berling, Chloe Sevigny…; An insinuating future–shock Euro–thriller, with Connie…
Double Vision (Shuang tong) (2002): Dir. Chen Kuo Fu
Feat. David Morse, Tony Leung (Kar-fai), Rene Liu; A slickly effective horror film, in which cross–cultural cop buddies Leung and Morse hunt a demonic serial killer in Taiwan. Imbued with a…
El Bonaerense (2002): Dir. Pablo Trapero; An authentically macho tale about the notoriously clannish and corrupt police force of Buenos Aires (members are known as 'el Bonaerense') which…
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (A la Folie pas du Tout) (2002): Dir. Laetitia Colombani
Feat. Audrey Tautou, Samuel Le Bihan; A slyly–structured tale of adultery which uses the ambiguous qualities of actress Audrey Tautou (AMELIE) to deliver some thrilling…
Infernal Affairs (2002): Dir. Wai Keung Lau, Siu Fai Mak
Feat. Andy Lau, Tony Leung (Chiu-wai), Anthony Wong…; This dynamic cops ‘n’ robbers spectacle is populist Hong Kong film–making at its most slick and sophisticated. Infused with more than a…
Inner Senses (Yee do hung gaan) (2002): Dir. Chi-Leung Law
Feat. Leslie Cheung, Karena Lam, Maggie Poon; A loner psychologist (Cheung) falls for a suicidal woman he is treating for her constant, gloomy visions of the dead, in this stylish Asian riff on…
Kaante (Thorns) (2002): Dir. Sanjay Gupta
Feat. Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Sunil Shetty; From a new generation of Bollywood film–making comes a kinetic heist picture, shot and located in LA in which six Indian suspects plot a…
L'Homme du Train (Man on the Train) (2002): Dir. Patrice Leconte
Feat. Jean Rochefort, Johnny Hallyday; An elegantly amusing role–switching tale that's equal parts social comedy, existential drama and subtle thriller, tinged with melancholy…
Missing Gun, The (Xun qiang) (2002): Dir. Chuan Lu
Feat. Wen Jiang; Wound–up thriller set in a small and eccentric Chinese village, where a policeman wakes one morning with a hangover to find his…
Pact of Silence, The (Le Pacte du Silence) (2002): Dir. Graham Guit
Feat. Gerard Depardieu, Elodie Bouchez; Glossy Euro–thriller in which a priest of doubtful faith (Depardieu) investigates twin sisters – one in prison, the other in a convent…
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002): Dir. Park Chan-Wook
Feat. Kang-ho Song, Ha-kyun Shin, Doona Bae; Incredibly bleak suspenser witnesses the disastrous efforts of a deaf–mute man and his girlfriend (who is on the fringes of a terrorist cell)…
8 Women (8 Femmes) (2001): Dir. Francois Ozon
Feat. Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart…; In the classic whodunnit mould, this whimsical French "thriller" starts with a man’s dead body in a snowbound Alpine manse in the 1950s, and eight…
Experiment, The (Das Experiment) (2001): Dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel
Feat. Moritz Bleibtreu, Maren Eggert, Christian Berkel; Twenty men volunteer for a paid two–week simulated study that divides them into the roles of prisoners and guards in a ‘controlled’…
Intacto (2001): Dir. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Feat. Max von Sydow, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Guillermo Toledo; A finely devised Spanish thriller, in which particularly obsessed gamblers contest their 'Luck' in various absurd, dangerous and creepy…
Merci Pour Le Chocolat (Nightcap) (2001): Dir. Claude Chabrol
Feat. Isabelle Huppert; Slyly subversive psychodrama, with Isabelle Huppert excelling as the owner of a Swiss chocolate–business, who also happens to be a…
Read My Lips (Sur Mes Levres) (2001): Dir. Jacques Audiard
Feat. Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos; Sturdy, unconventional French thriller about an insecure, partially–deaf office clerk who tries to help an irascible ex–con integrate…
Sleepless (Non ho Sonno) (2001): Dir. Dario Argento
Feat. Max von Sydow, Stefano Dionisi, Chiara Caselli; A welcome return to his 'giallo' roots by dir. Argento, turning a tangled tango between a serial–killer and recently–retired detective…
Tunnel, The (2001): Dir. Roland Suso Richter
Feat. Heino Ferch, Nicolette Krebitz; An extended though by no means deep excavation of German Cold War history, in which an East German swimmer (Ferch) defects to West Berlin in 1961 and…
Crimson Rivers, The (2000): Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz
Feat. Jean Reno, Vincent Cassel; A bizarre murder in the French Alps draws detectives Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel into the killing–cycle of a particularly grisly…
Dead or Alive 2 (Tobosha) (2000): Dir. Takashi Miike
Feat. Sho Aikawa, Riki Takeuchi, Shinya Tsukamoto; Understated yet rewarding sequel to the mind–blowing gangster actioner follows on from the 'end of the world' with an unrelated story, with…
Harry, He's Here to Help (2000): Dir. Dominik Moll
Feat. Sergi Lopez, Laurent Lucas; French festival–hit that invokes the delicious menace of Alfred Hitchcock with its insidious central character, Harry (Sergi Lopez) who invites…
Nine Queens (Nueve Reinas) (2000): Dir. Fabian Bielinsky
Feat. Gaston Pauls, Ricardo Darín; An Argentian congame thriller which uses a fresh, edgy setting to bolster its David Mamet–by–way–of–Quentin Tarantino…
One Hundred Steps, The (I Cento Passi) (2000): Dir. Marco Tullio Giordana; Expansive, fact–based drama set around a young man's fight against local mafiosos in the small Sicilian village of Cinisi in the…
Princess and the Warrior, The (2000): Dir. Tom Tykwer
Feat. Franke Potente; Follow–up and companion piece to dir. Tykwer’s RUN LOLA RUN, is a 'Snow White'–inspired tale of a psychiatric nurse who is hit by a…
Seance (2000): Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Feat. Koji Yakusho; A hybrid of crime thriller and ghost story, this remake of the British classic "Seance on a Wet Afternoon" reinstates the supernatural emphasis of…
Tell Me Something (2000): Dir. Chang Yoon-Hyung
Feat. Han Suk-gyu, Shim Eun-ha; A fine slice of Korean “giallo”, this is detective pulp of the lacquered–black, rain–drenched variety, with perverse/macabre trimmings…
Turbo (TV Series) (2000-2001): Feat. Roberto Farnesi; Addictive mystery series with the canine detective Turbo tracking villains against the sun–drenched vistas of Tuscany.
Dead or Alive (Hanzaisha) (1999): Dir. Takashi Miike
Feat. Sho Aikawa, Riki Takeuchi, Ren Osugi; A jaw–dropping, wickedly amoral revenge thriller from the dir. of AUDITION, who blows the dust (and the roof) off gangster movie cliches and…
East / West (Est / Ouest) (1999): Dir. Regis Wargnier
Feat. Sandrine Bonnaire, Oleg Menshikov, Sergei Bodrov Jr…; A 'woman's picture' in the proudest sense of the term, this lush historical melodrama from the dir. of INDOCHINE again finds a French woman in a…
Inugami (1999): Dir. Masato Harada
Feat. Yuki Amami, Atsuro Watabe, Eugene Harada; Quietly impressive suspenser set in a remote mountain village in Japan, where a young local woman and a visiting school teacher become aware of the…
Nameless, The (Los Sin Nombre) (1999): Dir. Jaume Balaguero
Feat. Emma Vilarasau, Karra Elejalde; A family, devastated by the murder of their daughter, are sent into a fresh spin by her seeming re–appearance five years later in this visually…
Quiet Family, The (Choyonghan kajok) (1998): Dir. Ji-woon Kim
Feat. Kang-ho Song, Min-sik Choi; A deliciously deadpan black comedy in which a respectable family decide to leave the rat race behind, buy a hotel in remote mountains and lead more…
Run Lola Run (1998): Dir. Tom Tykwer
Feat. Franke Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu; Runaway foreign–language hit clocks up mileage from a simple conceit – flame–haired punkette Lola has twenty minutes to go like the…
Secret Defense (1998): Dir. Jacques Rivette
Feat. Sandrine Bonnaire; A Hitchcockian thriller in which dir. Rivette, better known for his surreal excursions, knowingly toys with the conventions of the suspense genre,…
Assassin(s) (1997): Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz
Feat. Mathieu Kassovitz, Michel Serrault; Disappointing followup to LA HAINE for dir./star Kassovitz, plumping for a story of an apprentice hitman (Kassovitz) to aging pro Michel Serrault,…
Brother (Brat) (1997): Dir. Aleksei Balabanov
Feat. Sergei Bodrov Jr; Grimily captivating thriller follows a baby–faced veteran of the Chechen war as he quietly 'assists' his brother in the St Petersburg…
Character (1997): Dir. Mike van Diem
Feat. Fedja Van Huet; A murderous confrontation bookends an elegantly told story of class, oppression and perseverance in 1920s Rotterdam, in which a young…
Full Alert (1997): Dir. Ringo Lam
Feat. Lau Ching-wan, Francis Ng; Quality police thriller with realistic drama, bracing action and strong sense of locale – regarded as one of the last 'classics' from the…
Funny Games (1997): Dir. Michael Haneke
Feat. Ulrich Muhe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering…; Michael Haneke’s disturbing, self–reflexive examination of violence, and violence as entertainment, in which two young men dressed in tennis…
Insomnia (1997): Dir. Erik Skjoldbjaerg
Feat. Stellan Skarsgard; An edgy, ingeniously plotted psychological thriller about an amoral Swedish detective whose murder investigation in Northern Norway (where the sun…
La Vie de Jesus (Life of Jesus) (1997): Dir. Bruno Dumont; Virtuoso bleakness from the dir. of TWENTYNINE PALMS, in his debut study of alienated existence for a group of unruly skinheads in rural Flanders who…
Live Flesh (1997): Dir. Pedro Almodovar
Feat. Javier Bardem, Francesca Neri, Liberto Rabal; Five aggrieved characters get wrapped in a sticky web of consequence after a fateful incident leaves one paralysed and another in jail. Dir.…
Open Your Eyes (Abre Los Ojos) (1997): Dir. Alejandro Amenabar
Feat. Eduardo Noriega, Penelope Cruz, Chete Lera; A surrealistic nightmare unfurled with Hitchcockian precision and irony, Eduardo Noriega plays a young–man–who–has–everything…
Port Djema (1997): Dir. Eric Heumann
Feat. Jean-Yves Dubois, Nathalie Boutefeu, Christophe Odent…; A Paris surgeon gets into the thick of dangerous politics at an East African colonial port as he traces the footsteps of a murdered friend. Won Best…
Wintersleepers (1997): Dir. Tom Tykwer
Feat. Ulrich Matthes, Marie-lou Sellem, Floriane Daniel; The paths of five people on the German skifield of Berchtesgaden intersect following a car accident, resulting in a precise, chilly thriller from RUN…
Beyond Hypothermia (Sip si 32 doe) (1996): Dir. Patrick Leung
Feat. Lau Ching Wan; A master Hong Kong hitwoman is contracted to bump off top–level crime lords in this brooding suspenser, directed by a longtime assistant to…
Nobody Will Speak of Us When We're Dead (1996): Dir. Agustin Diaz Yanes
Feat. Victoria Abril, Pilar Bardem; Alcoholic and reluctant whore Victoria Abril turns a few clever tricks on a Mexican mob's laundering operation. A Spanish pulpy fiction grafted with…
Pure Formality, A (1996): Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore
Feat. Gerard Depardieu, Roman Polanski; A chilling interrogation of an elusive murder suspect transpires under weather most foul. Roman Polanski and Gerard Depardieu face–off…
Pusher (1996): Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn
Feat. Kim Bodnia, Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen; Intense Danish thriller follows a fast–living drug dealer's (Bodnia) downward arc after he inadvertantly loses a load of product and tries to…
Too Late (Prea Târziu) (1996): Dir. Lucian Pintilie
Feat. Razvan Vasilescu; Bleak, unflinching examination of Romanian society from dir. Pintilie focuses on an inexperienced investigator who discovers a myriad of corruption…
Bait, The (L'Appat) (1995): Dir. Bertrand Tavernier
Feat. Marie Gillain; A claustrophobic psychological thriller dealing with a trio of young friends who naively conspire to commit a home invasion, that becomes a study of…
Confessional, The (1995): Dir. Robert Lepage
Feat. Lothaire Bluteau, Kristin Scott Thomas; A man searches for lost relatives and missing pieces of family history, somehow linked to the making of Hitchcock's 'I Confess' in Quebec, 1953; past…
Judgement in Stone, A (La Ceremonie) (1995): Dir. Claude Chabrol
Feat. Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset; Veteran new–wave director Chabrol takes this HEAVENLY CREATURES–ish tale of the unholy synergy between two women, adds some class theory,…
Kamikaze Taxi (1995): Dir. Masato Harada
Feat. Koji Yakusho, Kazuya Takahashi, Reiko Kataoka; An apprentice gangster fouls up his first major assignment and flees Tokyo in a taxi, the driver of which turns out to be a unlikely confident with a…
L'Amour Molesto (Wounded Love) (1995): Dir. Mario Martone
Feat. Anna Bonaiuto, Angela Luce, Gianni Cajafa…; Filial difficulties between mother and daughter act as the centre of gravity for this Italian mystery that matches its edgy storyline with a…
L'Appartement (The Apartment) (1995): Dir. Gilles Mimouni
Feat. Vincent Cassel, Romane Bohringer, Monica Bellucci; Chic Parisian thriller lifts a few motifs from VERTIGO, but adds more than a few original flourishes. Vincent Cassel is about to settle down with…
La Haine (Hate) (1995): Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz
Feat. Vincent Cassel, Hubert Kounde, Said Taghmaoui…; A distinctive French urban crime drama in which the idle hands of male youth form fisticuffs on mean urban streets. A whole lot punchier, intelligent…
Patriotes, Les (1995): Dir. Eric Rochant
Feat. Yvan Attal, Richard Masur, Allen Garfield…; Disillusionment erodes the ideals of a young Frenchman who emigrates to Israel to train for a career in their intelligence division. Its astute focus…
Inspector Rex (TV Series) (1994-2004): Feat. Tobias Moretti; Austrian TV series, with a sizable cult following around the world (especially in Australia), in which a lone policeman and his German Shepherd…
Machine, La (1994): Dir. Francois Dupeyron
Feat. Gerard Depardieu, Nathalie Baye; Gerard Depardieu goes into mad–doctor mode for this high–tech mind–transplant thriller, as a shrink/inventor whose fleeting…
Nightwatch (1994): Dir. Ole Bornedal
Feat. Nikolaj Waldau; A student (Nikolaj Waldau) takes a job as nightwatchman in a morgue so he can swat for his exams, but is dragged into trouble by an unruly companion…
Six Days, Six Nights (1994): Dir. Diane Kurys
Feat. Anne Parillaud, Beatrice Dalle; Favourite French fatales Anne Parillaud and Beatrice Dalle brood into Polanski territory, finding sibling and sexual rivialry, and possibly madness…
Torment (L'Enfer) (1994): Dir. Claude Chabrol
Feat. Emmanuelle Beart, Francois Cluzet; Based on an unproduced H.R. Clouzot screenplay from the 1950s, and not quite up to the standard of its follow–up, A JUDGEMENT IN STONE, but a…
A Crime (Un Crime) (1993): Dir. Jacques Deray
Feat. Alain Delon; Vintage courtroom vehicle for the ice cool Delon, sturdy in its workmanlike screenplay and no–nonsense attitude.
Darkness in Tallinn (1993): Dir. Ilka Jarvilaturi
Feat. Elina Aasa, Milena Gulbe, Juri Jarvet; In liberated Estonia, gangsters plan the elaborate ambush of gold bullion being restored from a Paris vault. A humble electrician has the pivotal job…
La Scorta (1993): Dir. Rick Tognazzi
Feat. Ennio Morricone; Bold dramatic thriller draws from real events surrounding the indictment of Mafia collaborators with the focus on the four bodyguards of a maverick…
Red Squirrel (La Ardilla Roja) (1993): Dir. Julio Medem
Feat. Emma Suarez, Nancho Novo; On the cusp of suicide, a young man befriends the amnesiac victim of a motorcycle accident. Under a shroud of deceit, the couple 'renew' their…
Shadow of Doubt, A (1993): Dir. Aline Issermann
Feat. Mireille Perrier, Alain Bashung, Sandrine Blancke; A painfully credible exploration of how a father's alleged crime against his young daughter affects a middle class family. Well researched and…
Accompanist, The (1992): Dir. Claude Miller
Feat. Richard Bohringer, Romane Bohringer; A humble pianist is hired to accompany a wealthy soprano in occupied France, but their partnership becomes fraught with rivalry and…
Benny's Video (1992): Dir. Michael Haneke
Feat. Arno Frisch, Ulrich Muhe; This middle installment in Michael Haneke’s ‘Glaciation Trilogy’ considers under a familiar milieu of urban dread the effects of mediated violence,…
Flight of the Innocent (1992): Dir. Carlo Carlei
Feat. Manuel Colao, Federico Pacifici, Sal Borgese; A swirling steady–cam follows the chase of a young boy across Northern Italy after his family are slaughtered by a kidnapping ring. Thriller is…
Ip5 (1992): Dir. Jean-Jacques Beineix
Feat. Yves Montand, Olivier Martinez, Sotigui Kouyate…; Beineix's visual flair props up this slight story of a graffiti artist and his young pal who journey in search of escape and/or love. They meet an…
L627 (1992): Dir. Bertrand Tavernier
Feat. Didier Bezace, Jean-Paul Comart; A sharp, unsentimental depiction of the daily grind that a Paris drugs–squad detective must endure, contending with dealers, addicts and…
Autobus (1991): Dir. Eric Rochant
Feat. Yvan Attal, Kristin Scott Thomas; A desperate, attention–seeking young man (Yvan Attal – superb) hijacks a school bus, taking its two adults and little passengers hostage.…
Highway Patrolman (1991): Dir. Alex Cox
Feat. Roberto Sosa, Bruno Bichir, Vanessa Bauche; A wayward film–maker returns to form in using road–movie conventions to enrich this tale of poverty, drugs, prostitution and rampant…
Hors La Vie (Life on Hold) (1991): Dir. Maroun Bagdadi
Feat. Hippolyte Girardot, Rafic Ali Ahmad, Nidal Ashkov…; A fictionalised depiction of a freelance photographer's ten months in Shi'ite custody. Charged with political anger but unsensationalist and…
Indecent Woman, The (1991): Dir. Ben Verbong
Feat. Jose Way, Coen Van Vrijberghe de Coningh, Huub Stapel; A married violinist is drawn into a no–holds–barred relationship with a mystery man. A decent erotic parable that perceptively explores…
Lovers (1991): Dir. Vincente Aranda
Feat. Victoria Abril; Almodovar–regular Victoria Abril brings her sultry star presence to this smouldering tale of illicit lovers who conspire to a horrendous crime…
Zentropa (Europa) (1991): Dir. Lars Von Trier
Feat. Jean-Marc Barr, Barbara Sukowa, Udo Kier…; A multi–lingual visual essay from upstart director Von Trier, who unfolds his story of post–war European unease through metaphor and a…
Cup Final (1990): Dir. Eran Riklis
Feat. Moshe Ivgy, Mohamed Bakri, Salim Dau; An engaging Israeli film about a soccer player whose dreams of representing his country at the World Cup in Spain are shattered by war. He is…
Doctor Petiot (1990): Dir. Christian De Chalonge
Feat. Michel Serrault, Pierre Romans, Berangere Bonvoisin; A dark, expressionistic account of a depraved physician who, in occupied Paris, used his practise to facilitate emigration for hopeful Jews, only to…
Elegant Criminel, L' (1990): Dir. Francis Girod
Feat. Daniel Auteuil, Jean Poiret, Jaques Weber; Daniel Auteuil stars in this irreverent and witty biography of suave petty thief and condemned killer Pierre Lacenaire, whose brief flame burned…
Nikita (La Femme Nikita) (1990): Dir. Luc Besson
Feat. Anne Parillaud, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Tcheky Karyo…; A stylish thriller if ever there was one. The director combines the visual ostentation from his THE BIG BLUE with the plot mechanics of a classic…
Dark Woods, The (1989): Dir. Jacques Deray
Feat. Beatrice Dalle; Beatrice Dalle (BETTY BLUE) marries a stranger on a whim, and lives to regret it when her affections for his brother leads to a brutal crime of…
Nocturne Indien (1989): Dir. Alain Corneau
Feat. Jean-Hugues Anglade, Clémentine Célarié, Otto Tausig; Moody drama from dir. Corneau (TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE) sees a young Frenchman travel to India to search for a missing friend, and get lost in…
Monsieur Hire (1988): Dir. Patrice Leconte
Feat. Michel Blanc, Sandrine Bonnaire; A lonely, middle–aged tailor becomes obsessed with a glamourous but suspicious woman, whom he observes from his opposing apartment. Melancholy…
Vanishing, The (1988): Dir. George Sluzier
Feat. Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Berroets, Johanna Ter Steege; A genuinely creepy psychological thriller – a woman vanishes while on holiday in France, later her boyfriend is taunted in a battle of wits…
Angel Dust (1987): Dir. Edouard Niermans
Feat. Bernard Giraudeau, Fanny Bastien, Fanny Cottencon; Accomplished thriller in the film noir tradition about an out–of–luck cop who falls for a woman he later begins to suspect of murder.
Epidemic (1987): Dir. Lars Von Trier
Feat. Lars Von Trier; Typically divisive earlier Lars von Trier effort concerns the making of a low–budget horror movie about a highly contagious disease, thrown…
Loner, The (Le Solitaire) (1987): Dir. Jacques Deray
Feat. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Pierre Malo, Pierre Vernier; Sub–par Belmondo outing has him play the routine jaded cop out to avenge his partner's death. Low on stunts but high on cruelty this is one for…
Masques (1987): Dir. Claude Chabrol
Feat. Philippe Noiret, Bernadette Lafont; Showbiz thriller with an offbeat setting and treatment typical of the director. Phillip Noiret excels as a vain and complacent TV celebrity, with…
Camorra (1986): Dir. Lina Wertmuller
Feat. Angela Molina, Harvey Keitel; Complicated but well–judged thriller about the Naples underworld and specifically the use of children in the drug trade. More conventional than…
Death in a French Garden (1985): Dir. Michel Deville
Feat. Anemone , Richard Bohringer, Nicole Garcia; A guitar tutor arrives at the house of a beautiful nymphette and her suspicious mother, where games of sex, power and manipulation unfold ultimately…
Subway (1985): Dir. Luc Besson
Feat. Christopher Lambert, Isabelle Adjani; Fast paced action thriller set in the Paris underground. A cool rebel–hero (Christopher Lambert) teams up with Isabelle Adjani in stylish…
Element of Crime, The (1984): Dir. Lars Von Trier
Feat. Michael Elphick; A detective’s unconventional methods qualify him for the investigation of child murders in a dark, decaying, post–apocalyptic Germany. Dir.…
Finally Sunday (Vivement Dimanche!) (1983): Dir. Francois Truffaut
Feat. Fanny Ardant, Jean-Louis Trintignant; A businessman in trouble with the police over the murder of his wife's lover finds solace in his secretary who decides to investigate the case…
Moon in the Gutter (1983): Dir. Jean-Jacques Beineix
Feat. Gerard Depardieu, Nastassja Kinski, Victoria Abril…; Dockworker Gerard Depardieu befriends Nastassja Kinski as he hunts for the killer of his sister. Pompous or excellent? Watch and decide for yourself.…
Balance, La (1982): Dir. Bob Swaim
Feat. Nathalie Baye, Philippe Leotard, Richard Berry; Money, loyalty and death hang in the balance in this gritty, Cesar–winning thriller. A crime king–pin is exposed by an…
Diva (1982): Dir. Jean-Jacques Beineix
Feat. Frederic Andrei, Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, Richard Bohringer…; Stylish romantic thriller in which an opera–intoxicated youth bootlegs a concert of an unrecorded opera star which leads to trouble with shady…
Coup de Torchon (Clean Slate) (1981): Dir. Bertrand Tavernier
Feat. Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Pierre Marielle…; Mordantly humourous suspense set in dusty French Senegal, with Noiret playing a much–abused police chief who begins to have dreams of…
Professional, The (1981): Dir. Georges Lautner
Feat. Jean-Paul Belmondo; Action and humour alternate in this carefree Belmondo vehicle, in which the French larrikin plays a secret service agent out for revenge.
From the Life of the Marionettes (1980): Dir. Ingmar Bergman
Feat. Robert Atzom, Heinz Bennent, Martin Benrath; A dark themed and intricately plotted drama from dir. Bergman's later period, concerning a businessman who commits the sex–murder of a…
Egouts Du Paradis, Les (The Sewers of Paradise) (1979): Dir. Jose Giovanni
Feat. Francis Huster, Jean-François Balmer, Lila Kedrova; Romantic dramatization of "The Great Drain Robbery" of 1976, in which the Societe Generale Bank of France was robbed of over $10 million dollars by a…
Fourth Man, The (1979): Dir. Paul Verhoeven
Feat. Jeroen Krabbe; Jeroen Krabbe is a gay alchoholic writer prone to hallucinations who suspects his hairdresser of triple murder. Weird and stylish…
American Friend, The (1976): Dir. Wim Wenders
Feat. Bruno Ganz, Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray; Twisting thriller stars Bruno Ganz as an apparently terminally–ill man duped into murder. Dennis Hopper plays the American 'friend', while…
Body Of My Enemy, The (Le Corps De Mon Ennemi) (1976): Dir. Henri Verneuil
Feat. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Bernard Blier, Marie-France Pisier; Slow burning thriller with Belmondo as a man wrongly imprisoned for drug trafficking looking to exact revenge on those who framed him. Trading…
Hunter Will Get You (L'Alpagueur) (1976): Dir. Philippe Labro
Feat. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Bruno Cremer; Ice–cool Belmondo thriller about government mercenary who poses undercover as a prisoner to smoke out an insidious criminal mastermind.
Bullet Train, The (1975): Dir. Jun'ya Sato
Feat. Ken Takakura, Sonny Chiba; Unstoppable, no–holds–barred action vehicle finds Sonny Chiba steering a passenger train rigged with a bomb to explode if its speed drops…
Gypsy, The (Le Gitan) (1975): Dir. Jose Giovanni
Feat. Alain Delon, Annie Girardot, Paul Meurisse; Alain Delon humours the plight of the gypsy as a gangster with a nomadic past. An obscure, moody crime vehicle.
Lost Honor of Katherina Blum, The (1975): Dir. Volker Schlondorf
Feat. Angela Winkler, Jurgen Prochnow; Taken from the novel by Heinrich Boll, this reproach to the powers–that–be in mid–70s West Germany portrays the hardheaded…
Icy Flesh (Icy Breasts; Les seins de glace) (1974): Dir. Georges Lautner
Feat. Alain Delon, Mireille Darc, Claude Brasseur; Alain Delon potboiler, with the French leading man succumbing to the wiles of an alluring, if deadly femme fatale. Better known as 'Icy Breasts'.
Nuits Rouges (1974): Dir. Georges Franju
Feat. Jacques Champreux, Gayle Hunnicutt; Another Franju masked adventure launched from Louis Feuillade serials and his own excellent JUDEX, only this time in filmed in a garish, exagerrated…
Shock Treatment (Traitement de Choc) (1973): Dir. Alain Jessua
Feat. Alain Delon, Annie Girardot; Pointed medical chiller set in an anti–aging clinic overseen by Delon. This minor genre film is memorable for Girardot and Delon's risque beach…
Inheritor, The (L'Heritier) (1972): Dir. Philippe Labro
Feat. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Carla Gravina, Jean Rochefort; Shadowy thriller in which a wealthy industrialist dies in an air crash but his son suspects foul play. Soon he finds his own life in peril. Set…
Un Flic (Dirty Money) (1972): Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Feat. Alain Delon, Richard Crenna, Catherine Deneuve; Final film by the suspense–specialist Melville (LE SAMOURAI), spins a familiar tale of cops and bank–robbers involving Alain Delon,…
Max and the Junkmen (Max Et Les Ferrailleurs) (1971): Dir. Claude Sautet
Feat. Romy Schneider; French crime drama set in the noir shaded streets of Paris follows a frustrated detective getting tangled up in a love triangle after commissioning a…
Widow Couderc, The (La veuve Couderc) (1971): Dir. Pierre Granier-Deferre
Feat. Alain Delon, Simone Signoret; Rustic thriller with Delon as a brooding stranger embroiled in a torrid affair with hard–bitten widow Signoret. Witty adaptation of a George…
Borsalino (1970): Dir. Jacques Deray
Feat. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Michel Bouquet; Delightful seriocomic film of two likeable hoods who become gangland chieftains in 1930s Marseilles. Music by Claude Bolling.
Cercle Rouge, Le (The Red Circle) (1970): Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Feat. Alain Delon, Gian Maria Volonte, Yves Montand…; A precisely–crafted colour 'noir' from the French master, dir. Melville, which rejigs the usual ingredients into an exemplary heist…
Conformist, The (Conformista, Il) (1970): Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci
Feat. Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin…; Dazzling images and a potent brew of sex and politics merge seamlessly in this milestone of cinema about a submissive Italian Fascist recruited to…
Boucher, Le (The Butcher) (1969): Dir. Claude Chabrol
Feat. Stephane Audran, Jean Yanne; Psychological thriller probes the perhaps dangerous liaison between a celibate school–teacher and a murder suspect, the local butcher. Rich in…
Femme Infidele, La (the Unfaithful Wife) (1969): Dir. Claude Chabrol
Feat. Michel Bouquet, Stephane Audran, Maurice Ronet; French bourgeoisie couple Michel Bouquet and Stephane Audran form a murderous love–triangle with seducer Maurice Ronet, revealing the hidden…
Biches, Les (1968): Dir. Claude Chabrol
Feat. Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacqueline Sassard, Stephane Audran; A love–triangle between an heiress, an architect and a young woman, is tested to unsettling effect in this psychological drama. Chabrol…
Bride Wore Black, The (La Mariée était en noir) (1968): Dir. Francois Truffaut
Feat. Jeanne Moreau, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Brialy…; Traumatised by her fiance's death, moments before due to be wed, Jeanne Moreau dedicates herself to a long–term plan of revenge, hunting and…
Claude Chabrol Boxset Vol. 1 (Les Biches, Le Boucher, This Man Must Die, La Femme Infidele) (1968-1969): Dir. Claude Chabrol; Four classic films from the French master of suspense's late sixties output. Also includes the documentary GRAND MANEGE: THE LIFE AND WORK OF CLAUDE…
Farewell, Friend (Honor Among Thieves) (1968): Dir. Jean Herman
Feat. Alain Delon, Charles Bronson; Dependable French caper, centered on an elaborate heist, with warhorses Branson and Delon thick as thieves in vying to crack the same high security…
Z (1968): Dir. Costa-Gavras
Feat. Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Irene Papas; Pioneering conspiracy thriller based on the true story of the murder of a doctor and the raw sore of Greek political corruption it exposes. Oscars…
Diabolically Yours (Diaboliquement vôtre) (1967): Dir. Julien Duvivier
Feat. Alain Delon, Senta Berger, Sergio Fantoni; Creepy thriller has amnesiac Delon recovering in his opulent mansion with beautiful wife Berger, living the good life. Trouble comes when he begins…
Samourai, Le (The Samurai) (1967): Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Feat. Alain Delon; Alain Delon plays an ultra–cool assassin whose flawless disposition is impenetrable to the Gendarmerie but not to a sexy key witness.…
Made in U.S.A (1966): Dir. Jean-Luc Godard
Feat. Anna Karina, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Marianne Faithful; Further political horseplay from Godard in the skin of a Nouvelle Vague alternate reality: this time, Anna Karina plays a war journalist on the hunt…
Pierrot Le Fou (Crazy Pete) (1965): Dir. Jean-Luc Godard
Feat. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina; A striking example of the French New Wave. It's kiss, kiss, bang, bang all the way with Jean Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina as maverick intellectual…
Diamonds of the Night (1964): Dir. Jan Nemec
Feat. Ladislav Jansky, Antonin Kumbera, Irma Bischofova; Extraordinarily intense account, told with almost no dialogue, of two Jewish teenagers running for their lives after escaping from a train bound for…
Hamlet (1964): Dir. Grigori Kozintsev
Feat. Innokenti Smoktunovsky; The legendary Russian version of Shakespeare's play, which visually at least, stands as the greatest yet. Staged amidst the massive battlements of…
Doulos, Le (The Finger Man) (1963): Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Feat. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani; Eschewing the French New Wave movement in favour of homage to the then ‘passe’ genre of film noir, dir. Jean–Pierre Melville adds shades of…
High and Low (1963): Dir. Akira Kurosawa
Feat. Toshiro Mifune; Adapted from a crime–novel by Ed McBain, this kidnapping–thriller is a central work in dir. Kurosawa’s series of film noirs, combining…
Judex (1963): Dir. Georges Franju
Feat. Edith Scob, Channing Pollock, Francine Bergé; Georges Franju's magical remake of Louis Feuillade’s 1916 serial, in which a masked crime fighter seeks revenge on a corrupt banker. A lyrical fusion…
Knife in the Water (1962): Dir. Roman Polanski
Feat. Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz; The old adage 'three is a crowd' is chillingly played out in Polanski's directing debut about a couple's troubled yachting weekend with a…
Le Trou (The Hole; The Night Watch) (1960): Dir. Jacques Becker
Feat. Marc Michel; Classic, noir–ish prison suspense in the mould of A MAN ESCAPED and RIFIFI chronicles an ambitious tunnel escape. Sparse and tense.
Plein Soleil (Purple Noon) (1960): Dir. Rene Clement
Feat. Alain Delon, Marie Laforet, Maurice Ronet; The original adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's gripping novel 'The Talented Mr Ripley', who is here embodied by a sleek Delon in only his third…
A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) (1959): Dir. Jean-Luc Godard
Feat. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger…; Godard's landmark first film pulls out all the stops in the style department – with Jean–Paul Belmondo as the romantic fugitive,…
Come Dance with Me (Voulez-Vous Danser Avec Moi?) (1959): Dir. Michel Boisrond
Feat. Brigitte Bardot, Dawn Addams; Surprisingly entertaining French mystery thriller tracking a wife attempting to clear her husband's name from involvement in a dance studio murder.…
Man Escaped, A (1956): Dir. Robert Bresson
Feat. Francois Leterrier; Bresson's films are all extremely controlled in style: no suspense, no histrionics, flat acting, spare and simple camerawork, yet this is an…
Bob Le Flambeur (Bob the Gambler) (1955): Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Feat. Roger Duchesne, Isabelle Corney; Superb French noir from the dir. of LE SAMOURAI, here debuting with a taut plan to rob the Deauville casino, that grows ever more perilous for…
Rififi (1955): Dir. Jules Dassin
Feat. Jean Servais, Jules Dassin, Magali Noel…; The French reclaim film noir with this methodical and stylish heist movie, famous for its 35 minute real–time bank robbery, executed in virtual…
Les Diaboliques (1954): Dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot
Feat. Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, Paul Meurisse…; Simone Signoret stars as one of two women who conspire to murder the man they share – a sadistic schoolmaster. Iconic French thriller with a…
Wages of Fear (Salaire de la Peur, Le) (1953): Dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot
Feat. Yves Montand, Charles Vanel; A young Yves Montand leads a group of impoverished men over rocky Latin American terrain with a dangerous load of nitro–glycerine. Considered…
Drunken Angel (Yoidore tenshi) (1948): Dir. Akira Kurosawa
Feat. Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura; The film that made Toshiro Mifune a star – playing a petty gangster with TB, who turns to an alcoholic doctor for help after a shoot–out.…
Quai Des Orfevres (1947): Dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot
Feat. Louis Jouvet, Bernard Blier, Suzy Delair…; Romantically bleak French noir about an ambitious starlet and her protective husband who find themselves implicated in the murder of a lecherous…
Le Corbeau (1943): Dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot
Feat. Pierre Fresnay; Fascinating as a wartime allegory made under the German Occupation of France, a small town becomes a hot–bed of paranoia following a rash of…
Bete Humaine, La (1938): Dir. Jean Renoir
Feat. Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Fernand Ledoux…; Adaptation of Zola's romantic tragedy brims with tension and exults the presense of French icon Jean Gabin as a hot–headed train driver coaxed…
Le Quai Des Brumes (Port of Shadows) (1938): Dir. Marcel Carne
Feat. Jean Gabin, Michel Simon, Michele Morgan; The forever anti–heroic Jean Gabin takes on an underworld of pimps and perverts in this gloomy French classic, a major influence on the film…
Pepe Le Moko (1937): Dir. Julien Duvivier
Feat. Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin; Jean Gabin plays a super–cool gangster who finds immunity in the Algierian Casbah. Marvellously romantic, this classic of the French golden age…
M... Worst Crime of All (1931): Dir. Fritz Lang
Feat. Peter Lorre; A chilling expressionist classic starring Peter Lorre as psychotic child molester. Dir. Lang masterfully fills the screen with understated but…

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