Summary: A mysterious kidnapping of a corrupt banker by a shadowy crime fighter (American magician Channing Pollock) spins out into a thrillingly complex web of deceptions. Combining stylish sixties modernisms with silent-cinema touches and even a few unexpected sci-fi accents.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2014

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Summary: "Michael Curtiz brings a master skipper's hand to the helm of this thriller, Hollywood's second crack at Ernest Hemingway's To Have And Have Not. John Garfield stars as Harry Morgan, an honest charter-boat captain who, facing hard times, take on dangerous cargo to save his boat, support his family, and preserve his dignity. Left in the lurch by a freeloading passenger, Harry starts to entertain...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: The Criterion Collection 2017

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Summary: "Michael Haneke's most notorious production, Funny Games spares no detail in its depiction of the agony of a bourgeois family held captive at their vacation home by a pair of white-gloved young men. In a series of escalating 'games, ' the sadistic duo subject their victims to unspeakable physical and psychological torture over the course of a night. A home-invasion thriller in which the game's...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Freaks: A tale of love, deception, and retribution set among troupe of carnival sideshow performers, shunned by society because of their physical deformities.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

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Summary: During planting season in Northern Italy's Po Valley, an earthy rice-field worker falls in with a small-time criminal who is planning a daring heist of the crop, as well as his femme-fatale-ish girlfriend. Both a socially conscious look at the hardships endured by underpaid field workers and a melodrama tinged with sex and violence.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

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Summary: An undercover cop gets so deep in his assumed identity that he starts to act like the criminals he's trying to capture.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

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Summary: A Roaring Twenties gangster saga that only the Coen brothers could concoct, Miller's Crossing marries the hard-boiled sensibility of classic noir fiction with the filmmakers' trademark savory dialogue, colorful characters, and finely calibrated set pieces. Gabriel Byrne brings a wry gravitas to the role of Tom Reagan, the quick-thinking right-hand man to a powerful crime boss (Albert Finney),...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A small-town police chief concealing an explosive secret. A pair of ruthless drug dealers leave a bloody trail in their wake as they make their way from Los Angeles to Arkansas. And an enigmatic woman caught in the middle.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "This is a western like no other, combining the mythological scope of that most American of genres with the searing naturalism of a performance by Marlon Brando--all suffused with Freudian overtones and masculine anxiety. In his only directing stint, Brando captures rugged coastal and desert landscapes in gorgeous widescreen, Technicolor images, and elicits from his fellow actors (including...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "In this deeply personal tale of estrangement and reconciliation between two rebellious brothers, set in a dreamlike and timeless Tulsa, Francis Ford Coppola gives mythic dimensions to intimate, painful emotions. The director's "art film for teenagers" was his second adaptation of young-adult novelist S. E. Hinton's work in a single year, after the more classically styled The Outsiders. Graced...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Blondell, Joan

Summary: An ambitious man working as part of a surreal and disturbing traveling carnival sets out to become a mentalist and take over the job of someone else in the sideshow.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Distribution 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "Ernest Hemingway's simple but gripping short tale "The Killers" is a model of economical storytelling. Two directors adapted it into unforgettably virile features: Robert Siodmak, in a 1946 film that helped define the noir style; and Don Siegel, in a brutal 1964 version that was intended for television but deemed too violent for home audiences and released theatrically instead. The first is...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2015

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Summary: "This haunting silent thriller tells the tale of a mysterious young man (matinee idol Ivor Novello) who takes up residence at a London boardinghouse just as a killer known as the Avenger descends upon the city, preying on blonde women. The film is animated by the palpable energy of a young stylist at play, decisively establishing the director's formal and thematic obsessions."--Container.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Stigmatized from infancy by the fate of his criminal father, young Danny is bruised and bullied until one night, in a fit of rage, he kills his most persistent tormenter. As the police close in around him, Danny makes a desperate bid for the love of the dead man's fiancé, a schoolteacher who sees the wounded soul behind his aggression. A small-town fable about violence and redemption, it is the...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2018

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Summary: Set within the vibrant dancehalls and historic crime corridors of 1940s Paris, a singer with "stars in her eyes" ignores the protest of her covetous husband and pursues a meeting with a lecherous movie financier. When her husband attempts to crash the rendevous, murder ensues. Enter the detective, whose seasoned instincts lead him down a circuitous path of alibis.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2003

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Summary: Tom Ripley convinces a business associate to hire a young German picture-framer to assassinate a mobster.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A small-town Michigan lawyer takes on a difficult case: that of a young Army lieutenant accused of murdering the local tavern owner who he believes raped his wife. A gripping, envelope-pushing courtroom potboiler, Anatomy of a Murder was groundbreaking for the frankness of its discussion of sex. More than anything else, it is a striking depiction of the power of words. With its outstanding...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: The crowning achievement of Claude Chabrol's career is a riveting study of class dynamics and the psychology of crime, starring Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire as a pair of outsiders who form a mysterious alliance that gradually goes haywire.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: To escape the civil war in Sri Lanka, a former soldier, a young woman and a little girl pose as a family. They end up settling in a housing project outside Paris. Even though they barely know one another, they try to build a life together.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "Ripped from the headlines of the turbulent era between the Great War and the Great Depression, this dynamic, nostalgia-tinged crime drama balances tommy-gun action with epic historical sweep. Legends James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart star as army buddies whose fortunes rise and fall as their fates intersect, first in a foxhole on the front lines of World War I, then in Manhattan's...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2024

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Jef Costello is a fedora and trench-coat wearing contract killer with samurai instincts. When Jef assassinates a nightclub owner, he finds himself confronted by a series of witnesses, who drop his perfect world into the hands of a persistent police investigator and Jef's shadowy employer, both of whom are determined to put an end to the career criminal.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere