ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[southendmd]

IMDb:  When Charles Forsyth was sent to the electric chair for a crime he didn't commit, he forever haunts the prison where it occured. Flash forward several years the prison is reopened, under the control of it's new Warden Eaton Sharpe. A former security guard who framed Charlie. When prisoners are ordered to break down the wall to the electric chair, they unknowingly release the angry spirit of Charles Forsyth, a powerful being suffering from a murderous rage, all leading up to the Warden himself.

Sounds kind of silly to me.  But it stars Viggo Mortensen, and was filmed at the Wyoming State Prison in Rawlins.

[MaineWriter]

Mobster Ma Webster rules her clan with an iron hand, taking charge of all their robberies despite the protests of George Frost, the only member of her gang who is not her son. On Christmas Eve, Ma, George and her sons Eddie, Charlie and Tom, rob the Centre City bank, but are warned to get out of town by her other son Bert, who disdains their criminal activity and is studying to be a lawyer. Ma and the gang go on a crime spree across the states, receiving $300,000 in ransom for kidnapping, and additional cash from various robberies. Aware that the serial numbers on the ransom money have been recorded by federal agents, they arrange with fellow crook Pan to trade the money $100,000 in unmarked bills, but take the bills and kill him instead, They are unaware, however, that the police have found a list of the serial numbers for all Pan's bills in his coat pocket. Federal agents Scott Langham and Ross Waring are put on the case, and trace the Websters to a Southern town, where Ma is posing as a socialite. The Websters elude the police, but are forced to live meagerly while hiding out in cheap hotels. By the next Christmas, Ma returns to Centre City to visit Bert's baby boy. While she is out, her boys hold up a store, but Charlie is killed and Tom is arrested. Bert represents Tom at his extradition trial, and convinces him to plead guilty and return willingly to the city of the kidnapping. When George wants to go his own way, Ma and Eddie kill him, then hire Stitch Torey to get Tom away from the police. Their attempt fails, however, and most of Torey's gang perish. After a year, Ma and Eddie have developed a low profile while Eddie works at a cannery to support them, and Ma becomes neighborly. Unknown to Ma, Eddie arranges a hideout for some robbers he hopes to join up with and gives them a case of canned food, but the criminals' car crashes and the police get Eddie's fingerprints from the cans. On Christmas Eve, federal agents attempt to arrest Ma and Eddie, who respond with gunfire. In the hail of bullets, Eddie is killed and Ma is finally arrested.

[oilgun]

aka: Sur mes lèvres

Synopsis
She teaches him good manners. He teaches her bad ones.

As a secretary, Carla Behm (Emmanuelle Devos - Winner "Best Actress" 2002 Cesar Awards) is overqualified despite a disability that forces her to wear hearing aids in both ears. Still, her coworkers ridicule her daily for her plain looks, all the while taking credit for her best work. She's on the verge of cracking until she gets permission to hire an assistant.

Enter Paul Angeli (Vincent Cassel - CRIMSON RIVERS, BIRTHDAY GIRL). He's a suave, light-fingered ex-con unqualified for the simplest of tasks. However when it comes time to steal a file a co-worker has pilfered from Carla's desk, Paul has all the skills that Carla requires. Soon he discovers Carla's uncanny ability to read lips, and their relationship becomes a seductive tango as Paul enlists Carla in a revenge plot against a crooked loan shark.



Bad boys never wear shirts.  "Bad boy, bad boy, whatcha gonna do?"

Sounds kind of silly to me.  But it stars Viggo Mortensen, and was filmed at the Wyoming State Prison in Rawlins.

Viggo looks amazing, is that a shot from the film Prison? 

[southendmd]

Viggo looks amazing, is that a shot from the film Prison? 

Yes, it is, even though he looks like he might be starring in "Grease".  We all looked a little more amazing twenty years ago.

[Fran]

From Amazon.com:

Sidney Poitier directed--without much distinction, sorry to say--this 1980 comedy teaming Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor as New York knuckleheads who try their luck in California and are accused of robbing a bank. Most of the laughs concern their survival strategies in prison (at one point, Wilder decides to "reach out and talk" to some hulking murderer) and their plans to escape. Both performers are so brilliant in any situation that they give this film plenty of funny moments (one or two of which became instantly classic), but this is not exactly a film for the ages.

--Tom Keogh

[MaineWriter]

[southendmd]

IMDb:  Organized crime boss Rudi Wallchek is accused of murder and defended by prominent attorney Dwight Mason. After Wallchek is acquitted, he admits to Mason that he was, indeed, the murderer. When the chairman of the local crime commission is murdered, Wallchek is again accused. Attorney Mason sets in motion a series of events that assures justice will be served.

[Meryl]

Vera Drake (2004) is an Academy Award-nominated British film directed by Mike Leigh. It tells the story of a working class woman in London in 1950, whose values conflict with the social mores of the period.  She is arrested for performing illegal abortions.

[MaineWriter]

Roert DeNiro and Sean Penn as as escaped convicts. They end up in Canada impersonating priests. This is the second DeNiro priest impersonation movie in this round (the first was The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.)

[southendmd]

IMDb user comment:  After seeing this, all I can think is "wow." Impeccably directed by Fritz Lang, and starring a young and plump Peter Lorre, M is perhaps the single greatest film I have ever seen. Lang created two film genres with this one film: Film-Noir, and the Crime/Psychological Thriller. The origins of Film-Noir can clearly be seen in this, as are the remaining traces of German Expressionism, brought about by the director that helped pioneer both movements.

M is about the search for a child murderer in Berlin, and as the story, and the search progress, the high profile murderer begins to inhibit the lives of everyone from the Police, to the criminals, to innocent bystanders who are accused of being the murderer for even the slightest contact with any child.

The most startling thing about this film is it's use of sound. M was Germany's first talkie, and is evident by the primitive sound recording. Characters can often be just barely heard (thank God for the subtitles), but regardless of the limitations of the technology in the medium, the use of sound is advanced even by today's standards. This film featured the first scene where two different parties are talking about the same thing, and the conversation is continued between the two groups (for the dramatic touch, the two parties were the Police, and the Criminals both intent on finding the murderer to save their reputation). It was also the first talkie to have a person heard off screen while an image unrelated to the dialog is displayed on screen (as seen early in the movie when Mrs. Beckman is heard calling for her child Elsie while an empty attic, an empty chair, and an empty stairway are shown). While Lang used sound heavily to enhance the mood and feel of his film, he also went without it (complete dead silence) on occasion to increase tension and create a paranoid mood.

Other cool tricks used by the Fritz Lang include heavy use of shadows (largely in the style of the yet to come Film-Noir genre), and the use of setting to create darker moods (evidence that Lang was at the head of the German Expressionist movement).

This is a must see film. Without this film we would probably not have the modern psychological/crime thrillers like Silence of the Lambe, and Se7en.