Tag: crime movie

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Strongroom

Director – Vernon Sewell – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 80m

*****

Three men have planned the perfect bank robbery… but then, everything goes wrong – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 30th, BFI Blu-ray Monday, February 23rd, and BFI Player Monday, March 23rd

Strongroom doesn’t hang around. It opens with a strongroom door which must be locked at close of business by two separate keys, one looked after by the bank manager Mr. Spencer (Colin Gordon from Oh Brother!, TV series, 1968; The Pink Panther, Blake Edwards, 1963; Heavens Above!, The Boulting Brothers, 1963; The Man in the White Suit, Alexander Mackendrick, 1951) and the other by his secretary Miss Taylor (Ann Lynn from Just Good Friends, TV series, 1984-86; A Shot in the Dark, Blake Edwards, 1964). This Saturday, she’s agreed to work late as no-one will be in until the Tuesday after Easter.

What neither of them know is that sitting outside the bank in their small van, waiting for the bank employees to leave as per their usual schedule, is a gang of three criminals Griff (Derren Nesbitt from Tucked, Jamie Patterson, 2018; Where Eagles Dare, Brian G.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Zodiac

Director – David Fincher – 2007 – US – Cert. 15 – 158m

Two cops, a crime reporter and a geek working on the same paper attempt to solve the identity of San Francisco’s 1970s Zodiac Killer – engrossing crime thriller / character study is now out on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

Fincher’s feature filmography is a fascinating hit-and-miss affair, debuting with the middling Alien3 (1992) then covering gems Se7en (1995, make sure you see a silvered print), Fight Club (1999) and The Social Network (2010) plus lesser outings The Game (1997), Panic Room (2002) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Zodiac concerning a serial killer, you’d be forgiven for pigeonholing it as similar to Se7en – but in fact it’s something rather different. Se7en is a fictional thriller concerning cops hunting a serial murderer – or, you might argue, the murderer himself – whose killings are inspired by the Seven Deadly Sins and an exercise in avant-garde visual style.

Zodiac is based on the unsolved case of the real life Zodiac Killer who terrorised San Francisco in the seventies. It spans decades, focusing on the four men attempting to solve the case. Attempting to stay true to the facts, it avoids a wrapped up, neat ending, presenting instead the contradictory evidence and leaving you to draw your own conclusions – or make your own guess as to the killer’s identity.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Love Lies Bleeding
(2024)

Director – Rose Glass – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 104m

****

A small town member of staff at a gym falls hard for a bodybuilding drifter, both unaware that each has baggage which will cause the other considerable grief – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 3rd

The 1980s. New Mexico. Night. Rising up from a crack in the Earth. Towards the stars. And looking out over the small town, over the Crater Gym. We follow a woman inside. (Who is she? We never find out.) Bodybuilders work out. As Lou (Kristen Stewart) works to unclog a lavatory blocked with something resembling small human body parts (!), she is hassled by Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov) who appears to have been sexually close to her at some time, and possibly still is now only Lou doesn’t care.

Elsewhere in the night, a couple are having sex in a car. He (Dave Franco) is definitely enjoying it; she (Katy O’Brian), it’s hard to tell. She wants to know if she’ll get that job now. He says he’ll sort it. He warns her to be careful where she sleeps; this is a dangerous town. She finds a place at the side of a bridge; in the morning, it’s hot and sunny, she gets up and does her exercises using the edge of the bridge for pull-ups.… Read the rest