Tag: investigator

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Crime 101

Director – Bart Layton – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 140m

*****

A high class lone operator thief and the rigorously analytical cop on his trail cross paths with a disillusioned insurance saleswoman to the wealthy – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 13th

As coloured dots come into focus, they are revealed to be the lights of a Los Angeles freeway upside down, an image which bookends the movie. Davis (Chris Hemsworth) exercise in his sparse apartment before donning a suit. Detective “Lou” Lubesnik (Mark Ruffalo) shaves in his small, untidy bathroom. Sharon Coombs (Halle Berry), in her bathroom, goes through the laborious task of applying make-up.

This is essentially a four-hander – more of the fourth character later on.

Davis is a lone operator who thinks through his proposed robberies beforehand in such a way as to ensure that no-one gets hurt. LAPD investigator Lubesnik has become obsessed with a string of robberies he believes committed by the same person, to the detriment, as his colleagues and superiors see it, of his regular police work. Sharon works for a high end insurance company who have been stringing her along for years with hollow promises of board membership to use her now fading good looks to close sales to wealthy clients.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Ring
(Ringu,
リング )
(Collection)

Ring

Director – Hideo Nakata – 1998 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 96m

*****

Spiral (Rasen)

Director – Joji Iida – 1998 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 97m

** 1/2

Ring 2

Director – Hideo Nakata – 1999 – Japan – Cert. 12 – 95m

*****

Ring 0

Director – Norio Tsuruta – 2000 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 99m

***1/2

Ring plays in the BFI Japan 2021 season October / November at BFI Southbank, also currently streaming on BFI Player as part of the BFI Japan 2021 programme. Ring and Ring 2 are on Shudder.

You watch a short, scary video on the VCR. Then your phone rings… you have a week to show it to someone else – or die! Ring (1998) took the world by storm.

A single parent, TV journalist investigates a cursed videotape…

I review Arrow’s Ring Collection for All The Anime.

Ring plays in the BFI Japan 2021 season October / November at BFI Southbank, also currently streaming on BFI Player as part of the BFI Japan 2021 programme. Ring and Ring 2 are on Shudder.

Trailer:

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Features Live Action Movies

Sleepy Hollow

Director – Tim Burton – 1999 – US – 15 – 105 mins

***

A nineteenth century policeman must solve a series of gruesome murders allegedly by a headless horseman wielding a sword – in cinemas from Friday, January 7th 2000.

Tim Burton’s last few movies have been a real treat, but this adaptation of Washington Irvine’s classic American tale is a disappointment. Murder scene-hardened, late nineteenth century policeman Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) is sent to isolated hamlet Sleepy Hollow to solve a mysterious series of murders. As the locals and his own eyes keep telling him, the murderer is no mystery but a headless horseman riding around decapitating victims with his sword.

Splendidly creepy visual designs from regular collaborator Rick Heinrichs (Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993, Edward Scissorhands, 1990) looks as good as any previous Burton, if not better. The proceedings can commendably be accused of neither gratuitous gore nor shirking the necessary quantity or quality of decapitations. But Sleepy Hollow has major flaws. Namely, that one doesn’t feel for Ichabod Crane the way one felt for Johnny Depp playing prior Burton protagonists Edward Scissorhands or Ed Wood. Crane is supposedly a nineteenth century investigator who uses twentieth century investigative methods, yet Burton never properly gets to grips with this essential background material.… Read the rest