Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
1957 Billy Wilder courtroom drama from Agatha Christie. Charles Laughton as defense barrister, Marlene Dietrich as the wife.
Tag: Mystery (Page 4)
2000sThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
Oplev's 2009 Swedish thriller. Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander.
1940sCitizen Kane (1941)
The film film school built itself around. Deep focus, ceiling shots, fractured timeline.
2000sThe Dark Knight (2008)
The film that proved comic book films could be major cinema. The Dark Knight is the Christopher Nolan-directed second entry in his Batman trilogy and the film that established the post-2008 standard for superhero cinema.
1950sRashomon (1950)
Kurosawa's 1950 film that gave English the word for unreliable narrative. Four versions of one crime, each true, each false.
AdaptationThe Raven (1935 / 1963 / 2012), Contrast Review
Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 poem The Raven has generated multiple screen adaptations across nearly a century of cinema. The three versions covered here represe.
2000sMemento (2000) Review
Christopher Nolan's directorial breakthrough. Guy Pearce's career-defining performance.
1990sBasic Instinct (1992) Review
Paul Verhoeven's foundational erotic thriller. Sharon Stone's career-defining performance.
2000sThe Hangover (2009) Review
Reverse-mystery structure, Galifianakis as Alan, Mike Tyson on the air drums, and the taser scene that never stops being funny. The film is funnier on rewatch than it was on first viewing because the audience already knows where it is…
Crime FictionKiller Cuts and Dead Letters
A salon owner and a mail carrier between them know everything about a block, which turns out to matter after chapter two. A dark comedy crime novel.
FictionAltverse
Ari maps condemned buildings and finds a projector with forty-three symbols on its ring, each one a different world. Speculative fiction with a documenter at the center.
1990sDark City (1998) Review
Dark City is the most underrated film in the history of science fiction cinema. It arrived in 1998, one year before The Matrix, explored several of the same fundamental questions about manufactured reality and the nature of consciousness, and was…