Letterboxd — Your life in film

Franco Nero (Django) stars as an architect thrown in jail for a misdemeanour in The Case is Closed: Forget It. Inside, he sees the grim reality of life behind bars, faced with corrupt guards and a prison yard ruled by the mafia. Damiano Damiani (A Bullet for the General) continues his exploration of mafia stories with this gritty prison drama. Nero gives a sympathetic performance as the honest man, while support is given by noted character actors including Riccardo Cucciola…

The Day of the Owl stars Franco Nero (Django) as a police chief who, while investigating the death of a construction worker, goes up against corrupt officials and a ruthless mafia boss (Lee J. Cobb, On the Waterfront). Adapted from the celebrated novel by Leonardo Sciascia (Illustrious Corpses, Todo Modo), The Day of the Owl was the first book to openly deal with organised crime in Sicily. Director Damiano Damiani followed in the civic-minded cinema of Francesco Rosi and Elio…

In How to Kill a Judge, Franco Nero (Django) plays filmmaker Giacomo Solaris, whose latest film features a judge corrupted by the mafia and who is later killed. The real judge the character is based on seizes the film but is later found murdered. Feeling a degree of responsibility, Solaris investigates through his police and mafia advisors, but as the assassinations increase around him, will he reach the source of the conspiracy? Full of twists and a fascinating meta-commentary on…

When Amy is suddenly stricken by the random idea she will die tomorrow, a bizarre phenomena starts passing through her social circle, where each and every person is eventually hit by the same realisation they will not last until the next sunrise, despite there being no obvious reason to believe this. Rather than riffing on the notion of contagion as conventional plague Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow takes an abstract route into the subject, one which recalls films such as…

Klouk (Bernard Crombey) is a car salesman who has to miss a family holiday to deliver a luxury Chevrolet station wagon to his boss' wealthy client. He decides to take his friend Philippe (Xavier Saint-Macary) along with him for the ride across the length of France from Lille to the Cote d'Azur. On the way they give a lift to hitchhiker Charles (Etienne Chicot) who also brings along his friend Daniel (Patrick Bouchitey). A buddy road movie that came together…

Thomas (Marquard Bohm, Kings of the Road) gets a ride to Munich where he finds his ex-girlfriend Peggy (counter culture activist and model Uschi Obermaier) who takes him in. In her flat he finds Peggy and her roommates have a commune-like lifestyle where they kill the men in their lives after five days, but will Thomas realise in time? A pop fantasy focused on the post-’68 and women's liberation movements, Red Sun was compared to a comic strip by Wim…

George Armitage (Grosse Pointe Blank) adapted celebrated noir author Charles Willeford’s novel Miami Blues for the screen with new star Alec Baldwin in the lead role as Frederick J. Frenger, Jr., a sociopathic criminal. Arriving in Miami fresh out of jail he commits one crime after another when he meets young hooker Susie (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Single White Female) who he starts to build a pseudo-married life with, including the home cooking and the white picket fence. As Frederick tries…

Junior high school student Dawn “Wiener-dog” Wiener is perpetually teased by her classmates and tormented by the school bully, Brandon. All she wants is to be popular and that would certainly help her emerging crush on the lead of her brother’s garage band. Todd (Happiness) Solondz’s celebrated coming-of-age comedy won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and young star Heather Matarazzo was awarded Best Debut Performance at the prestigious Independent Spirit Awards. Perfectly capturing the growing pains…

Police officer Stig Nyman is murdered by an unseen assailant brandishing a bayonet. His colleagues Beck, Rönn and Kollberg pick up the case quickly, keen to solve the crime on one of their own. Investigating Nyman and drawing up a list of potential suspects leads the team to discover he was a lousy cop who abused his power with a history of brutality. As their search draws closer they are caught unaware by a rooftop assassin with a sniper rifle,…

A series of prostitute murders disturb the public with the thought of a serial killer on the loose. Hélène Picard, a prostitute, is sentenced and executed for the murders, but shortly thereafter similar crimes continue. Executioner Louis Guilbeau meanwhile develops a relationship with the investigating officer, Solange, who soon learns Louis may not be who he says he is. Filmed in the tumultuous events of May 1968, Jean-Denis Bonan's A Woman Kills never found distribution due to controversy around the…

An odious architect is beaten to death and a high society wife (Jacqueline Bisset, Day for Night) and her gay friend (Jean-Louis Trintignant, The Conformist) are the key suspects with a discarded letter implicating them in the crime. Commissioner Santamaria (Marcello Mastroianni, Fellini’s 8 ½) is assigned to the case and tries to uncover the murder suspect in upper-class Turin. With a murder mystery narrative worthy of Agatha Christie, The Sunday Woman is also a sharp critique of Turin’s upper…

Tokyo, 1934. Gang boss Arakawa is too ill and a successor must be named. The choice falls on Nakai, but being an outsider he refuses and suggests senior clansman Matsuda instead. But Matsuda is in jail and the elders won’t wait for his release, so they appoint the younger and more malleable Ishido to take the reins. Clan honour and loyalties are severely tested when Matsuda is released, resulting in an increasingly violent internal strife. An atmospheric tale of gangland…