Letterboxd — Your life in film

Comedy ruled the box office in Italy from the late 1950s to the 1970s where the commedia all’italiana also found critical success. Great talent behind and in front of the camera delivered a series of brilliant films that gave an incredible spin on familiar genres with comedic overtones that often held a dark and biting critique of social mores that would provoke a challenge to a society in need of change. Feted at local awards ceremonies and European festivals as…

Comedy ruled the box office in Italy from the late 1950s to the 1970s where the commedia all’italiana also found critical success. Great talent behind and in front of the camera delivered a series of brilliant films that gave an incredible spin on familiar genres with comedic overtones that often held a dark and biting critique of social mores that would provoke a challenge to a society in need of change. Feted at local awards ceremonies and European festivals as…

Comedy ruled the box office in Italy from the late 1950s to the 1970s where the commedia all’italiana also found critical success. Great talent behind and in front of the camera delivered a series of brilliant films that gave an incredible spin on familiar genres with comedic overtones that often held a dark and biting critique of social mores that would provoke a challenge to a society in need of change. Feted at local awards ceremonies and European festivals as…

Small-time hood Wah Dee (Andy Lau, Infernal Affairs) is enlisted by Triad boss Trumpet (Tommy Wong, The Killer) as a getaway driver for a daring heist that goes wrong. Thinking fast Dee takes Jo Jo (Jacklyn Chien-Lien Wu, The Barefooted Kid) hostage to save his skin, but the bosses order her to be killed. They escape and begin a forbidden relationship while being chased by both sides of the law. Produced by Johnnie To (Throwdown) and Ringo Lam (City on…

A woman arrives in a sleepy seaside town after receiving unsettling letters from her father, only to discover the town is under the influence of a strange cult that weeps tears of blood and hunger for human flesh. From Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, the writers of American Grafitti, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Howard the Duck, this dreamy and atmospheric film transposes the post-Night of the Living Dead zombie movie to a surreal small-town American setting,…

The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs

O.C. and Stiggs are a pair of sharp teens who carry out a vendetta against middle-class neighbour Mr. Schwab as his insurance company has cancelled O.C’s grandfather’s retirement policy. From characters created by Ted Mann and Tod Carroll of the National Lampoon (the magazine that ushered in the biggest comedy of the era in Animal House), Robert Altman brought O.C. and Stiggs to the screen, a blazing satire of 1980s America.…

A group of criminals daringly escape from prison in depression-era Mississippi. They survive by robbing banks and hole up with a gas station attendant where injured Bowie (Keith Carradine, Nashville) falls in love with the attendant’s daughter Keechie (Shelley Duvall, 3 Women). Made within one of the great runs of back-to-back classics by any filmmaker, Robert Altman followed multi-award-winning classics like M*A*S*H and The Long Goodbye with Thieves Like Us, an adaptation of Edward Anderson’s pulp novel. Previously adapted by…

Harry, a drifter (Don Johnson, Miami Vice) rolls into town and talks his way into a job at a car dealership where he becomes caught between two beautiful women, the boss’s conniving wife Dolly (Virginia Madsen, Candyman) and Gloria (Jennifer Connelly, Requiem for a Dream) a naive young accountant whose life is complicated by blackmail. When Harry plans to rob the local bank, he becomes enmeshed in a lethal web of lust, greed and extortion, whose only escape is murder.…

When he falls for the beautiful wife of the jailed boss of the Nishida gang, things start to spiral out of control for detective Kuroiwa (Tetsuya Watari, Graveyard of Honour). In a world where the line between police and organised crime is vague, he finds himself on the wrong side of a yakuza war when his superiors favour Nishida’s rivals, the Yamashiro gang. Co-starring the iconic Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood) and featuring Nagisa Oshima as chief of police, Yakuza Graveyard…

Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim) stars as the titular bride, who after marrying her love sees him murdered on the steps outside the church. From here she enacts her ruthless revenge on the group of men responsible. Undoubtedly an influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, François Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black was itself influenced by the director’s idol, Alfred Hitchcock. Adapting celebrated crime writer Cornell Woolrich (who was also the author of the short story Hitchcock’s Rear Window is based…

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…