A gutsy 30s gangster noir with two 'hood boys whose paths into adulthood are a complete contrast; Cagney becoming a violent gangster and O'Brien a priest. O'Brien has to fight the local kids' hero-worship of Cagney, and this leads to an emotional and ambiguous climax. Tense, dramatic, well-acted with sharp dialogue. Astounding. find out more...

Franz and Arthur team up with an innocent young girl, Odile, and decide to plan a heist, but as the trio cruise the bars and cafes of Paris hatching the perfect crime it becomes apparent, in their less than professional approach, that everything may not go as smoothly as at first hoped. The Outsiders is a tongue-in-cheek homage to early American pulp crime flicks, fast paced and free spirited, Godard's film retains much of its freshness and excitement. find out more...

Fritz Lang's last Hollywood film is a savage indictment of the complacency of American justice. A writer is obsessed with the idea that an entirely innocent man could be sent to the chair - and he sets out to prove his theory when a showgirl is mysteriously found dead. A classic.

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Brilliant noirish adaptation of Graham Greene's gritty novel with Attenborough superb as the psychopathic Pinky, a small time gangster and violent hood, who marries a witness to one of his crimes to keep her quiet. Disturbingly good. find out more...

Based on a true story, the film begins in 1932 with the killing of a Chicago cop and the sentencing of two young men for his murder. Fast-forward eleven years, and the boss of the Chicago Times newspaper is intrigued to find an advert by the mother of one of the killers, Frank Wiecek, asking for information about the crime, clearly Wiecek's mother thinks her son is innocent. PJ O'Neal (Stewart), one of the Times' top reporters, is dispatched to find out whether Mrs Wiecek's opinion is clouded by find out more...

Nothing more can be said about this classic melodrama from the peak of the Hollywood studio-film era. Hardened cynic Bogart softens when he meets old flame Bergman who is now a refugee in neutral wartime Casablanca. Together they outwit the Germans... and of course there's that famous song. Watch this classic or some day you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow... find out more...

Working class anti-hero Midge moves from Chicago to LA, shits on just about everybody, including his new girlfriend and those that he meets in the corrupt and brutal world of professional boxing in which he makes his way. A public hero he may be, but the cost of success is his soul.

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Perhaps THE classic film noir, made in a studio in 6 days on a minimal budget. Fatalistic narrator Neal is hitching west to catch up with his girlfriend when his lift drops dead on him. Savage is superb as the femme fatale who blackmails him into a scam. A must for any student or lover of film noir. find out more...

Phyllis Dietrichson is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who inspires in her nothing but contempt, but rather than leave him Phyllis decides to kill him and collect on the insurance policy she's had set up with the help of her lover, and naive partner in crime, insurance salesman Walter Neff. The only flaws in their plan are the company's reluctance to pay out so much, the diligence of Neff's increasingly suspicious colleague, (and his 'little man'), and the exemplary ruthlessness of Ph find out more...

A seminal 1940s film noir about two brothers trapped in a world of mob corruption and realising too late their unavoidable doom. Force of Evil is a strikingly original example of the genre, dripping in atmosphere and conveying in every word and image a sense of dread. Both the director and the star were blacklisted by the McCarthyite witch-hunts, a situation that obviously influenced their work during the film. Superb. find out more...