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The best thing you can say about The Wire is that is so close to real life that it lingers in your mind even months after having seeing it . In the end this can be said of very few series /films throughout the years and for me there is no doubt that The Wire is among those creations which truly have marked an era

Moreover in some ways it marks a new milestone as we don't realize how hard is to keep the interest for 5 entire seasons and to display such a wide and varied portrait of characters as The Wire does.... in this sense Simon's merit is even greater.This is not the prototypical 90 minutes gangster's film ,it last for about 60 hours where all ends of Baltimore's daily life are covered , from the obvious drugs dealing to political corruption, from failure to success ,all of which may led to same deadly end .

Simon and the corresponding directors for each chapter always manage to show raw situations in a totally realistic way .Moreover these are shown through the eyes of the carefully designed characters , with whom you totally come to empathize , which adds a empathy note to the equation which makes the outcome ever more raw

You come to care and to suffer for all the characters involved as if they were real , it's difficult to say what matters more : the situation or the characters …you can always take opposite sides., maybe Omar or Stringer and many of the characters are acting wrong but you totally wish that they will be able to get away with it …no matter how much pain they are causing

Plot is so full of grip , ramifications and twist on the plot are so many and so carefully put together that seems that you are actually living in the east Baltimore and dealing with all these trouble yourself. It's not even that all twist are unexpected , as there are times when some consequences are quite foreseeable, you can easily figure out how some of the main characters will end due to their suicide life style but this doesn't make them any less impacting when the moment of truth finally comes

Omar can be a ruthless killer but come to care for this man, same for Bubbles , it's impossible not to suffer for him when you see him again dragged down and shooting himself heroine once more

What else can be said about The Wire , there are not enough words to describe how magnificent this series actually is . Never an above 9 rate on the IMDb has been so fair and duly deserved as this one.

Nice and well paced B thriller , one of those in which you enjoy the way the directors manage to overcome the obvious script and budget limitations to create a personal piece of work , as much as the film itself . It happened in the past and still happens today , what could have turned into a routine movie it's saved by an skilled director who is able to add some spark to what otherwise could be an unremarkable film

Lerner was an absolute expert on this task and It's quite appealing to see this in action and how he manages to create and maintain the tension throughout this film . Literally he builds it out from nothing , no budget and based on a script that you probably came across on a dozen of movies before . All action and trouble comes from an small cylinder allegedly containing heroine worth 1 million USD , which has been stolen by a convict during his prison break . It contains a highly radioactive material instead which causes the alarm and the relentless pursuit of the convict .

Don't get any wrong impression , this is a classic man on the run B thriller , and as such there are some incongruences but mostly it's filmed imaginatively enough to offset the lack of budget and keep the interest It can be compared to what happened with Budd Boetticher , both get some attention when they received some props from Scorssesse himself , so that shed some light to their careers which thus far have been quite neglected by the general public.

Really impressed. Didn't think it was possible to recreate the style of the 50's classic film noir in such an impressive way , and on top of that add to it an explicitly raw and violent touch you can find nowadays in other Ferrara's films like Bad Lieutenant or The Funeral . This produces a shocking effect, centered in the day to day of a Chicago police squad in the 50s , it picks up again the classic film noir themes , robbery ,double crossing , good guy going the wrong road and paying for the wrong choices.

But all is treated in a different way and it's not only a recreation of a classic film . Ferrara's approach is much more raw , Dennis Farina is not the honest cop who always sticks to the law . Here you have a degenerated cop who follows his own impulses rather than sticking to the procedures. Difference between good and bad it's no always that clear and Ferrrara plays perfectly with that duality,

As a one time film this works really fine , plot and ambiences are really solid ,only con is that , apart from Farina who is superb and makes the film, someone could ask for more charismatic actors to fill in the secondary roles ,here you have Michael Rooker and David Carusso who never were known for being the paradigm of good acting . Anyway , amazing film wasn't aware that this was based on a series but I'm looking forward to put my hands on that .

Well really the beginning is not that bad when compared with the way it develops later on . Indeed the beginning is funny and somehow entertaining..right after the old lady went mad but it's also really misleading... For a second you hope you are about to see something in the vein of The Prophecy , you know with fallen angels and all that stuff , and definitively it's not that what the film give us.

The whole plot is senseless, and the ending is completely stupid . Could have done something better, I totally dig films about this kind of satanic stuff , don't even have to be a masterpiece for me to enjoy , f.i I found End of Days , The Prophecy , Stigmata highly enjoyable . But this is a total lack of time and a wasted effort. If the director thought for a second that adding up zombies , fallen angels. a group of guys isolated in a gas station in a Romero's style and tons of special effects he would came up with a good film…sorry to say that he failed miserably.

I would have expected something much better from Val Guest , to put it other way I would have never expected such a senseless film from someone who during the 50's managed to direct "Hell is a city" ( with the great Stanley Baker ) or excellent sci Fri flick "the day the Earth caught fire " .

To be honest this films fails on almost every aspect imaginable. Plot is somewhere between ridiculous and absurd. Seems that the 70's didn't make him any good to his career.

A band of mercenaries (which included O.J Simpson and Christopher Lee ) plans to heist a diamond depot placed somewhere in the African desert . There are many aspects that are horrible in this film , which go from the acting (meaning Peter Fonda, Teddy Savallas and C.Lee are all capable of delivering good acting but here they are so bonded by a ridiculous script that everything they say sounds laughable ) , plot dialogues and action scenes are simply lame , as they would have been taken from the A team outtakes .

Acting didn't escape from the burn , sad to see Christopher Lee playing the role of a ruthless mercenary , I would have never expected to see him in such a lame role he's the Prince of Darkness for god sake Don't drag him into o this embarrassing situations .

Only positive comment would be that the end is as ridiculous as the rest of the film, so at least you can find a trace of coherence here ..sadly it the sole you'll find

Night of the seagulls is my favorite Amando De Ossorio's movie . All the flicks he made about the legend of the templars zombies are pretty decent given the difficulties to surmount to fund and create an horror film in the late 60s early 70s Spanish industry . La noche de las Gaviotas appears as the more credible and well rounded outcome among his creations ( well don't know if we can use the term credible when we are referring to templars zombies) .

Ossorio manages to transmit an eerie and creepy atmosphere throughout the film . All action is located in a remote and isolate village in the Galicia's seaside , whose villagers are encircled by the Blind Dead cult . Sole solution to ease the templars' blood thirst is to offer them young virgin for sacrifice .

A young doctor and his wife arrived there and, obviously they don't seem to agree with local traditions . Villagers don't seem to love foreigners either , so you can expect a tied match

Well , plot might seem a bit dull and won't dare to deny that actually is , but what counts here is the atmosphere Ossorio manages to create a chilly and eerie ambiance , maybe due to the remote localization in which the film was shot but for whatever reason film is actually very effective . Scenes where templar's appears on the beach to regain their victims are pretty well filmed

Being Melville my favorite director ever and this his final film, what could I say .I was speechless when I first saw it years ago and even today after several views it still amazes me.

Doubtless this was a great ending to his outstanding career, the man who redefined the film noir himself and whose films ,at least half a dozen of them, should be placed among the greatest pieces of film noir ever filmed could not do wrong in his Swang song .

And he didn't do wrong indeed, probably it ain't as good as Le Doulous , LeSamurai , Bom Le Flambeur a, Circle Rouge and so on but it comes closer , which by any means does mean that this movie deserves less than a 10 . Initial scene , when the gang arrive to the bank they have planned to rob under the pouring rain , is so beautifully filmed that has become one of my favorite moments in his career.

Melville came back once again to his traditional obsessions ( solitude , crime & betrayal, revenge ) and placed them into an amazing heist movie , as a way to explore the human nature.

Once again Delon nailed it as the solitary cop and is the prefect vehicle to put face to all these themes. His performance is so chilled out and so classy , in the vein of the silent Jeff Costello , that this is another classic display of acting , no matter whether he plays a thief or a cop you always wanted him to win.

You can predict much of the themes and situations you can face here if you've seen Melville's previous films , but nonetheless this doesnñt make them any lessexciting . Plot is pretty basic ,stripped to the very necessary, but what makes the movie are its silences and its ambiances ,totally filled up with hopelessness and despair . Don'texpect much talk here , Melville , unlike Tarantino, can pass on the message through without needing thousands of senseless speeches . In the end whether Delon will catch Crenna didn't seem to matter much, at that point you have come to know and love the characters as they are and how this will end up becomes secundary.

Pleasant surprise, I wonder how the hell this film get the approval of the Spanish censorship, probably because at the beginning there is a small note stating that the crime doesn't pay, so after that kind of green light director probably felt that he can shot whatever he wanted with no restrictions…and he did a hell of a film indeed.

Five men plot to steal the payroll from a isolated factory, Heist goes wrong and it turns into a massacre . They are forced to split up during the escape,so history follows up both the police investigation leading to the criminals who committed the heist and the runaway of the various participants .

Can hardly count the number of people killed here. Film is only about 1h 15 but pace is frantic there is plenty of violence , shootings and prosecutions . Overall the film is very entertaining, no time to get bored here , and whole plot is quite solid , even up to the final scenes .. obviously this is a 50s Spanish film of the 50's the criminals to get away with murder , that simply won't happen. but. Anyway there are many ways to create a climax and this keep up the tension up to the very end of it .

Didn't know this was scripted by Dalton Trumbo , or by someone on his behalf let's say, due to the circumstances which surrounded the guy during the 50's. His script here is not particularly impressive , plot is quite dull indeed ,typical revenge history focused on the clash between the righteous and noble country boy and the hired gun whit conscience troubles who knows that the end of the road is getting closer for him . We have seen this history a million times , so accomplishments of this films are mostly on the visual side, the way it was beautifully shot in black and white , relying on the dark ambiances to make up for the lack of budget ...Lewis definitively knew how to do that .

The whole tone of hopelessness and deception given to the film reminds me a bit of Ow Box Incident ( but that was a much better film ) The impression I get after having seen this is that with a tighter script the outcome could have been much better , ( for instance why Sterling and his father are using an harpoon ? it appears this was the only weapon they could find but it's clear that there are people in the village who have guns and ammunition …ok maybe it's just a symbol )

Sterling never was a hell of an actor let's admit it. He was quite solid and managed to complete dozens of good films throughout his career but when it comes to acting he was not specially skilled .

He knew to play though characters which made him a perfect choice for film noir and westerns , but don't ask him for much acting , his presence was enough . Problem here is that he had to play a Swedish character and his accent is a bit ridiculous , but his impressive presence and his stiff face contribute a lot to the elegiac tone of the film .

Don't expect a dull movie here in the vein of the Spanish 50's melodramas. This is almost the Spanish version of Bad Lieutenant filmed 40 years before, obviously it's a bit exaggerated but if you see it under perspective of the political situation in Spain during these years El Salario de la Violencia turns out to be quite a quite risky film. You can find many films covering similar grounds in the US or France , but sadly that's not the case for Spain ,where due to the political situation all cinema was oriented to a more folkloric side. This is what it makes this film special , had this been filmed in the US it would be an unremarkable film but in Spain you can hardly find any film noirs nor many alumni of the works of Richard Thorpe , Phil Karlson or J.Becquer.

Plot is about police corruption , a fine cop who felt in love with a kind of rich femme fatal he met during an investigation . Obviously he can afford to follow up her expensive living with his modest salary so he starts behaving randomly in a Bad Liutenant' style, taking money and hiding evidences until finally he ends up planning a bank heist .

It's not only the subject of the film id quite audacious due to the Spanish censorship in force at that time . It's also that the film itself is well constructed , plot and actors are quite credible and realistic ( even A. Fernandez who later became a popular figure in Spain for his comical roles in popular movies and also for his total lack of any acting skills ) You can avoid to come across to a moralistic end and some bizarre turns made the plot became a bit cheesy at the end but it's well worth the time .

What a brilliant movie, that was the first thinking that crossed my mind when I first saw this some years back and that very same thinking is the one I had when I went through this film again recently. A user mentioned in his comment that Lizbeth Scott and Dan Duryea are not Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray , yes they ain't but don't think their performances have much to envy them here, and overall this film ,even if it can hold comparison with the classic film noir namely Double Indemnity or whatever films you may think of . it turns out to be a minor master piece which deserves much more attention and appreciation

Both Scott and Duryea are superb throughout the whole movie . You can feel the evil personified by Scott , raising and taking hold of Dureya and Kennedy. dragging them down to an the unavoidable spiral of hate and ambition , almost the same way you can't help getting dragged by the absorbent plot and theoppressive atmosphere

Only the final scene cracked me up a little but up to that point plot is solid enough and script twist are pretty credible, all rounded up by great acting.

Minor film noir classic . Well worth a try

Not among Siegel's finest , but in any case not a bad attempt at all. In this first stage of his career Siegel worked as a kind of hired hand on numerous low budget films .In some cases he was forced to work with very standard material, nonetheless in some others Siegel worked with some of the finest scripts ever created such as the Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Killers. No worries whatsoever, if the basis are not that solid here ,Siegel had what it takes to left his mark and didn't need a super script to come out with an amazing films ,as he proved with the Line up or Private Hell 36.

Sadly foundations here are not that solid , indeed these are much much weaker . He was probably charged with the task of making a teenage movie in the vein of the Blackboard Jungle ,same as he was probably assigned to do in Riot in Block cell 11 .

In both cases he managed to succeed though working under disadvantageous circumstances: low budget , unoriginal plots with a moralistic tone which allows to see the what would be the end from minute one . Crime in the streets also had some clichés about juvenile delinquency.

But Siegel overcame aany inconveniences to provide a more than decent outcome . Characters are solid and well constructed, Cassavettes is very convincing as the leader of the gang and action flows smoothly , helped by the sense of realism that the director gives to the film, so overall not bad at all

I know it's hard to keep track of the endless mumber of movies Jess Franco carriedout during his 4 decades career ...sometimes 3 o 4 at a time , but if someone asks me to list only three among his more remarkable this would be one of those that would made the cut.

Don't think for a second this is up to the Rififi's standards , Jess probably thought that could get some extra publicity by having Jean Servais so tried to sell this as a kind of Rififi follow up , but sadly all similarities ended up in the title .

As a film noir it turns out to be quite weak at some points but it's also true that , as it happens with most of Jess' flicks , Rififi en la ciudad has its charms . Apparently action is located in an undetermined South American country but actually Jess filmed all the action in the south of in Spain and even with a restricted budget ambiance are well crafted and manages to give us the atmosphere Jess intended . Plot itself it's not a wonder, classical search for a killer mixed up with some revenge touches but is enough to keep you interested throughout the film . Main assets here is that Jess is not trying to do here his usual mix of sexplotation ,vampires ,lesbanism . He steps in a different ground and provided the level of the Spanish cinema in the late 50's I would say that he accomplished a fine impersonation of the Dassin and Melville works and ambiance's.

Quite entertaining, though wouldn't say this is among Polanki's finest overall is quite solid and ended up positively surprised . Not if we measure it against the old Polanski's master pieces , but yes if we compare it with the political thrillers we are getting from Hollywood lately ( lately means almost two decades indeed) .

Major inconvenience for me is that for being a Polanski film this is quite an impersonal film in some ways , plot is OK but couldn't find Polanski's touch more of the times , it could have been directed by any other director and no one would notice the difference , has a kind of dark and oppressive ambiance throughout which is quite good but wouldn't dare to compare it with the Pianist or his most personal works of the 70s such as The Tenant or Rosemary' Baby .

As an espionage thriller this effort works fine but nowadays political thrillers are not what they used to be in 70's , there are some honorable exceptions as the Constant Gardener but don't think Polanski delivers here as much as Meirelles did . In the end this is well above the political thrillers produced by Hollywood even if it fails to become something really impressive

McGregor never impressed me throughout his career and this time is no different ,seems so flat and inexpressive that made me wish that someone with more nerve had gotten his role. Brosnan is OK , but seems that he's just being himself rather than acting . Big surprise for me was to find out Eli Wallach is still alive and acting ,though is sad to see him that old .