Polanski has a go at the film noir detective thriller, very bleak, very twisted and very menacing it is to. Nicholson plays a private-eye in pre-war LA who is hired to pursue an adultery case, but finds himself embroiled in a complicated murder investigation. find out more...

Years of police work have taught Detective Finlay that where there's crime there's motive. However he finds no usual motive when investigating a man beaten to death, this man was killed because he was a Jew. "Hate", Finlay says, "is like a gun." A landmark film noir nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Edward Dmytryk directs a taught stylish tale that, certainly for its time, dared to explore a topic rarely covered in Hollywood; anti-Semitism in the US. find out more...

The year is 1932 and the world of the aristocracy is drawing to an inevitable close, but in the house of Sir William McCordle such realities are forgotten for a weekend shooting party. As the eclectic mixture of guests arrive so the belly of the house also swells with various valets and personal servants; but as characters develop it becomes clear that some have neglected to know their place and before the weekend is out a murder has been committed. 'Gosford Park' is a quite stunning recreation find out more...

An arrogant bright black Northern homicide detective travelling via a small Mississippi town becomes involved in a murder investigation after a local industrialist is found dead. Engaged in a clash of wills with the local racist cop the two eventually develop a mutual respect. Won Best Picture at 1967 Academy Awards. find out more...

An ambitious journalist wants to get to the top of his profession. In order to get the inside scoop on a murder, he feigns mental illness and goes undercover in the county hospital's psychiatric unit, where the murder was witnessed by three of the inmates. Immersed into the world of the mentally unsound and subject to intense shock treatment, he soon tips the balance of sanity and pays the ultimate price for his "rehearsed nightmare". More harrowing than "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", Shock find out more...

This is, along with Hawks' The Big Sleep, easily the most intelligent of all screen adaptations of Chandler's work. Altman in fact stays pretty close to the novel's basic narrative (though there are a couple of crucial changes), but where he comes up with something totally original is in his ironic updating of the story and characters: Gould's Marlowe is a laid-back, shambling slob who, despite his incessant claim that everything is 'OK with me,' actually harbours the same honourable ideals as C find out more...

A case history of a middle-aged man with an urge to commit insane and violent murders, well OK he just liked to top people, as we all feel like doing from time to time, but in this case the police could never catch him. A flashback goes some way towards explaining how he developed such a disdain for authority, and the film takes an almost doco-style approach to the crimes of its protagonist and takes great pains to examine the impact his behavior had on his mother, father and wife. A rare insigh find out more...