griggs's - Moviedrome List
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Highway Patrolman (1991)El Patrullero
Pedro Rojas (Roberto Soza) graduates from the Police Academy in Mexico City with his best friend Anibal Morales (Bruno Bichir). They begin their careers as federal highway patrolman on a lonely stretch of road in Northern Mexico. Anibal immediately starts taking bribes. Pedro holds out but suffers a series of mishaps: he is shot in the leg by a drunk driver and harrassed by his father's ghost (Eduardo Lopez Rojas), wrecks a police car, beats up the son of the State Governor. Soon he too succumbs to easy money, marries a local ranch-owner, Griselda Marcos (Zaide Silvia Gutierrez) and takes as his mistress a prostitute, Maribel (Vanessa Bauche). But when Anibal is killed in a shootout with drug dealers, Pedro's old fanaticism returns. He sets out into the desert, to settle the score... - Director:
- Alex Cox
- Cast:
- Roberto Sosa, Bruno Bichir, Vanessa Bauche
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Trespass (1992)The Looters
While attending a blaze, two Arkansas firefighters, Don (William Sadler) and Vince (Bill Paxton), acquire a map identifying the whereabouts of a hoard of stolen gold hidden years earlier in an abandoned East St. Louis building. Unbeknown to the treasure hunters, the location lies within the territory of a ruthless gang, led by the notorious King James (Ice-T) and his lieutenant Savon (Ice Cube). While searching for the treasure, Vince witnesses the gang murder of an enemy and inadvertently alerts the gangsters to his presence, leading to a tense standoff. As the gang call in reinforcements, the trespassers must use every means at their disposal if they're to escape with the treasure, and their lives. - Director:
- Walter Hill
- Cast:
- Bill Paxton, William Sadler, Ice-T
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Hotter than Bond. Cooler than Bullitt, movie posters proclaimed. John Shaft was indeed a shut-your-mouth detective to reckon with, a fact emphasized from the film's start by Isaac Hayes Academy Award-winning Best Original Song and Oscar-nominated score. Richard Roundtree plays the smart, tough confident lead, a private investigator whose hunt for a kidnapped woman puts him in the middle of feuding syndicates. Gordon Parks directs from a screenplay that Ernest Tidyman co-scripted from his own novel. John Shaft is an icon of change from an era of change. Today, Shaft still tells it like it is. - Director:
- Gordon Parks
- Cast:
- Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi
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An ambitious but unscrupulous lawyer (John Garfield) works for the mob, and scents the prospect of a personal fortune when he helps concoct a plan that will merge all of New York City's numbers rackets into a single powerful and unbreakable operation. But one of them is run by his own brother (Thomas Gomez), who is much happier as an independent, mainly because it allows him to apply his own ethical standards to prevent innocent people from being corrupted by his shady activities. And it's the Cain-and-Abel clash between them that gives the film its tragic dimension. - Director:
- Abraham Polonsky
- Cast:
- John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, Marie Windsor
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Funny Bones (1995)Los comediantes
Struggling in the shadow of his famous comedian father (world-renowned entertainer Jerry Lewis), a young comic (Oliver Platt) retreats to his hometown when his act bombs in Las Vegas. Searching for a new comedy routine, he uncovers some not-so-funny secrets about his family - and discovers their own eccentricities may be just the material he's looking for. - Director:
- Peter Chelsom
- Cast:
- Jerry Lewis, Oliver Platt, Lee Evans
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Cat People (1982)La marca de la pantera
Nastassia Kinski stars as Irena, a beautiful young woman on the bridge of sexuality; she discovers love for the first time only to find that the explosive experience brings with it tragic consequences. The tremendous passion of this girl's first romantic love is so strong, however, it by-passes the chaos around her-including her brother's (Malcom McDowell) extraordinary demands - as it pushes her on to her own bizarre destiny. With a style as timeless as myth, Cat People is an erotic fantasy of the passion and terror that surround this girl's first love. Desire... passion... blood, her lust transforms her into one of the Cat People. - Director:
- Paul Schrader
- Cast:
- Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard
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The Killers (1946)Los asesinos
Ernest Hemingway s spare, laconic short story about two professional killers and their encounter with a mysteriously unresisting victim was significantly expanded into this all-time film noir classic, which Hemingway said was the first adaptation of his work that he really admired. As washed-up boxer turned hitman victim Ole 'Swede' Andreson, Burt Lancaster made his screen debut, and was catapulted to instant stardom, not least for the screen chemistry that he showed opposite sultry Ava Gardner, whose Kitty Collins is the very personification of the femme fatale. German émigré Robert Siodmak was one of the filmmakers who helped create film noir, and Elwood Bredell s high-contrast cinematography, all harsh lighting and long shadows, elevates the film far above a conventional crime drama. But even on that level it s a first-rate demonstration of how to maintain narrative tension, with the flashback structure withholding crucial details until almost the very end. - Director:
- Robert Siodmak
- Cast:
- Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien
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Caged Heat! (1974)Caged Females / Renegade Girls
Thrown into the penal hell of Connorville, petty criminal Jacqueline (Erica Gavin) must fight against the ruthless inmates, a cruel warden (Barbara Steele) and a depraved staff. Eventually she forms an uneasy friendship with two hardened inmates. When these three unite, they find themselves on a sexy and violent adventure seeking escape, money, and revenge. - Director:
- Jonathan Demme
- Cast:
- Juanita Brown, Erica Gavin, Roberta Collins
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John Thunderbolt Doherty (Clint Eastwood) is a former thief whose razor-sharp wits and steely nerves made him a monster of his profession, but he's about to to enter the criminal world with a new partner. Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges), a brash young drifter whose energy and exuberance give the veteran a new outlook on life. Their target: the seemingly impenetrable Montana Armored Depository. After forming an uneasy alliance with Thunderbolt's former partners in crime (George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis), they launch an amazing scheme that will test the limits of their endurance...and the power of their friendship. - Director:
- Michael Cimino
- Cast:
- Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy
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Leon (1994)Léon: The Professional
From acclaimed director Luc Besson comes the hard-hitting, action-packed thriller, 'Leon'. Gary Oldman plays a corrupt government official whose maniacal greed leads to murder on the streets of New York. A deadly game of cat and mouse ensues when he crosses paths with a lone hit-man named Leon (Jean Reno). Caught in the middle is an orphaned 12-year-old girl (Natalie Portman), who can't forgive or forget the man who killed her family. - Director:
- Luc Besson
- Cast:
- Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman
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Le Samouraï (1967)The Godson / The Samurai
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville, 'Le Samourai' is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940's American gangster cinema and 1960's French pop culture - with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology. - Director:
- Jean-Pierre Melville
- Cast:
- Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon
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Clockers (1995)Clockers: Hermanos de sangre
A clocker is a 24-hour drug dealer, and Strike (Mekhi Phifer) is the hardest-working one on the streets. But for Strike, time is running out. When the local drug kingpin (Delroy Lindo) tips Strike off about an opportunity for advancement, a rival dealer ends up dead, and Strike finds himself caught between two homicide detectives. One is Mazill (John Turturro), who's only looking for an easy bust. The other Rocco (Harvey Keitel), who's looking for something much harder to find the truth and when Strike's law-abiding brother confesses to the murder, Rocco vows not to rest until he's sure the real shooter is behind bars. - Director:
- Spike Lee
- Cast:
- Harvey Keitel, John Turturro, Delroy Lindo
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Experience Tim Burton's acclaimed, true-life story of the wackiest filmmaker in Hollywood history,'Ed Wood'. Celebrated actor Johnny Depp stars as the high-spirited director who never let terrible reviews or hostile studio executives derail his big-screen dreams. With an oddball collection of showbiz misfits, Ed takes the art of bad moviemaking to an all-time low! - Director:
- Tim Burton
- Cast:
- Johnny Depp, Maurice LaMarche, Martin Landau
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Boris Karloff stars in one of his most chilling roles as the sinister 'resurrection man' of old Edinburgh. Medical student Donald Fettes (Russell Wade) is apprentice to Dr. 'Toddy' MacFarlane (Henry Daniell), greatest anatomist of the age. But, as Fettes learns, MacFarlane is not scrupulous how he obtains the bodies he uses for dissection: he buys them from sinister cabman John Gray (Boris Karloff), who robs the graves of the recently deceased. But Gray's grim work has attracted attention and the cemeteries are under watch. Unwilling to give up his lucrative trade, Gray finds another source of corpses - the bodies of people he has killed himself... - Director:
- Robert Wise
- Cast:
- Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell
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Pret a Porter (1994)Prêt-à-Porter
At the world's hottest fashion show, there's been a murder.Now, everybody's a suspect, including two guests (Julia Roberts and Tim Robbins) who end up sharing more than a hotel room!Sizzling Kim Basinger also stars as s hilariously inept TV reporter on the trail of her hottest interview yet. They're all caught up in the year's biggest see-and-be-seen event - where scintillating scandals and spectacular supermodels turn up the heat in a riotous show of high-fashion hilarity! - Director:
- Robert Altman
- Cast:
- Sophia Loren, Julia Roberts, Marcello Mastroianni
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