Foster on Film

A pair of killers (Charles McGraw, William Conrad) show up in a small town diner with plans to kill the Swede (Burt Lancaster). Things are delayed as they terrorize the three people there, but eventually they get their man, who does not resist. Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien), an insurance investigator, takes the case because the

A Few Thoughts Carmen: “You’re not very tall are you? Marlowe “Well, I try to be.” There, less than three minutes into the film, and it’s clear that something special is going on. This is no cheap detective thriller. This is art. Normally, a review would include some general plot synopsis at this point, but

Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) is a rather bland businessman with commitment issues and a very clingy girlfriend, Paula (Pamela Britton)—really, really clingy. He heads to San Francisco for a sudden vacation. After a night of wild partying, he discovers he’s been poisoned by a “luminous” substance and has between a day and a week to

Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd) returns from the war with his two buddies (William Bendix & Hugh Beaumont), one of whom has a brain injury. His sleazy drunken wife, Helen (Doris Dowling) has been carrying on an open affair with Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva) a wealthy criminal, and admits to killing their child in a

Two soldiers murder Samuels (Sam Levene), a Jewish man. While police captain Finlay (Robert Young) is in the apartment of the victim, Montgomery (Robert Ryan), show up. He’s one of a group of recently returned servicemen that had met the victim the night before. His story sets the police after Mitchell (George Cooper), the most

What is often missed about Double Indemnity is that it is a comedy, a dark, twisted, comedy.  The world of most Film Noirs is an extreme version of our world–everything has been kicked up a notch. Billy Wilder just took it up an additional “notch.”  It’s a parody of Film Noir made while Film Noir was

A beautiful blonde model is murdered in her New York apartment. Lt. Dan Muldoon (Berry Fitzgerald) and detective Jimmy Halloran (Dan Taylor) are put on the case. It will lead to a string of jewelry robberies and to the nearly pathologically untruthful Frank Niles (Howard Duff) and his snooty fiancée Ruth Morrison (Dorothy Hart). Critics

Nick, a troubled policeman (Michael Douglas), becomes the mental and physical plaything of rich, educated, bisexual partier, Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), a suspect in an ice pick murder.  His simple partner (George Dzundza) and ex-lover, psychologist Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), try to help him, but he falls deeper and deeper into addiction and Catherine’s

In London, General Sternwood (James Stewart) hires American expatriate detective Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) to deal with blackmail threats. However, what he really wants is for Marlowe to uncover what happened to his missing son-in-law.  Marlowe finds that both the blackmail and the disappearance are tied up with Sternwood’s wild daughters, Charlotte (Sarah Miles) and Camilla (Candy

Stuffy, British couple Fiona and Nigel Dobson (Kristin Scott Thomas, Hugh Grant) take a cruise to India in an attempt to bring some magic to their overly comfortable marriage.  On board they meet sexy, French, femme fatale, Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner), and her obnoxious, crippled, American husband, Oscar (Peter Coyote), who pick Nigel to hear the

Abby (Frances McDormand) has an affair with Ray (John Getz) to distract herself from her life with Marty (Dan Hedaya), who is also Ray’s boss.  Marty has hired a detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to watch his wife.  With the best of these four people a cheat and liar, and the worst an amoral murderer and

Insurance salesman Walter Neff (Richard Crenna) is seduced by housewife Phyllis Dietrickson (Samantha Eggar) into killing her husband. Walter falsifies an accident policy for the husband that has a double indemnity clause: it pays double if the insured dies in a train accident. Their one foreseeable problem is Barton Keyes (Lee J. Cobb), a crack insurance investigator