Franklyn (2009)

Jonathan Preest is a very vigilant detective who lives in Meanwhile City, a city of the future.

He is an atheist living in a city ruled by faith and religious fanatics, and he spends his time wandering about, looking for “The Individual”, his rival.

In the parallel world of contemporary London we meet four unique characters which share one characteristic: their unhappiness.

Milo is a young man who is broken hearted because his fiancé left him at the altar; Sally is Milo’s high school sweetheart, whom he hopes to start a new life with.

Emilia is a cynical and depressive Arts student who is always trying to find better ways of committing suicide in order to film and expose them as part of her degree paper.

Finally, we meet Esser, a Cambridge priest who goes to the capital in order to search his lost son amongst the homeless people of London.

Release Date: 20 February 2009

Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Thriller

Cast: Jay Fuller, Eva Green, Bernard Hill, Ryan Phillippe, Art Malik

Director: Gerald McMorrow

The movie goes beyond the murderer’s atrocious crimes, all the way to the impact they have caused on the victims, on their families and friends, and even on the communities they were a part of.

The police detective Matt Parish and his son Johnny, who is obsessed with the Zodiac’s crimes, are going back on the killer’s trace and are trying to find as many clues as possible related to his real identity.

What they seem to be ignoring is that, during this headhunt, they are not only jeopardizing their lives, but also the one of their relatives as well.

Will that stop their search?

Release Date: 17 March 2006

Genre: Crime, Drama, Horror, Mystery,Thriller

Cast: Justin Chambers, Robin Tunney, Rory Culkin, Philip Baker Hall, William Mapother, Brad William Henke, Rex Linn

Director: Alexander Bulkley

Fissure Poster

Life for detective Paul Grunning has not been very pleasant lately. He has gone though a personal tragedy, but he keeps working so as to keep his mind off other things.

One night, following a routine call, he is sent to the house of a local scientist, but it soon turned out there was nothing usual about that place.

What he found out there is considered to be a deadly secret and he will soon be forced to distinguish between what is real and what is not; he will have to decide if he has the courage to change his destiny but also that of the mankind.

In order to be able to share his secret to anybody else, he will have to find his way out of a parallel and fractured reality before it will be too late.

Release Date: 2008

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Cast: James MacDonald, Scarlett McAlister, Jim Blumetti, Crystal Mantecon,

Director: Russ Pond

I Heart Huckabees Poster

Convinced that a series of coincidences regarding a door man actually hide a secret related to the main enigmas of life, Albert Markovki asks for the help of a detective agency different from all others, which will soon lead him to questioning the essence of his own existence.

In his attempt to discover the secret meaning of those coincidences, Albert also asks advice from Bernard and Vivian Jaffe, also known as the Existential Detectives, a married couple of meta-physicians. They usually investigate the mysteries that are at the base of their clients’ inner and secret lives.

When they take over a case, they closely follow their client, observe their daily activities, question their friends and work colleagues.

The only difference between them and a traditional private investigator is that they try to find the solution to the most persistent of mysteries – the one which stands at the base of all essence of reality and of existence itself……will they succeed?

Release Date: 22 October 2004

Genre: Comedy

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman, Lily Tomlin, Mark Wahlberg, Naomi Watts

Director: David O. Russell

Martin Lawrence and Will Smith meet again with the producer Jerry Bruckheimer and the director Michael Bay for another action movie full of amazing and intense adventures in “Bad Boys II”.

The danger coefficient is greater as well as the laughing effect because the detectives from Tactical Narcotics Team, Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett are now taking part from the special team, and their duty is to stop the invasion of Ecstasy to Miami.

Without knowing, they discover a dangerous conspiracy that implies a cruel baron of drugs, decided to enlarge his empire and to have the control over the profitable narcotics trade, killing anyone who stays in his way.

The things get even worse when the beautiful sister of Marcus, Syd, a DEA undercover agent, gets caught in the middle, forcing our heroes to reach the border of illegality.

The task becomes even more difficult when Mike starts a relationship with Syd, Marcus being very overprotective.

Release Date: 18 July 2003 (USA)

Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime, Thriller

Cast: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Jordi Mollà, Gabrielle Union, Peter Stormare

Director: Michael Bay

What Doesn’t Kill You

Brian and Paulie are two young delinquents who action on the tough streets of South Boston.

Coming from different families, but both disunited, the two boys form such a deep friendship that it transforms them in brothers.

They do everything that is necessary to survive, living by the illegal and immoral rules of the neighborhood they live in.

While Brian and Paulie grow up, their little offences become crimes even bigger.

Those two end up in the hands of Pat Kelly, the boss of organized crime, who takes care of all the illegal businesses from the south region.

In time, they get arrested by detective Moran.

After they are released from prison, they think completely different: Paulie wants to get rid of this convict life through a last daylight rubbery, kind of dangerous; and Brian wants to get back to his family.

When Paulie asks for his help, Brian has to make the hardest decision of his life: to help his friend or to save his marriage.

He can’t do both, can’t he?

Release Date: 12 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Crime, Drama

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Richard Italiano, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Ace, Jean-Pierre Serret, Thomas Regan

Director: Brian Goodman

“Mad Detective” is the new project that we were waiting for, of the interesting Johnnie To, a thriller which promises a good dose of exciting and intense movie, in the specific note of the Hong Kong’s star.

Bun is an obnoxious detective who has direct and less orthodox methods which caused the repulsion of his superiors.

After he cut his ear and offered it as a present to one of his superiors, in an act of pure insanity, he is obliged to retire.

In spite of all, Bun has a special gift: he can see what’s hiding inside of other persons, their fears, their doubts, and what is worse, their different personalities.

This an infallible weapon to resolve the problems from work, but which threatens with driving him crazy.

Being unemployed, a colleague asked his help to resolve the mystery case of two policemen and a gun.

Both entered in a forest and only one of them came out.

Release Date: 29 November 2007 (Hong Kong)

Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller

Cast: Andy On, Kelly Lin, Jay Lau, Ching Wan Lau, Ka Tung Lam

Director: Johnnie To, Wai Ka-fai

2-13

“2:13″ is a terrifying thriller who tells us the story of Russell Spivey, a middle aged homicide detective.

He has just returned to work, after a period of absence during which he underwent therapy; his childhood traumas and his daily job became too much for him, so he needed to have some rest.

Once he gets back to the office, Russell Spivey is back in business. He gets a new case, and he has to work with the beautiful fellow detective Amanda Richardson to catch and take to justice a serial killer who tortures his victims and covers their faces with horrifying masks.

Haunted by nightmares caused by the new case he is working on, but also by the memory of a mother who committed suicide and a father who died several years after due to alcohol abuse, Russell Spivey needs to overcome his inner demons and the serial killer in order to survive.

Release Date:  2008

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Cast: Mark Thompson, Mark Pellegrino, Teri Polo

Director: Charles Adelman

Giallo

The whole Italy is shocked by the horrifying deeds of a serial killer who was raised in an orphanage and is known under the nickname of ‘Giallo’.

He chooses his victims out of the most beautiful women in the country, he kidnaps them, he tortures them in the most sadistic ways possible; then he kills them and dumps their bodies.

When an American flight attendant called Linda gets to Torino, she starts to get worried because she has not heard from her sister in quite a while; Celine is a successful supermodel who participates in the Milan fashion week.

Scared by the thought that her sister may have been captured by the serial killer, who had just killed an Asian student, Linda appeals to the help of Italian detective Enzo Avolfi.

Linda and Enzo start a time race in order to find Celine before the psychopath gets the chance to torture her like he did with the other victims.

Will they make it?

Release Date: 2009

Genre: Crime, Horror, Thriller

Cast: Adrien Brody, Elsa Pataky, Emmanuelle Seigner

Director: Dario Argento

After his last African adventure, Ace Ventura goes back to Florida, gets married to his girlfriend Melissa and becomes a father for the first time.

Unfortunately, he still needs adrenaline in his life, so he leaves Melissa and Ace Jr. at home and gets involved in a new case.As a temporarily single mother, Melissa Ventura gets a job at the zoo in order to be able to take care of her 12 year old son, which is starting to look and act more and more like his father.

Ace Jr. starts playing the role of the detective for his 7th grade colleagues, by finding the pets they lost and he often goes through bad moments and funny situations.

When somebody steels a baby panda bear from the zoo and his mother is wrongfully accused, Ace Jr. gets his friends Laura and A-Plus and they all start investigating to see who was the real thief, to capture him and show the police his mother is innocent.

Release Date: 27 January 2009

Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Mystery

Cast: Josh Flitter, Emma Lockhart, Austin Rogers

Director: David M. Evans