Crime & Punishment
Explore this gripping selection of films packed with paranoia and conspiracy, with inescapably brilliant performances from some of Britain’s best loved stars, come and traverse the underside of British cinema.
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County Lines
Obeying the first rule – 'write what you know' - former youth worker turned filmmaker Henry Blake turns in an original, stylish debut feature which premiered at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival.
It exposes the urban-to-rural drugs system of the title, a network which exploits children to use as...
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Peeping Tom
Much criticised at the time of its release, Michael Powell’s psychological study of a shy camera technician who films for his home movies the death throes of the women he kills is now widely regarded as a dark classic. Less a straightforward serial-killer thriller than a Freudian meditation on ho...
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Silent Scream
1963: When Larry Winters violently murders a Soho barman in cold blood he is sentenced to life imprisonment. Within ten years he is addicted to prescription drugs and feared as Scotland's most violent inmate. After being transferred to the experimental Barlinnie Special Unit, Winters finds new an...
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Recluse
Harrowing drama based on the true story of a murder and suicide that took place on the Luxton family farm in Devon in the 1970s. Sensitively handled by director Bob Bentley and superbly edited by the acclaimed David Gladwell, Recluse stars Maurice Denham and boasts fine naturalistic perfomances f...
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Repeater
Comic thriller influenced by the French New Wave which, with its unorthodox narrative about a woman's confession of murder, deconstructs the conventions of the thriller genre. Directed by Christopher Monger (Voice Over), who would go on to have a successful Hollywood career, Repeater was produced...
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Operation Third Form
In this favourite from the Children's Film Foundation, a fresh-faced John Moulder Brown (Deep End) gives a sparkling performance as the schoolboy out to foil a pair of North London crooks with his crack spy unit – his classmates and kid sister. With its groovy 1960s soundtrack, Operation Third Fo...
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Melancholia
The sole directorial credit by the German-born founder of distributor Artificial Eye, Andi Engel, is a cerebral thriller about an art critic drawn into an assassination plot. Jeroen Krabbe plays the German ex-pat who reconnects with his radical past when he's asked to assist with the hit of a Chi...
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Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Legendary Hollywood director Sidney Lumet’s final film is as blistering as any young director’s. In desperate need of money, brothers Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke rob a ‘mom and pop’ jewelry store – only it belongs to their own mom and pop. Murder and time-tripping editing ensue; and Al...
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Carlos
Adapted from a five-and-a-half-hour television miniseries, this three-hour biopic from acclaimed director Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Personal Shopper) chronicles 20 years in the life of Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez aka Carlos the Jackal. Édgar Ramírez (The Bourne Ultimatum) star...
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Vice Squad
Fed up with life as a Hollywood prostitute, Karla (Season Hubley) goes to a mortuary to identify the body of her friend Ginger who has been beaten to death by their pimp Ramrod (Wings Hauser). Karla then agrees to work with Sergeant Tom Walsh (Gary Swanson) to help arrest the murderer. She calls ...
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Baise-moi
This film is a blunt, brash and blood-smeared revenge tale of two sex workers who decide to go on a killing spree through France. Co-directed by French feminist provocateur Despentes, and based on her book, Baise-moi does not care for cinematic slickness, instead using handheld visuals and raw la...
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Bad Timing
Seen in flashback through the prism of a woman's attempted suicide, this fragmented portrait of a love affair expands into a labyrinthine enquiry into memory and guilt, as her cold-hearted psychoanalyst partner himself falls victim to an even cooler and crueller investigation by the detective ass...