#films about

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Federico Fellini: 10 essential films

Fellini was a flamboyant Italian master whose genius still looms large over the history of cinema. Here are 10 key films that continue to inspire filmmakers and audiences today.

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To some, the fashion industry might seem like a daunting empire of self-obsessed fashionistas who glitz around wearing Louboutins, talking only about their favorite brand-named eyelash curler. Needless to say it’s not quite like that. Thanks to some recent (and not-so-recent) silver screen attention, the fashion community has taken to the cinemas to give in-depth looks into the lives behind the lux of the world of fashion.

From documentaries to films inspired by real life, here are 15 extraordinary examples of what happens behind the runway—as well as a few comedic takes that are just too good to leave out. 

15 Must-Watch Fashion Films

More Films: HERE.

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Like Crazy, 2011

25 Films About First Love To Fall For

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Poetry, 2010

10 great foreign-language films of the decade so far

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The 25 Most Visually Stunning Films of The Past 5 Years

When someone mentions “visually stunning films”, it's easy to associate this with films that lack real content, and instead are based mainly on images without portraying anything truly significant. The fact that these films are so relevant visually doesn’t mean that they don’t still tell a great story.

  In fact, most of the films here are also considered some of the best from the last four years, and with reason. The wonderful collaborations between these directors, cinematographers, production, art and costume designers, colorists, etc., are most often built around a story, working towards the best ways to capture and express it in order to make fantastic and overwhelming visual experiences.

Over the last few years, a lot of filmmakers have been coming up with completely distinct storytelling formats, experimenting and toying with unusual mediums and styles. Featuring some of the most awe-inspiring American Indies and Hollywood films, and a few foreign films and collaborations, here are the 25 most visually stunning films from 2010 to 2014 – in no specific order.

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9 Iconic Lipstick Moments in Film and the Shades to Match

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11 great films about committing the perfect crime

One of the great themes of the crime film is the idea of the perfect crime. Its enduring appeal can be put down to the fascinating expertise of the criminals who believe they can slip by undetected, the complicity the audience feels in being party to their fastidious planning, and the final sensation of leaving the cinema thrilled, and knowing that you (at least) have got away with it.

Lift to the Scaffold (1958)

Director: Louis Malle

Louis Malle’s Lift to the Scaffold (1958), about to be rereleased in cinemas nationwide, promises all such vicarious pleasures. Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) plans the murder of his boss, an arms manufacture who is also married to his lover (Jeanne Moreau). However, his perfect crime soon turns into ironic tragedy when he realises he has left a vital piece of evidence behind, yet finds himself trapped in a lift and powerless to influence his own fate.

For cerebral criminals like Julien, committing the perfect crime is an intellectual exercise, which challenges their own skilfulness. They take as much satisfaction from proving it can be done as from the loot at the end of it. For others, such as the chancers cheating and stealing their way to a better life in 1940s noir, the perfect crime turns lust and greed into quick bucks.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Director: Tay Garnett

Hollywood only dared approach James M. Cain’s legendary crime story (which was banned in Boston on its first publication) after Billy Wilder made his controversial adaptation of Cain’s second novel, Double Indemnity (1944). The plot centres on straight-talking Frank (John Garfield) and fiery sexpot Cora (Lana Turner), who meet at a diner and dream of starting a life together.

They aspire to commit the perfect crime – knocking off Cora’s much older husband (Cecil Kellaway) – but their efforts are undermined throughout by their guilty consciences and brooding mutual mistrust. Director Tay Garnett, who would never be better, creates a grisly atmosphere of stagnant frustration and stymied movement in which sin is no shortcut to the American dream.

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Director: John Huston

Based on the novel by W.R. Burnett, The Asphalt Jungle established a new way of viewing the perfect crime. In James Cagney’s gangster films of the 1930s, the act and artistry of crime is secondary to the power, recognition and public notoriety it leads to, but John Huston’s 1950 film is more intimately focused on the criminals themselves and the minutiae of their profession. 

Huston’s small-time crooks include Sterling Hayden’s debt-ridden hardman, Sam Jaffe as the prime mover and Louis Calhern’s duplicitous lawyer, who team up for a ‘perfect’ $1 million diamond robbery. The 11-minute heist sequence is a masterclass in slow-building tension, tautly directed by Huston, and helped along by Harold Rosson’s shadowy lighting cues and Miklós Rózsa’s haunting theme music.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was no stranger to a perfect crime plot – he had already made Rope in 1948 and would go on to direct Dial M for Murder in 1954 – but Strangers on a Train is his best example, a diabolical black-comedy masterpiece. Hitchcock originally asked Raymond Chandler to adapt the screenplay from Patricia Highsmith’s source novel but actually ended up jettisoning most of it, accusing the writer of being too concerned with the characters’ motivations.

The opening meeting between the two strangers (Farley Granger and Robert Walker) – in which they initiate a hypnotic discussion about murdering each other’s wives – is classic Hitchcock: part murder plot and part love story. Things come to a head in the climactic fight on the carousel – Hitchcock’s most vivid and alluring use of expressionist visuals since his early British work.

Les Diaboliques (1954)

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot

Henri-Georges Clouzot is often compared to Hitchcock, because of his mastery of clockwork suspense, but Les Diaboliques is pulpier and more demonic than any Hitchcock effort. It follows two women who plot to kill a sadistic boarding school headmaster – one of them is his wife Christina (Véra Clouzot), the other his mistress (Simone Signoret).

Clouzot’s sulphuric blend of realism and expressionism suggests that such pervasive evil, in the real-world context of a school, may have supernatural connotations. The delicious final twist was so incendiary it came with a message attached to the end credits: “Don’t be diabolical. Don’t spoil the film for your friends by telling them what happens. Thanks on their behalf".

The Killing (1956)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

“I’ve got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists – neither take life as it is”. So said Stanley Kubrick, aligning his profession with that of his protagonists in The Killing – a group of doomed hustlers led by Sterling Hayden. Kubrick himself practised perfection as a filmmaker (he would often demand multiple takes and paid staggering attention to the smallest details), but throughout his career he would make reference to the fallibility inherent in being human.

The racetrack heist in The Killing is corrupted at the final turn by human greed and deceit, despite the meticulousness with which the operation was planned. The quality of the film may be the greatest rejoinder to Kubrick’s own thesis – demonstrating that some human designs could indeed be quite perfect.

The Day of the Jackal (1973)

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Built with a lapidist’s hand, without any direct showiness but a clinical precision, The Day of the Jackal is an impeccable perfect crime procedural adapted from Frederick Forsyth’s bestselling novel. Edward Fox plays the eponymous Jackal, a hired assassin out to murder Charles de Gaulle and collect half a million dollars, and Michel Lonsdale is the shrewd investigator who doggedly foils the plot.

Based roughly on real-events, Zinnemann said he was excited by the idea of making “a suspense film where everybody knew the end – that de Gaulle was not killed”. The rising pulse of the suspense lies in the efficiency of its construction, the documentary-style of its execution, and how, for all the Jackal’s flawless planning, fate will eventually assert its own reckoning.

Thief (1981)

Director: Michael Mann

The perfect crime trope often crops up alongside another staple of the crime film: the ‘one last job’. For hardened criminals like James Caan’s Frank in Thief, that ‘one last job’ sums up the thief’s dilemma: he steals to get out of his life of crime, but the art of thievery is the only thing he knows. Frank takes on one last big jewellery heist when he starts to dream of a settled family life with cashier girl Jessie (Tuesday Weld).

In his feature film debut, director Michael Mann depicts the filigree detail of both his own and Frank’s craft in the wordless heist sequences, reducing the action to closeups and metallic sounds that recall the technical brilliance of Jules Dassin’s Rififi (1955). Anchored by a career best performance from Caan, this is visual, muscular storytelling with a deep regard for the psychology of the criminal.

The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982)

Director: Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway brings his painterly touch and intellectual heft to the country house murder mystery with The Draughtman’s Contract. The perfect crime here involves cocksure draughtsman Neville (Anthony Higgins), who is commissioned to make 12 drawings of the Herbert family’s Wiltshire estate in return for sexual favours from the lady of the manor, Virginia (Janet Suzman).

Greenaway applies a surreal sensibility to a conventional genre format, yet it remains one of his most naturalistic and accessible films. Its rich and sensuous imagery, outrageous Restoration wigs and costumes, witty, pun-filled dialogue, and intricate neo-Baroque score by Michael Nyman, reconstitute the world of Agatha Christie and put it into a new, cerebral puzzle.

The Last Seduction (1994)

Director: John Dahl

Director John Dahl followed up his nifty work on low-budget cowboy-noirs Kill Me Again (1989) and Red Rock West (1993) with this devilishly seductive thriller. Linda Fiorentino gives a searing and ferocious performance as Bridget, a sociopathic femme fatale pitched somewhere between the white-hot dames of 1940s noir and Basic Instinct’s brand of leggy, new-breed misanthropy.

Bridget’s perfect crimes are so brazen and unburdened by planning or contingency that it suggests she pulls them off for thrills rather than monetary gain. She forces her husband (Bill Pullman) to perform a dangerous drug deal, running off with the loot while he’s in the shower, before roping in another tumescent fall guy (Peter Berg) for a new scheme.

Nine Queens (2000)

Director: Fabian Bielisnky

This shifty con-job film from neophyte director Fabian Bielinsky – who secured funding after winning a scriptwriting competition – is non-stop chicanery of the most breathlessly thrilling kind. It stars Ricardo Darín as professional scam artist Marco, who trains up rookie hustler Juan (Gastón Pauls) in order to dupe a rich mafioso with facsimiles of priceless rare stamps called the Nine Queens.

As in George Roy Hill’s The Sting (1973) or David Mamet’s best work (House of Games, 1987; Homicide, 1991; The Spanish Prisoner, 1997), we are willing victims of the film’s own trickery, pulled along by the glamour of the perfect crime. Bielinsky would make this something of a directorial trademark, teaming up again with Darin in 2005 for another film based around the idea of the perfect crime – the moodier character study, El aura.

Full movie list made by BFI