Infamous (2006)

Toby Jones' impersonation of Truman Capote is the more uncanny one and this movie provides more interesting context about Capote's trip to and interactions with locals in Holcomb, Kansas, but unlike the Philip Seymour Hoffman movie released a year earlier, which rivetted, this unfortunately timed "other movie" dealing with Capote's authorship of In Cold Blood flags by the end with the scenes between Daniel Craig's Perry and Toby Jones' Capote repetitive and the direct-to-camera commentary of friends Harper Lee and Jack Dunphy and others, particularly towards the end of the movie, a distraction.

★★★☆☆

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Compulsion (1959)

Surely Ttuman Capote, often touted as the pioneer of the true crime novel, was in fact influenced either by journalist Meyer Levin's 1955 novel, Compulsion - a fiction based on the infamous Leopold-Loeb murder case - or by this movie adaptation of it which turns the disturbing subject matter (the 1924 murder in Chicago of a schoolkid at the hands of two Nietzsche-spouting teens) into an utterly compelling thriller, one that keeps so close to fact it really isn't a fiction at all - consider for example the fact that Orson Welles adopts prosthetics to look like real-life lawyer Clarence Darrow.

★★★★★

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The Gang (Le Gang) (1977)

Based on a book by Parisian Inspector of Police-turned-author Roger Borniche, this wafer-thin crime caper follows a criminal gang in Paris in 1945, the real, historical Gang des Tractions Avant, who, with the suited swagger of Reservoir Dogs and the nonchalance of Ocean's Eleven, take advantage of the city's post-war disorganisation to commit a series of brazen robberies.

★★★★☆

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Capote (2005)

This isn't In Cold Blood but Truman Capote writing 'In Cold Blood', and it is painterly and utterly captivating in its evocation of the 1960s and in the way it contrasts the cocktail parties, soirees of New York with the bleak landscapes of rural Kansas, its scene of the now infamous Clutter family murders and its penitentiary stretched out across the flat, but the biopic remains frustratingly superficial about its subject, more snapshot than character study, touching upon - for a Capote Devotee maybe - but not wholly taking up - for anyone else - myriad points of interest including Capote's addictions (we just see him with a glass in hand, a mere signal for those in the know), his self-centredness (he cries, but we wonder why; he says he's done all he can (after a holiday in Spain) but we wonder if he actually believes it); the veracity of his journalism (we hear him repeatedly proclaim his near-perfect recall but wonder if it might be because he feels his credibility is/would be challenged); his deteriorating relationship with Harper Lee (she cools but we wonder what affect this has on him), and the freedom he had in his relationship with Jack Dunphy (there are hints at dalliances, and possibly even one with one of the killers, Perry Smith (according to some sources but not this film), but we are left wondering if he feels duplicitous...or anything at all).

★★★☆☆

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True Story (2015)

Even a cursory knowledge of the true story of Christian Longo and his murdered wife and children is enough to know this bad taste exercise is the fruit of Truman Capote-wannabe Michael Finkel's wish to write his own In Cold Blood, but this nebulous "true crime" thriller about Finkel's friendship with Longo, adapted here for the screen with stretched-beyond-their-dramatic-acting-limits Jonah "punch a wall to show you are angry" Hill and James "just try to look enigmatic" Franco, ends at the conclusion of the opening scene depicting Longo's arrest in Mexico - the rest (shared handwriting, winks, feigned internal turmoil, double negatives and passionate jailhouse speeches) reeks of two self-interested men, both not very good at their jobs, trying to spin the four murders into positive personal outcomes.

★★☆☆☆

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Just Mercy (2019)

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of the book upon which this movie is based, is depicted here (by Michael B Jordan) setting up the EJI and working to free from death row a first client, Alabama prison inmate 'Johnny D' (Jamie Foxx) and if there are moments you wish this long and only very plainly told 5-star story were over, you'll sit through it in any case given the case Stevenson makes against capital punishment is unequivocal and uncomfortable, and incontrovertible is his presentation of the justice system, its courts, police, and jails as a flawed (but held up as sacrosanct) temple of white privilege - a theatre not furnished with iluminated exit signs for the benefit of the beset inside.

★★★☆☆

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Patriots Day (2016)

This moment-by-moment account of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing is a moving tribute to the city, its first responders and citizens injured or killed in the two explosions, and coming so soon after events, is naturally not a movie interested in turning the camera away from the victims and heroes to explore more deeply the genesis of the crime or the backgrounds, rationales or personalities of the perpertrators, their relationship to each other, with their families or to Islam.

★★★☆☆

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Catching the Black Widow (2017)

The spin of this dramatisation of a real life crime story, a case I'd never heard of but one which apparently rivetted New Zealand as it played out in court in 2013, is that a selfless Erin Brockovich-style crusader, Lee-Anne Cartier, overcame family problems, financial troubles and disinterested police to expose her brother's wife as his killer, but given the perfectly plain fact that the wife, Helen Milner, is a murderous weirdo who compulsively - and stupidly - lies (and not just about the details of her husband's death) and given she was at the time being investigated about other crimes including a $30,000 theft, was considered a loon by work colleagues and was seeking to claim $250,000 from her victim's life insurance policy, it is hard to believe Cartier's efforts beyond her initial questioning of a suicide ruling were necessary, which might just be a problem in the telling of the story, but either way, rightly or wrongly, this $2 million production is a dry affair and feels like an attempt to present slow-moving and routine NZ police matters as something more 'Hollywood'. 

★☆☆☆☆

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The Iceman (2012)

This account of the career of real-life crime figure Richard Kuklinski, a hitman-for-hire active in the 70s, is more concerned with the gory techniques he used for his murder-for-profit than with his psychology, and so there's little of interest beyond that very briefly generated by David Schwimmer's turn as the Iceman's killer colleague.

★★☆☆☆

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Foxcatcher (2014)

Behind the Candelabra was also a true story about a dysfunctional relationship that develops between a man of great wealth and his young impressionable charge upon whom he has an unhealthy psychological effect, but here the context is Olympic wrestling and medals, not showbiz and glamour, and where Candelabra tapped into the black humour of its situation, Foxcatcher is a far more grim work about low-affect characters moving inexorably towards a tragic, senseless crime.

★★★★☆

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Compliance (2012)

Before you remark how unlikely the events of this suspense thriller are (a prank caller convinces a fast food manager to strip search an employee) know that it is based on a true series of prank calls that led to an arrest in 2004, and that fact alone makes this interesting viewing as you ponder the tendency of people to blindly accept authority.

★★★☆☆

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Murdered By My Boyfriend (2014)

This 2014 drama based on a true four-year-long abusive and controlling relationship that resulted in a young British woman's death is chilling viewing but is important in the way it illuminates the ways abusive men manipulate and lock their victims into no-win situations.

★★★★☆

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Cock and Bull (追凶者也) (2016)

Unless it is all cock and bull, it might help to be familiar with the true case of murder in China's Yunnan Province upon which this "Chinese Fargo" is based because a mostly young Chinese cinema audience responded positively to this movie while I was bewildered and bored by its disjointed story which starts being told from the perspective of a father falsely accused of murder, switches to the perspective of a bike-thieving bystander, then finally tells the long and unremarkable story of a bungling assassin-for-hire.

★☆☆☆☆

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The French Connection (1971)

Inspired by and informed by a real-life drug-ring-busting NYC cop, this 1971 police procedural won five academy awards for its atmospheric story of cops staking-out, shadowing and gun-battling with drug-smuggling bad guys and features Gene Hackman and Rob Schneider as the dogged cops, the N-word as its conspicuous self, and fluorescent red paint standing in as blood spill.

★★★☆☆

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River's Edge (1986)

Grubby American high school friends react to the fact one of their group has committed murder but not in the way you'd imagine, in this difficult to watch drama inspired by a true story (!) featuring such a great deal of adolescent ugliness that in the end, like the apathetic teenagers in it, you'll find the story so depressing, so grim, you'll just want to dismiss it all out of hand.

★★☆☆☆

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All Good Things (2010)

I was not familiar with the actual Robert Durst or his bizarre true story of double (triple?) murder, and having watched this perfectly suspenseful thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst, I am none the wiser - it is acted beautifully, the details of the case are laid out suspensefully, but it feels like a mere highlight reel from an unsolved case, one that frustrates by being neither outright fact nor outright fiction.

★★★☆☆

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Snowtown (2011)

To read in articles the bare details of the infamous murders that took place in South Australian town, Snowtown, is disturbing to say the least but this movie turns over every stone, pours over every bleak detail, and is a harrowing, horrifying character study -- of those responsible and of an all-too-familiar small town country Australia.

★★★★☆

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Memories of Murder (살인의 추억) (2003)

Only South Korea's Bong Joon-ho could produce from such grim true-life serial killer events this terrifically heady mix of human absurdist farce, police procedural thrills, mystery, and tragicomedy.

★★★★★

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Bernie (2011)

Jack Black is hugely charismatic as real life convicted murderer, Bernie, but the movie, despite the inclusion of interviews with the townsfolk involved in the true events, feels like it has failed to turn over some obvious other stones.

★★★☆☆

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