A concise introduction to the genre about that one last big score, The Heist Film: Stealing With Style traces this crime thriller’s development as both a dramatic and comic vehicle growing out of film noir (Criss Cross, The Killers, The Asphalt Jungle), mutating into sleek capers in the 1960s (Ocean’s Eleven, Gambit, How to Steal a Million) and splashing across screens in the 2000s in remake after remake (The Thomas Crown Affair, The Italian Job, The Good Thief). Built around a series of case studies (Rififi, Bob le Flambeur, The Killing, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Getaway, the Ocean’s trilogy), this volume explores why directors of such varied backgrounds, from studio regulars (Siodmak, Crichton, Siegel, Walsh and Wise) to independents (Anderson, Fuller, Kubrick, Ritchie and Soderbergh), are so drawn to this popular genre.

Ever since its inception, British cinema has been obsessed with crime and the criminal. One of the first narrative films to be produced in Britain, the Hepworth's 1905 short Rescued by Rover, was a fast-paced, quick-edited tale of abduction and kidnap, and the first British sound film, Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1930), centered on murder and criminal guilt. For a genre seemingly so important to the British cinematic character, there is little direct theoretical or historical work focused on it. The Britain of British cinema is often written about in terms of national history, ethnic diversity, or cultural tradition, yet very rarely in terms of its criminal tendencies and dark underbelly. This volume assumes that, to know how British cinema truly works, it is necessary to pull back the veneer of the costume piece, the historical drama, and the rom-com and glimpse at what is underneath. For every Brief Encounter (1945) there is a Brighton Rock (2010), for every Notting Hill (1999) there is a Long Good Friday (1980).

Criminologist Nicole Rafter analyses the source of the appeal of crime films, and their role in popular culture. She argues that crime films both reflect and shape our ideas about fundamental social, economic and political issues.

The Best Laid Plans includes an accessible group of essays that will meet the needs of students and scholars in film and media studies by offering new insights into an important and neglected area in genre criticism.

Movie is considered to be an important art form; films entertain, educate, enlighten and inspire audiences. Film is a term that encompasses motion pictures as individual projects, as well as — in metonymy — the field in general. The origin of the name comes from the fact that photographic film (also called filmstock) has historically been the primary medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist — motion pictures (or just pictures or "picture"), the silver screen, photoplays, the cinema, picture shows, flicks — and commonly movies.

Learn the rules of scriptwriting, and then how to successfully break them.Unlike other screenwriting books, this unique guide pushes you to challenge yourself and break free of tired, formulaic writing--bending or breaking the rules of storytelling as we know them. Like the best-selling previous editions, seasoned authors Dancyger and Rush explore alternative approaches to the traditional three-act story structure, going beyond teaching you "how to tell a story" by teaching you how to write against conventional formulas to produce original, exciting material. The pages are filled with an international range of contemporary and classic cinema examples to inspire and instruct. New to this edition. New chapter on the newly popular genres of feature documentary, long-form television serials, non-linear stories, satire, fable, and docudrama. New chapter on multiple-threaded long form, serial television scripts. New chapter on genre and a new chapter on how genre’s very form is flexible to a narrative. New chapter on character development. New case studies, including an in-depth case study of the dark side of the fable, focusing on The Wizard of Oz and Pan’s Labyrinth.

Featuring rumpled PIs, shyster lawyers, corrupt politicians, double-crossers, femmes fatales, and, of course, losers who find themselves down on their luck yet again, film noir is a perennially popular cinematic genre. This extensive encyclopedia describes movies from noir's earliest days – and even before, looking at some of noir's ancestors in US and European cinema – as well as noir's more recent offshoots, from neonoirs to erotic thrillers. Entries are arranged alphabetically, covering movies from all over the world – from every continent save Antarctica – with briefer details provided for several hundred additional movies within those entries. A copious appendix contains filmographies of prominent directors, actors, and writers. With coverage of blockbusters and program fillers from Going Straight (US 1916) to Broken City (US 2013) via Nora Inu (Japan 1949), O Anthropos tou Trainou (Greece 1958), El Less Wal Kilab (Egypt 1962), Reportaje a la Muerte (Peru 1993), Zift (Bulgaria 2008), and thousands more, A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir is an engrossing and essential reference work that should be on the shelves of every cinephile.

Explores the philosophical, literary, and psychoanalytic significance of film endings.
Editing has been called the language of cinema, and thus a film’s ending can be considered the final punctuation mark of this language, framing everything that came before and offering the key to both our interpretation and our enjoyment of a film. In Cinematic Cuts, scholars explore the philosophical, literary, and psychoanalytic significance of film endings, analyzing how film endings engage our fantasies of cheating death, finding true love, or determining the meaning of life. They examine how endings offer various forms of enjoyment for the spectator, from the momentary fulfillment of desire in the happy ending to the pleasurable torment of an indeterminate ending. The contributors also consider how film endings open onto larger questions relating to endings in our time. They suggest how a film ending’s hidden counternarrative can be read as a political act, how our interpretation of a film ending parallels the end of a psychoanalytical session, how film endings reveal our anxieties and fears, and how cinema itself might end with the increasing intervention of digital technologies that reorient the spectator’s sense of temporality and closure. Films by Akira Kurosawa, Lars von Trier, Joon-Hwan Jang, Claire Denis, Christopher Nolan, Jane Campion, John Huston, and Spike Jonze, among others, are discussed.

Analyzing crime movies set in Detroit, Miami, Boston, Las Vegas, and the fictional Gotham City, this book examines the role that American cities play as characters in crime films. Furthering our awareness of how popular media shapes public understanding of crime and justice in American cities, this book contributes to scholarship in popular criminology by providing insight into the development of criminological theory in cinematic representations of crime and urban space. Each chapter focuses on a different city, starting with an overview of the social, economic, and political history of the city and proceeding to discuss the cinematic depiction of crime and justice in the city. At the heart of each chapter is a discussion of themes that are common across films set in each city. For each theme, the book makes connections to the criminological theory discussed in that chapter and concludes by focusing on real-world implications that stem from the social construction of urban crime in crime films. Bridging the gap between criminology and media studies, The American City in Crime Films will appeal to students of criminology and media studies, and urban sociology/criminology.

This book represents the culmination of Thomas Elsaesser’s intense and passionate thinking about the Hollywood mind-game film from the previous two decades. In order to answer what the mind-game film is, why they exist, and how they function, Elsaesser maps the industrial-institutional challenges and constraints facing Hollywood, and the broader philosophic horizon within which American cinema thrives today. He demonstrates how the ‘Persistence of Hollywood’ continues as it has adapted to include new twists and turns, as well as revisions of past concerns, as film moves through the 21st century. Through examples such as Minority Report, Mulholland Drive, Source Code, and Back to the Future, Elsaesser explores how mind-game films challenge us and play games with our perception of reality, creating skepticism and (self-) doubt. He also highlights the mind-game film's tendency to intervene in a complex fashion in the political moment by questioning the dominant power’s intent to program both body and mind alike. Prescient and compelling, The Mind-Game Film will appeal to students, scholars, and enthusiasts of media studies, film studies, philosophy, and politics.