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Mystery movie titles
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| Rating: 9.1 |
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Right after taking out Ra's Al Ghul's plan and the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Jonathan Crane AKA Scarecrow, Batman continues his seemingly-endless effort to bring justice to Gotham's crime and corrupt with the help of Lt. James Gordon and new appointed District Attorney Harvey Dent. But this time, The Dark Knight faces a rising psychopathic criminal called The Joker, who's eerie grin makes him more dangerous than what he has yet to unleash. It becomes an agenda to both enemies that only one of them remains and are willing to break every part of what they believe in to stop the other. |
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| Rating: 8.7 |
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After a waterfront explosion, Verbal (Kevin Spacey), an eye-witness and participant tells the story of events leading up to the conflagration. The story begins when five men are rounded up for a line-up, and grilled about a truck hijacking (the usual suspects). Least pleased is Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) a crooked cop - exposed, indicted, but now desperately trying to go straight. The cops won't leave him alone, however, and as they wait for their lawyers to post bail, he is talked into doing one more job with the other four. All goes tolerably well until the influence of the legendary, seemingly omnipotent "Keyser Soze" is felt. Although set in the modern day, it has much of the texture of the forties, plus suspense, intrigue (a fairly high body count), and lots of twists in the plot. |
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| Rating: 8.7 |
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In 1950-something New York, an adventuresome free-lance photographer finds himself confined to a wheelchair in his tiny apartment while a broken leg mends. With only the occasional distraction of a visiting nurse and his frustrated love interest, a beautiful fashion consultant, his attention is naturally drawn to the courtyard outside his "rear window" and the occupants of the apartment buildings which surround it. Soon he is consumed by the private dramas of his neighbors lives which play themselves out before his eyes. There is "Miss Lonelyhearts," so desperate for her imaginary lover that she sits him a plate at the dinner table and feigns their ensuing chat. There is the frustrated composer banging on his piano, the sunbathing sculptress, the shapely dancer, the newlyweds who are concealed from their neighbors by a window shade, and a bungling middle-aged couple with a little yapping dog who sleep on the fire escape to avoid the sweltering heat of their apartment. ...And then there is the mysterious salesman whose nagging, invalid wife's sudden absence from the scene ominously coincides with middle-of-the-night forays into the dark, sleeping city with his sample case. Where did she go? What's in the trunk that the salesman ships away? What's he been doing with the knives and the saw that he cleans at the kitchen sink? |
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| Rating: 8.7 |
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Hitchcockian film noir/thriller set in the exclusive resort community of The Hamptons. Trophy husband Davis Meyers meets local investigator Linus. Davis Meyers' ill-fated attempt to produce an heir leads to infidelity, murder and tragic consequences. Classic film noir in the style of the '40s and '50s. |
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| Rating: 8.6 |
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You wouldn't wish this hell on anyone, not even on your worst enemy... Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) suffers from amnesia: he can remember only the last two or three minutes of his life. It complicates his existence very much, especially because Lenny's mission is to revenge for his wife (Jorja Fox) who was raped and murdered by a John J. Lenny remembers it through the tattoo on his body. Every day he writes notes, takes Polaroid photos and makes tattoos, so it takes him only to look at himself in the mirror to rebuild the vital details. Lenny is obsessed with thoughts of vengeance. And there are manipulators who are intent on taking advantage of the disabled and inconsolable man. |
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| Rating: 8.6 |
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Considered by many to be the best film ever made, this is the story of Charles Foster Kane. The film opens with a long shot of Xanadu - the private estate of one of the world's richest men. In the middle of the estate is a castle. We see, inside the castle, a dying man examining a winter scene within a crystal ball. As he drops it, it smashes, and one word is heard - "Rosebud..." What follows are pieces of newsreel-like footage detailing how Kane amassed his fortune, and turning around full circle at the end. |
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| Rating: 8.6 |
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John "Scottie" Ferguson is a retired San Francisco police detective who suffers from acrophobia and Madeleine is the lady who leads him to high places. A wealthy shipbuilder who is an acquaintance from college days approaches Scottie and asks him to follow his beautiful wife, Madeleine. He fears she is going insane, maybe even contemplating suicide, because she believes she is possessed by a dead ancestor. Scottie is skeptical, but agrees after he sees the beautiful Madeleine. |
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| Rating: 8.5 |
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This thriller portrays the exploits of a deranged serial-killer. His twisted agenda involves choosing seven victims who represent egregious examples of transgressions of each of the Seven Deadly Sins. He then views himself as akin to the Sword of God, handing out horrific punishment to these sinners. Two cops, an experienced veteran of the streets who is about to retire and the ambitious young homocide detective hired to replace him, team up to capture the perpetrator of these gruesome killings. Unfortunately, they too become ensnared in his diabolical plan.... |
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| Rating: 8.5 |
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Los Angeles detective Jake Gittes is hired by a woman claiming to be a Mrs. Mulwray to spy on her husband. Shortly after Gittes is hired, the real Mrs. Mulwray appears in his office threatening to sue if he doesn't drop the case immediately. Gittes pursues the case anyway, slowly uncovering a vast conspiracy centering on water management, state and municipal corruption, land use and real estate, and involving at least one murder. |
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| Rating: 8.5 |
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An American pulp writer arrives in post-WWII Vienna only to find that the friend who waited for him is killed under mysterious circumstances. The ensuing mystery entangles him in his friend's involvement in the black market, with the multinational police, and with his Czech girlfriend. |
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| Rating: 8.5 |
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"Pan's Labyrinth" is the story of a young girl who travels with her pregnant mother to live with her mother's new husband in a rural area up North in Spain, 1944, after Franco's victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Fascist repression during the first years of Franco's dictatorship is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own. |
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| Rating: 8.5 |
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It's 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn't been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity. |
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| Rating: 8.5 |
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Jess, a woman whose life turns surreal after an automobile accident leaves both her husband Ryan and her brother-in-law Roman in a coma. Things take an even darker turn when Roman wakes believing that he is Ryan. As Jess tries to deal with these increasingly disturbing events, she also struggles with the possibility that either the spirit of her husband has returned to her or that something very sinister is at work. |
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| Rating: 8.4 |
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Bud White (Russel Crowe) and Ed Huxley (Guy Pearce) are LA cops in the 50s. These guys are so different that sometimes they even hate each other, but now they are to work together at the murder which should be solved at any cost. Wide LA beaches and the bright sun of California seems to be the perfect crime scene as the mafia bosses compete to occupy an empty place on the top of the criminal hierarchy after the main mafia boss was imprisoned to serve a long term. Kim Basinger appears in the film as a high-paid prostitute-blackmailer.
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| Rating: 8.3 |
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Set in Middlesex, Virginia, the story follows Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), a 16-year-old dreamer and Christina Applegate fan who suffers from pyromania. On October 2nd, 1988, Donnie is visited by a man-sized large-toothed bunny named Frank (James Duval) and invited to go for a walk. While Donnie sleepwalks outside, a jet engine falls from the sky into his bedroom. At parting the rabbit prophesies that the "end of the world" will occur in "28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds." Before the apocalypse Frank calls on Donnie several times and draws him into a chain of vandal actions. |
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| Rating: 8.2 |
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Bourne is once again brought out of hiding, this time inadvertently by London-based reporter Simon Ross who is trying to unveil Operation BlackBriar—an upgrade to Project Treadstone—in a series of newspaper columns. Bourne (Damon) sets up a meeting with Ross (Considine) and realizes instantly they're being scanned. Information from the reporter stirs a new set of memories, and Bourne must finally, ultimately, uncover his dark past whilst dodging The Company's best efforts in trying to eradicate him. |
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| Rating: 8.2 |
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The touching movie is narrated by Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), an old man who lives in a nursing home and recollects his job as the head guard on Cold Mountain Penitentiary's Death Row, also known as the "Green Mile" for the green linoleum flooring leading from the jail cells to the electric chair. Paul has watched over a variety of killers but he has never before seen someone like John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a gigantic African-American man who is convicted of the rape and murder of two 9-year-old sisters. Despite his formidable size and strength to kill anyone, he seems to be a good-natured, polite, childlike man who is deathly afraid of the dark and is able to perform miracles of healing terminally ill people. When Edgecomb and his fellow guards, Howell (David Morse) and Stanton (Barry Pepper), discover that Coffrey hasn't committed the crimes for which he is sentenced to death, they are forced to make a difficult choice... |
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| Rating: 8.2 |
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This thought-provoking movie is divided into three chapters concerning three different men whose lives intertwine in the most bizarre and mysterious ways.
"The Prisoner" tells the story of a popular Hollywood TV actor named Gary (Ryan Reynolds) who becomes distraught after being dumped by his girlfriend. To cope with the sharp pain of the breakup, he drinks and uses crack cocaine, then decides to burn her belongings but uses too much lighter fluid and burns down his house. After his escapade Gary ends up living under home arrest and the supervision of a cheery, serious publicist, Margaret (Melissa McCarthy), who moves him into the empty house of a television writer. He befriends an attractive next-door neighbor, Sarah (Hope Davis), and mysteriously becomes haunted by the number nine.
"Reality Television" focuses on Gavin (Ryan Reynolds), the house's owner who is away in Canada. He is shooting a supernatural network television drama starring his best friend Melissa McCarthy. When the network boss and studio executive Susan (Hope Davis) decide to replace Melissa with another actress, Gavin must tell her bad news.
"Knowing" finds a videogame designer, Gabriel (Ryan Reynolds), facing car trouble on an outing in the Hollywood Hills. Leaving his wife Mary (Melissa McCarthy) and child (Elle Fanning) in the car, he goes to seek help and encounters Sierra (Hope Davis), a strangely wary woman.
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| Rating: 8.2 |
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In England, the Italian English hairdresser Milo Tindle is invited by the successful writer of detective stories Andrew Wyke to visit his isolated house. The lower class Milo is the lover of Andrew's wife, who is used to have a comfortable life, and he intends to marry her. Andrew proposes Milo to steal his jewelry simulating a burglary. Milo would make a fortune selling the jewels to an intermediary; and Andrew would be reimbursed by the insurance company and would not pay alimony. However, the whole situation was part of an evil game. When Milo vanishes, a detective visits Andrew to investigate what really happened that night, when deadly games are disclosed. |
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| Rating: 8.2 |
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On the day that Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, elderly Daisy Williams nee Fuller is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital. At her side is her adult daughter, Caroline. Daisy asks Caroline to read to her aloud the diary of Daisy's lifelong friend, Benjamin Button. Benjamin's diary recounts his entire extraordinary life, the primary unusual aspect of which was his aging backwards, being born an old man who was diagnosed with several aged diseases at birth and thus given little chance of survival, but who does survive and gets younger with time. Abandoned by his biological father, Thomas Button, after Benjamin's biological mother died in childbirth, Benjamin was raised by Queenie, a black woman and caregiver at a seniors home. Daisy's grandmother was a resident at that home, which is where she first met Benjamin. Although separated through the years, Daisy and Benjamin remain in contact throughout their lives, reconnecting in their forties when in age they finally match up. Some of the revelations in Benjamin's diary are difficult for Caroline to read, especially as it relates to the time past this reconnection between Benjamin and Daisy, when Daisy gets older and Benjamin grows younger into his childhood years. |
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