Betrayed (1988)

Betrayed (1988)

Betrayed" is loosely based on the real life murder of a left-wing radio personality by the name of Alan Berg by a white supremacist group called The Order headed by a guy named Robert Mathews.

Shocking disturbing but at the same time penetrating film by director Costa-Garvras about terror in Americas heartland spilling over into the big city, Chicago. A popular but controversial Jewish talk show host Sam Kraus, Richard Libertini, gets gunned down by a group of white separatists in the garage of his apartment building the killers leave their calling card on the murder scene Z.O.G : Zionist occupied government. A phrase that the separatists use to refer to the US government all throughout the movie.

The FBI in trying to find and arrest those who perpetrated the crime send agent Cathy Phillips/ Kathy Weaver, Debra Winger, undercover to the farm land in the area where they think that the killers come from. Due to the very high anti-government sentiment there with farmers in danger of losing their land. It turns out that Agent Phillips should have been the last person for the FBI to put on a case like that due to her very sad home and family life. Phillips lost her parents at a very young age and had no family her entire life but her employer the FBI which was anything but loving and personal to her.

In the farm land and being undercover as Cathy Weaver she falls in love and lives with murder suspect Gary Simmons, Tom Berenger, and his family. Simmons is a widower with children who's mother also lives with him that has Cathy/Katie for the first time in her life have the family that she always longed for. This very fact is what Cathy says is "Screwing up her loyalties" to the government and FBI that she works for.Cathy/Katie desperately wants to be taken off the case before she betrays the man, Gary, as well as the family that she loves. Still the FBI refuses to do so because Cathy's in too deep and is too close to break the case on the Kraus killing. (IMDB  sol)  V&D

Some screenshots may be considered to be spoilers.

Ted Levine

Tom Berenger - Debra Winger

John Heard

Bolero (2004 Czech Republic)

Bolero (2004 Czech Republic)

A psychological crime drama based on actual events of the not-too-distant past. A group of university students thought it would be entertaining to abduct girls and gang rape them. Out of fear, none of the victims talked. A female student, however, didn't want to remain silent. The kidnappers drew lots to decide which of them would become a murderer. At dawn they dragged the girl (Barbora Seidlová) off to a lake and drowned her. They terrified the witnesses and severed all contact among themselves. It took the police several years to find the necessary clues. In the meantime, some of the perpetrators began raising families, even became model citizens. Their parents used every means possible to fight the evidence, heedless of the victims' suffering, motivated only by the need to save their children, their reputations, their position in society. (IMDB Czech film center)

Dark Star: HR Gigers Welt (2014)

Dark Star: HR Gigers Welt (2014)

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Dark Star: H.R. Giger's World

Just what you might have expected: HR Giger's home is a museum of the macabre. The celebrated creator of the Alien monster and a painter, sculptor, and architect as well, Giger inhabits a world of gargoyles and monsters, straight from his imagination to us. Dark Star: H R Giger's World is an intriguing documentary sometimes as weird and inscrutable as his mind. It certainly doesn't burden the audience with analysis.

As director Belinda Sallin tracks us through the baroque museum that is his Zurich house, we see a phantasmagoria of monsters from Egyptian-monarch-looking portraits to old skulls, one of which he dragged around by string when a young boy. While the camera passes his Oscar on a shelf, the spare narration overall gives no nod to this achievement (Oscar for best visual effects for Ridley Scott's Alien), typical of the documentary's minimalist approach.

Appearances by his collaborators like Gabriel Fischer, a metal musician, sometimes refer to the artist's kindness, and they occasionally give insight into the psycho-sexual, violent undertow of his startling images. The now humble man appears as if in the aftermath of a stroke, moving and speaking slowly and deliberately, but always kindly as he autographs body parts and throws off a sly smile or two.

Perhaps the purpose of limiting explanation about his work is to let the array of deeply symbolic creations out of his subconscious speak for themselves, almost defying analysis. Although Freud would have a holiday assessing Giger's innermost demons, Giger's expressionism remains delightful impressionism for viewers. (IMDB  jdesando)