There was a parallel tradition of serials both in the United States and in Europe. In Europe, the motion picture serial was a close relative to today's TV series, with longer, self-contained episodes or segments. France, with pioneering auteur director Louis Feuillade, provided several magnificent chapter plays, including the five-part Fantomas (1913-France), the influential 10-part masterpiece Les Vampires (1915-France) with Musidora as villainous Irma Vep, the 12-episode Judex (1916-France), and Tih Minh (1918-France). Germany contributed the popular six-episode silent serial Homunculus (1916-Germany). Also, in the 1920s, Fritz Lang made the following two silent films in two-parts: the crime thriller Dr. Mabuse (1922-23), and Die Nibelungen (1924) (in two parts: Siegfried, and Kriemhilds Rache, aka Kriemhilde's Revenge)

The themes of noir, derived from sources in Europe, were imported to Hollywood by emigre film-makers. Noirs were rooted in German Expressionism of the 1920s and 1930s, such as in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Germ.) or Fritz Lang's M (1931, Germ.), Fury (1936) and You Only Live Once (1937). Films from German directors, such as F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst, and Robert Wiene, were noted for their stark camera angles and movements, chiaroscuro lighting and shadowy, high-contrast images - all elements of later film noir. In addition, the French sound films of the 30s, such as director Julien Duvivier's Pepe Le Moko (1937), contributed to noir's development.

Starring Adrien Brody
Forest Whitaker
Maggie Grace
Clifton Collins Jr.
Cam Gigandet
Fisher Stevens
Travis Fimmel
Ethan Cohn

Review:

Travis is a guy trying to make ends meet. He's working part time in a retirement community helping out with the various patients, and they seem to like him. But when budget cuts hit the community, Travis quickly finds himself out of a job.

While attending a peace rally with a friend of his, Travis comes across a girl who's being hit upon and she wants nothing to do with the guy putting the make on her. Travis steps in and almost defies his peaceful nature by getting ready to punch the guy. His cooler head prevails and soon he's off with the girl, named Bay, and both find kindred spirits in each other.

Ultimately, it's of minor import how much of Rob Roy is based upon historical fact and how much has been embellished by the pen of screenwriter Alan Sharp. As a hero of 18th century Scotland, Robert Roy MacGregor is known to have walked through the mists of the Highlands, living by the code that made his name a legend. This film takes the skeletal myth and builds a real person around those bones. As embodied by Liam Neeson, Rob Roy is a tremendous protagonist -- a naive man whose belief in honor and whose love for a woman, family, and clan make him a figure to cheer for.

Stars: Daniell Edwards, Sami Darr and Anna Bård

Although technically a series of 28 films stretching over a period of twelve years (1938-1950), the series of Blondie films somewhat qualifies as a feature-film serial. Columbia Pictures produced this popular and wholesome series of low-budget situation comedies with a blonde character named Blondie Bumstead, after acquiring the film rights to the story.

Funniest Movie Scenes: Although it would be impossible to compile a list of every single funny scene ever screened, this collection moves toward that goal. It should be obvious that a selection of funny movie moments and scenes is entirely subjective and can only scratch the surface.

The first Dracula film was followed closely by the definitive, quintessential combination of science fiction and Gothic horror in a 'mad doctor' thriller. This classic monster/horror film - Frankenstein (1931) - was James Whale's adaptation from Mary Shelley's novel about Dr. Henry Frankenstein with a virtually unknown actor - Boris Karloff. With a boxy forehead and neck electrodes (and other features created from Whale's sketches by make-up artist Jack Pierce), Karloff's poignant portrayal of the pathetic created Monster's plight gave a personality to the outcast, uncomprehending character with a lumbering and lurching gait.

Cast
Zoe Felix
Eric Savin
Arie Elmaleh
Ivan Franek
Igor Skreblin
Margaux Guenier
Philippe Krhajac
Jana Bitternova
Clara Barbosa
Typhaine Hilaire
Thais Fischer
Goran Kostic
Eric Kailey
Sacha Mijovic

Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics (first by Nino Frank in 1946) who noticed the trend of how 'dark', downbeat and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France to theatres following the war, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Murder, My Sweet (1944), Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Laura (1944). A wide range of films reflected the resultant tensions and insecurities of the time period, and counter-balanced the optimism of Hollywood's musicals and comedies. Fear, mistrust, bleakness, loss of innocence, despair and paranoia are readily evident in noir, reflecting the 'chilly' Cold War period when the threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present. The criminal, violent, misogynistic, hard-boiled, or greedy perspectives of anti-heroes in film noir were a metaphoric symptom of society's evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict, purposelessness and sense of injustice. There were rarely happy or optimistic endings in noirs.