Detective-Mystery Films are usually considered a sub-type of crime/gangster films (or film noir), or suspense or thriller films that focus on the unsolved crime (usually the murder or disappearance of one or more of the characters, or a theft), and on the central character - the hard-boiled detective-hero, as he/she meets various adventures and challenges in the cold and methodical pursuit of the criminal or the solution to the crime. The plot often centers on the deductive ability, prowess, confidence, or diligence of the detective as he/she attempts to unravel the crime or situation by piecing together clues and circumstances, seeking evidence, interrogating witnesses, and tracking down a criminal. See also AFI's 10 Top 10 - The Top 10 Mystery Films and Filmsite's related Greatest Plot Twists, Spoilers, and Surprise Endings.

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To compete with Charlie Chan, another Far-Eastern sleuth - of Japanese descent, derived from the I.A. Moto character in Pulitzer Prize-winning John P. Marquand's novels (which first appeared as Saturday Evening Post serials), was developed by 20th Century Fox, and named Mr. Moto. Hungarian-born German actor Peter Lorre (in his 7th American film role) starred in the title role as the enigmatic, quiet, self-effacing, unobtrusive, spectacle-wearing and brilliant detective in the eight-film series (produced in less than three years from 1937-1939):

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Hollywood has always enjoyed lucrative returns from the action-film genre, although the action film has been steadily worn thin with retreaded stories, excessive macho-posturing of the 'one-man-army' hero or hit-man vigilante, and overwhelming special-effects and insane stunts. By the 1980s, action films became more hyperkinetic, violent, and expensive to produce. Raw, indestructible, powerful and muscular heroes of modern, ultra-violent action films were very much unlike the swashbuckler action heroes of the past. Many of the films have morphed into other genre areas, including thrillers, sci-fi, and adventure dramas. The biggest stars and their action films have been:

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The Maltese Falcon (1941) is one of the most popular and best classic detective mysteries ever made, and many film historians consider it the first in the dark film noir genre in Hollywood. It leaves the audience with a distinctly down-beat conclusion and bitter taste. The low-budget film reflects the remarkable directorial debut of John Huston (previously a screenwriter) who efficiently and skillfully composed and filmed this American classic for Warner Bros. studios, with great dialogue, deceitful characters, and menacing scenes.

The precocious director Huston was very faithful to Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel The Maltese Falcon, that had originally appeared as a five-part serialized story in a pulp fiction, detective story magazine publication named Black Mask. However, for an early preview audience, the film took a different, short-lived title, The Gent From Frisco. There were two major differences between the book and film: (1) Gutman was killed by Wilmer, and (2) the last quotable line of dialogue, with a Shakespearean reference, was thought up by Bogart on the set.

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A wide variety of romantic melodramas in gaudy, lush, super-saturated Technicolor - classic, histrionic-laden, exaggerated, glossy, tear-jerking soaps, appeared from director Douglas Sirk. Since these overwrought films appeared during a time of Hollywood censorship, all of the sexual transgressions, ungratified desires, illegitimacies, psycho-sexual disorders (impotence, frigidity, nymphomania, Oedipal problems, etc.), rapes, adulteries, domestically-oppressed women, abuses, abortions, and affairs were not made entirely explicit. These potentially-subversive topics, nonetheless, were brought to the screen. Today, they are sometimes considered over-the-top, but should be viewed with irony for the hidden meanings contained within:

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A controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece - these all describe ground-breaking producer/director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). The domestic melodrama/epic originally premiered with the title The Clansman in February, 1915 in Los Angeles, California, but three months later was retitled with the present title at its world premiere in New York, to emphasize the birthing process of the US. The film was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s anti-black, 1905 bigoted melodramatic staged play, The Clansman, the second volume in a trilogy:

* The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden, 1865-1900
* The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan
* The Traitor


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The Big Parade (1925) is director/producer King Vidor's most famous, precedent-setting war film from the silent era. It was the first realistic war drama and has served ever since as an archetypal model for all other war films. It was the first big box-office success of the newly-formed MGM Studios - and possibly the most profitable silent film of all time - it helped bring back the popularity of war films in the late 20s. Vidor, often compared to the end of the century's director Steven Spielberg, brought his own epic, sweeping style to his intimate yet massive work about love and war.

Screenwriter Harry Behn based his script on a story by author Laurence Stallings, who based his writing on his own gritty wartime experiences as a Marine serving in N. France. Made only seven years after the Great War's Armistice, the film captures the impact of the conflict on an ordinary GI. It was the first war film of its kind to tell its story from the viewpoint of the GI. Handsome matinee silent screen idol John Gilbert gave his greatest acting performance in a star-making role as one of three Americans who enlisted and was swept into the war in France.

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Raise the Red Lantern is one of the more sublimely beautiful and openly disturbing films of the 1990s. It is also the best work to date turned in by the actress/director combination of Gong Li and Zhang Yimou -- and this includes other impressive films like Ju Dou andTo Live. Raise the Red Lantern is one of those all-too-rare motion pictures capable of enthralling audience members while they're watching it, then haunting them for hours (or days) thereafter. With its simple story and complex themes and emotions, Raise the Red Lantern hints at the kind of film a great director like Ingmar Bergman might have made had he attempted a story set in mainland China.

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Starring Keir Gilchrist
Zach Galifianakis
Emma Roberts
Viola Davis

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Transformers producers Don Murphy and Susan Montford made a lot of fans happy today with their news of acquiring popular 1990’s cartoon Captain Planet, featuring a hero who promotes environmental themes in addition to battling super villains, for a live-action movie.

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