Claudio Martinez Movies

Lorenzo Lamas plays a bounty hunter who seeks revenge on the crime syndicate responsible for killing his brother and sister-in-law in this actioner. ~ Kristie Hassen, Rovi

In this drama, a Chicano gang member falls in love with a beautiful, wealthy Anglo girl. She tries to get him to leave the gang, but the young man is too deeply involved in being macho to listen. Then his grandmother dies and he travels to Mexico for the funeral. There his mother decides to introduce him to his estranged father, a boozy Anglo-American neer-do-well. Seeing his father causes the boy to take a good look at himself. He decides he wants a better life. He tries to leave the gang and they end up beating him senseless. Still he persists, and soon he is reunited with the girl he loves. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

"You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't," warns water baron Noah Cross (John Huston), when smooth cop-turned-private eye J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) starts nosing around Cross's water diversion scheme. That proves to be the ominous lesson of Chinatown, Roman Polanski's critically lauded 1974 revision of 1940s film noir detective movies. In 1930s Los Angeles, "matrimonial work" specialist Gittes is hired by Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to tail her husband, Water Department engineer Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling). Gittes photographs him in the company of a young blonde and figures the case is closed, only to discover that the real Mrs. Mulwray had nothing to do with hiring Gittes in the first place. When Hollis turns up dead, Gittes decides to investigate further, encountering a shady old-age home, corrupt bureaucrats, angry orange farmers, and a nostril-slicing thug (Polanski) along the way. By the time he confronts Cross, Evelyn's father and Mulwray's former business partner, Jake thinks he knows everything, but an even more sordid truth awaits him. When circumstances force Jake to return to his old beat in Chinatown, he realizes just how impotent he is against the wealthy, depraved Cross. "Forget it, Jake," his old partner tells him. "It's Chinatown." Reworking the somber underpinnings of detective noir along more pessimistic lines, Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne convey a '70s-inflected critique of capitalist and bureaucratic malevolence in a carefully detailed period piece harkening back to the genre's roots in the 1930s and '40s. Gittes always has a smart comeback like Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, but the corruption Gittes finds is too deep for one man to stop. Other noir revisions, such as Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975), also centered on the detective's inefficacy in an uncertain '70s world, but Chinatown's period sheen renders this dilemma at once contemporary and timeless, pointing to larger implications about the effects of corporate rapaciousness on individuals. Polanski and Towne clashed over Chinatown's ending; Polanski won the fight, but Towne won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Chinatown was nominated for ten other Oscars, including Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costumes, and Score. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

This sequel to The Doberman Gang finds the same set of dogs again being trained to rob banks and commit other crimes. The difference is that there's another group of crooks who have hatched the plan. A young boy with an emotional attachment to the canines is their only hope for a fresh start. ~ John Bush, Rovi

In the conclusion of a two-part story, new police commissioner Edna Dixon (Juanita Moore) insists upon accompanying mobile officers Jim Reed (Kent McCord) and Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) during a night shift. It's something of an ordeal by fire for all three persons, inasmuch as Jim and Peter are virtually the only cops left standing during a flu epidemic. Although there are plenty of action scenes involving a neighborhood riot and a teenage car thief, the highlight of the evening is a battle royale between bar owner Jean Wagner (Rose Marie) and elderly drunk Fred Tiller (Burt Mustin)--who happens to be naked. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi