Tomorrow, Gangster Squad hits theaters (click here for my review).  The crime flick takes place in 1949 Los Angeles during mobster Mickey Cohen’s rise to power in the City of Angels.  America has had a fascination with the gangster throughout cinema history.  They’ve been seen as folk heroes and the scourge of society.  In the era of the Production Code, Hollywood tried to have it both ways with mandated-warnings paired with exhilarating, charismatic characters.  Gangsters may always fall, but it’s a thrilling, infamous ride.

I’ve compiled a list of five gangster movies worth checking out.  To stay in line with Gangster Squad, all of these films were made before 1950, so they lived in the era of the glamorous underworld and all the seedy, ruthless behavior it entailed.  Hit the jump to check out the list.

Classic films are getting remade left and right, but what if it went the other way?  What if our original films of recent years were thrown back to an earlier era?  Who would star?  Who would direct?  What would the poster look like?  Artist Peter Stults ran with that idea and came up with some wonderfully creative and thoughtful posters based on recent movies.  I’m not sure if I see Leonard Nimoy as John McClane, but I can absolutely see James Dean starring in a 1950s version of Drive.

Hit the jump to check out some of the posters.

With the help of a recently discovered 16mm print found in an Argentinian film archive, Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis is finally (nearly) complete.  And with the addition of 25 minutes of never-before-seen footage, Kino International is planning limited releases in cities across the country to let cinephiles everywhere see the b&w classic in all its glory.  As a German Expressionism junkie, I know I’ll be in line when it hits LA on May 14th.  For the new trailer and a full list of cities and dates for the theatrical re-release, follow the jump.

One of the more fascinating moments in many auteur filmographies is the moment when he or she tackles their first big studio project.  Stepping (at least financially) into the Hollywood big leagues can be both wonderful and disastrous (and sometimes both).

Contempt was a film that, for Jean-Luc Godard, stands out as such a creative oddity; a studio-fueled adaptation of a 1954 novel (by Alberto Moravia, also known for the source material of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist) with big name stars like Jack Palance, Brigitte Bardot and (playing himself) Fritz Lang.  More after the jump:

There’s nothing like a tough-minded, film noir excursion into the bleaker side of the human soul to make the hottest days of summer seem even more unrelenting.  With that in mind, here’s the first of several noir picks to get you through the steamy evenings.