The Shawshank Redemption (1994), 12 Angry Men (1957), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Fury (1936), Scarlet Street (1945), A Place in the Sun (1951), Seven Beauties (1976) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Murder Trial movies.
Storyline: Chronicles the experiences of a formerly successful banker as a prisoner in the gloomy jailhouse of Shawshank after being found guilty of a crime he did not commit. The film portrays the man's unique way of dealing with his new, torturous life; along the way he befriends a number of fellow prisoners, most notably a wise long-term inmate named Red.
Plot Keywords: wrongful imprisonment, prison, escape from prison, based on the works of stephen king, friendship between men, suicide by hanging, wrongful conviction ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young man is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open-and-shut case of murder soon becomes a detective story that presents a succession of clues creating doubt, and a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other. Based on the play, all of the action takes place on the stage of the jury room.
Plot Keywords: jury, dialogue driven, courtroom, single set production, racism, all male cast, ensemble cast ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara), a lieutenant in the army, is arrested for the murder of a bartender, Barney Quill. He claims, in his defense, that the victim had raped and beaten up his wife Laura (Lee Remick). Although Laura supports her husband's story, the police surgeon can find no evidence that she has been raped. Manion is defended by Paul Biegler (James Stewart), a humble small-town lawyer and recently deposed district attorney. During the course of interviews, Biegler discovers that Manion is violently possessive and jealous, and also that his wife has a reputation for flirting with other men. Biegler realizes that the prosecution will try to make the court believe that Laura had been drunk and was picked up by the bartender and then Her husband killed him and beat her up when he discovered they had been together. Manion pleads "not guilty" and Biegler, who knows that his case is weak, tries to find evidence that will save Manion.
Plot Keywords: murder trial, rape victim, rosary, catholicism, underwear, u.s. military, law ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: It's the Great Depression. In the process of robbing a bank of $10,000, Ben Harper kills two people. Before he is captured, he is able to convince his adolescent son John and his daughter Pearl not to tell anyone, including their mother Willa, where he hid the money, namely in Pearl's favorite toy, a doll that she carries everywhere with her. Ben, who is captured, tried and convicted, is sentenced to death. But before he is executed, Ben is in the state penitentiary with a cell mate, a man by the name of Harry Powell, a self-professed man of the cloth, who is really a con man and murderer, swindling lonely women, primarily rich widows, of their money before he kills them. Harry does whatever he can, unsuccessfully, to find out the location of the $10,000 from Ben. After Ben's execution, Harry decides that Willa will be his next mark, figuring that someone in the family knows where the money is hidden. Despite vowing not to remarry, Willa ends up being easy prey for Harry's outward ...
Plot Keywords: widow, preacher, spanking, car theft, girl, southern gothic, loss of father ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Based on the story "Mob Rule" by Norman Krasna. Joe Wilson and Katherine Grant are in love, but he doesn't have enough money for them to get married. So Katherine moves across the country to make money. But things go disastrously wrong for Joe when he stops in a small town and is mistaken for a wanted kidnapper. Through the course of the movie, Fritz Lang shows us how a decent and once civilized man can become a ruthless and bitter man.—Andre'a M. Thompson <athompso@ziggy.st.hmc.edu>
Plot Keywords: mob, lynch mob, xenophobia, social injustice, memento, miscarriage of justice, black american ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Chris Cross, 25 years a cashier, has a gold watch and little else. That rainy night, he rescues delectable Kitty from her abusive boyfriend Johnny. Smitten, amateur painter Chris lets Kitty think he's a wealthy artist. At Johnny's urging, she lets Chris establish her in an apartment (with his shrewish wife's money). There, Chris paints masterpieces; but Johnny sells them under Kitty's name, with disastrous and ironic results.
Plot Keywords: death sentence, guilty conscience, greenwich village manhattan new york city, presumed dead, art gallery, electric chair, art exhibition ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The young and poor George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) leaves his religious mother and Chicago and arrives in California expecting to find a better job in the business of his wealthy uncle Charles Eastman. His cousin Earl Eastman advises him that there are many women in the factory and the basic rule is that he must not hang around with any of them. George meets the worker of the assembly line, Alice Tripp, in the movie theater and they date. Meanwhile, the outcast George is promoted and he meets the gorgeous Angela Vickers at a party thrown at his uncle's house. Angela introduces him to the local high society and they fall in love with each other. However, Alice is pregnant and she wants to get married with George. During a dinner party at Angela's lake house with parents, relatives, and friends, Alice calls George from the bus station and gives him thirty minutes to meet her; otherwise she will crash the party and tell what has happened. George is pressed by the situation which ends ...
Plot Keywords: murder of a pregnant woman, abortion, social climber, boat accident, death by drowning, murder trial, high society ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: It's sometime during WWII. Italian national, Neapolitan Pasqualino Frafuso, is a big talking layabout who has grand ideas of his importance, especially in upholding the honor of his family consisting of his mother and his less than attractive seven sisters. He admits to himself that he too is less than handsome, but believes he nonetheless attracts the romantic interest of most women. It is in he upholding the honor of his sisters that he often calls himself Pasqualino Settebellezze, translated Pasqualino "Seven Beauties". Having gone AWOL from military service, he has just gotten off a train as a stowaway in an unknown locale having just met another AWOL soldier, Francesco, they believing they somewhere in Germany, which is indeed a correct assumption. In relaying his less than direct "point A to point B" story in how he arrived at this point in time to Francesco, Pasqualino tells one in which every conscious decision was what he thought would be the path of greatest ease for himself in less than ideal circumstances, that path which began with accidentally killing his sister Concettina's pimp and, according to her, lover and fiancé, declaring insanity in the ensuing legal battles rather than going to prison, and choosing military service rather than continue to endure medical intervention, such as shock treatment, at the psychiatric hospital. Pasqualino and Francesco are quickly captured by the Nazis and sent to a POW camp. Having already witnessed mass murders by the Nazis both inside and outside the camp, Pasqualino makes another such "easier path" decision in what ends up being a dangerous campaign of seducing the obese and sadistic female camp commandant.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: writer director, male nudity, male frontal nudity, male pubic hair, pubic hair, murder, f rated ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A loose remake of 12 Angry Men (1957), set in a Russian school. 12 jurors are struggling to decide the fate of a Chechen teenager who allegedly killed his Russian stepfather who took the teenager to live with him in Moscow during the Chechen War in which teenager lost his parents. The jurors: a racist taxi-driver, a suspicious doctor, a vacillating TV producer, a Holocaust survivor, a flamboyant musician, a cemetery manager, and others represent the fragmented society of modern day Russia. A stray bird (a touch of New Age cinema) is flying above the jurors' heads, alluding to tolerance.
Plot Keywords: stepfather, experiment, long take, loss of parents, murder trial, prison cell, stairs ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Clive Langham (Sir John Gielgud) spends one tormenting night in his bed suffering from health problems and thinking up a story based on his relatives. He is a bitter man and he shows, through flashbacks, how spiteful, conniving and treacherous his family is. But is this how they really are or is it his own vindictive slant on things?—Archie Moore <ar.moore@student.qut.edu.au>
Plot Keywords: surprise ending, birthday, courtroom, dialogue driven, husband wife relationship, lawyer, mercy killing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: When a young man, Aaron, is charged with the horrific murder of Archbishop Rushman, hot-shot Chicago lawyer Martin Vail takes on his defense at no charge. Aaron was a homeless street kid before he was taken in by the Archbishop. He's shy and speaks with a stammer. Vail is convinced that Aaron is innocent but after discovering a video that shows Aaron may have had good reason to want the Archbishop dead, he begins to question that conclusion. When Aaron lashes out at the psychologist examining him another personality, Roy, is revealed. With the trial already underway, Vail cannot change Aaron plea and so has to find a way to introduce his client's condition. Aaron has something of a surprise for him as well.
Plot Keywords: altar boy, murder trial, deception, manipulation, amnesia, stuttering, courtroom ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Dr. Robert Richardson, a dedicated young general practitioner, seeks to establish himself in an isolated fishing village on Cape Breton Island off the Nova Scotia coast. The population is poor and the struggling physician generally gets paid for his efforts in barter. When he meets Belinda McDonald, a young deaf mute callously dismissed by family and neighbors as "the dummy," he alone senses her innate intelligence. He overcomes the initial skepticism of her flinty, gruff father and indifferently cold aunt, who operate a hardscrabble grist mill and farm, and devotes himself to teaching the young girl sign language and lip-reading. Hopes are even raised that she might even eventually qualify for a medical procedure that might improve her condition. Her optimism is crushed, however, when she raped by Locky McCormick, a brutish local fisherman. Traumatized, she is unable to communicate the outrage to her family, who are baffled and angry when they learn she is pregnant. The local gossips blame the doctor, and he and the McDonalds become pariahs, unable to earn a living in the provincial village. Matters come to a head when McCormick and his new wife pressure the local council to declare Belinda an unfit mother and declare them the baby's legal guardians.—duke1029
Plot Keywords: egg, chicken, rapist, pregnant from rape, acquittal, trial, murder trial ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Michael O'Hara, against his better judgement, hires on as a crew member of Arthur Bannister's yacht, sailing to San Francisco. They pick up Grisby, Bannister's law partner, en route. Bannister has a wife, Elsa, who seems to like Michael much better than she likes her husband. After they dock in Sausalito, Michael goes along with Grisby's weird plan to fake his (Grisby's) murder so he can disappear untailed. He wants the $5000 Grisby has offered, so he can run off with Elsa. But Grisby turns up actually murdered, and Michael gets blamed for it. Somebody set him up, but it is not clear who or how. Bannister (the actual murderer?) defends Michael in court.
Plot Keywords: hall of mirrors, chinatown san francisco, crooked lawyer, cross examination, crutch, double cross, drug overdose ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) is a psychiatrist at Green Manors mental asylum. The head of Green Manors has just been replaced, with his replacement being the renowned Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck). Romance blossoms between Dr. Petersen and Dr. Edwards, but Dr. Edwards starts to show odd aversions and personality traits...
Plot Keywords: amnesia, dream sequence, post traumatic stress disorder, skiing, flashback, childhood memory, cigarette case ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: As children, Lorenzo Carcaterra - Shakes to his friends - Michael Sullivan, Tommy Marcano, and John Reilly were inseparable. They grew up in Hell's Kitchen, a far from perfect neighborhood, one filled as Shakes says with scams and shake downs, but one where the rules were known by its residents. The one adult who they admired was Father Bobby Carelli, who understood them as kids more than most adults and more than he himself would like to admit. In 1967, their lives would change forever when a typical teenage prank went wrong which led to the four of them being sentenced to various terms at Wilkinson Home for Boys, a reformatory. There, they were physically, emotionally and sexually abused primarily by Sean Nokes, the head guard of their cell block, and fellow guards Ralph Ferguson, Henry Addison, and Adam Styler, although there were other caring figures of authority at the home including other guards. Their time at the home affected the four, not all who were able to emerge from the ...
Plot Keywords: sexual abuse, kicked in the crotch, gang rape, library, bar, coffin, cocaine ...
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