AFS Delivers a World of Police Thrillers to Austin

in

Polisse

Good cops, bad cops ... Austin Film Society is bringing us a month of top-notch police procedurals in its latest Essential Cinema series. The cops might not be good but the movies certainly are.

"Officers of Uncertainty: The Policier Legacy in Contemporary International Cinema" features a great mix of police movies -- one American, one French, one Turkish and one from Hong Kong. The films screen on Tuesday nights at 7 pm at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar throughout August. All films will be shown from 35mm prints.

The series kicks off tonight with Polisse (pictured at top), a 2011 French film directed by actress/filmmaker Maiwenn. It's about the difficulties of working in the Child Protection Unit of a municipal police force, focusing on a journalist who is drawn a little too closely to one of the officers. Tickets are still available but you can buy them online at the AFS site only until 3 pm -- after that, you have to get to the theater early and hope there's room.

Next Tuesday, August 14, the series returns to the U.S. for We Own the Night, James Gray's crime thriller from 2007 starring Joaquin Phoenix, Eva Mendes and Mark Wahlberg. It's set in the 1980s, centered around two brothers: One owns a Brooklyn nightclub, the other is a cop fighting drug lords.

On August 21, you can catch Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a Turkish movie from 2011 about an extensive police search for a possible murder victim's corpse. It's set in and around the Anatolia steppes. The movie won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2011.

Finish off your month of police thrillers with Andrew Lau's suspenseful 2002 film Infernal Affairs, the basis for the movie The Departed (which Wahlberg was also in, around the same time as We Own the Night). If you want to see what inspired Martin Scorsese's much-lauded film, here's a rare chance to watch Infernal Affairs on a big screen.

Tickets are available online on the AFS website for all movies in the Essential Cinema series.

Good Cops/Bad Cops

A fine beginning for this series. Thank-you and welcome to Austin Holly.