The Public Enemy News

One can assume that certain moviegoers have been violently opposed to movie violence since the first fist was thrown on the silver screen.

Like most everyone, my earliest impressions of criminals and inmates came by way of watching television.

Frank Coghlan Jr., who was a child actor in the silent film era passed away quietly last month of natural causes at the ripe old age of 93.

A Movie A Week: THE MAYOR OF HELL I aina t no lawyer. I cana t talk without thinkina .

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the next installment of A Movie A Week. [For those who new to the column, A Movie A Week is just that, a dedicated way for me explore vintage cinema every week.

The Beast of the City plays out as an above-average crime picture made for MGM where the good guys and the heroes are, finally, one and the same.

"You're aces," says Edward G. Robinson to Joan Blondell in the course of "Bullets or Ballots," a 1936 crime melodrama from Warner Bros.

Summer: It can drain you faster than an oil pan at Jiffy Lube and leave you slack-jawed and feeble at the sight of a sweat-soaked ice cream vendor.

Summer: It can drain you faster than an oil pan at Jiffy Lube and leave you slack-jawed and feeble at the sight of a sweat-soaked ice cream vendor.

James Cagney in The Public Enemy Edward G Robinson's Little Caesar is great; Cagney's twitchily restless Tom Powers, profiting from Prohibition, is even greater.

It was the movies that killed John Dillinger - Gangster No. 1 until he was gunned down outside a Chicago theatre after taking in the pictures one hot night in 1934 - and it was the movies that brought him back to life.

As one of Hollywood's most famous "tough guy" actors, James Cagney was known for the exuberance he poured into his roles.

We all know how it is. You'd like to get out to see a new movie this weekend, but all those fireworks aren't gonna shoot themselves off, and there are too many hot dogs to be eaten anyway.

As any solid movie buff knows, there's a certain number of ingredients that go into making a movie about gang life.

The gangster movie, along with the Western, the musical and the screwball comedy, is among the most enduring American movie genres.

Johnny Depp is the latest actor to jump into a getaway car when "Public Enemies" opens Wednesday.

Depression-era outlaw John Dillinger saw a fellow outsider in Billie Frechette - and fell head over heels for her.

Sure, George Raft might have actually hung out with mobsters like Bugsy Siegel. Bogart could play criminals with more sensitivity and depth.

If it seems appropriate that "Public Enemies," director Michael Mann 's film starring Johnny Depp as Depression-era bank robber and all-around gangster John Dillinger , is opening Wednesday in the midst of the greatest economic meltdown in 70 years, that's because the 1930s were the golden age of the gangster film.

The Brattle continues its Classic Gangsters series with a pair of pre-Code gems.