A Perfect Murder (1998)

Director
Andrew Davis

Main cast
Michael Douglas; Gwyneth Paltrow; Viggo Mortensen; Sarita Choudhury; Constance Towers

Genres
Crime, Thriller, Drama

Description
Millionaire industrialist Steven Taylor is a man who has everything but what he craves most: the love and fidelity of his wife. A hugely successful player in the New York financial world, he considers her to be his most treasured acquisition. But she needs more than simply the role of dazzling accessory.


Similar movies

Two young men strangle their "inferior" classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the "perfection" of their crime.
The classic Raymond Chandler tale retold with Mitchum taking over the Bogart role.
Alice's boyfriend Frank is a Scotland Yard detective who seems more interested in police work than in her. When she agrees to go out with another man, he attacks her and she defends herself and kills him. When the body is discovered, Frank is assigned to the case. He quickly discovers that Alice is the killer, but so has someone else, and they are threatening blackmail.
Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett) devises a cunning plan to snare a ruthless blackmailer who's been causing misery throughout London. And this time, even his loyal sidekick Dr. Watson finds the Baker Street sleuth's campaign a little strange. Based on Arthur Conan Doyle's characters, this film features a softened version of Holmes who -- zounds! -- falls in love.
Peter Weller (Robocop) stars as Baton Morris, a drifter suspected of murder, in this crime drama. A widow (Kathy Baker) living in West Virginia takes in the man (Weller) whom she believes murdered her husband. As she spends more time with him, she begins to fall for him, but continues to question whether or not she can trust him.Directed by David Saperstein and based on a novel by Robert Houston, A Killing Affair features twists and turns up until the end.
Based on the actual case files for one of the most intriguing unsolved crimes in America, "Zodiac" tells the story of a serial killer that terrified the San Francisco Bay Area, taunting police with his ciphers and letters. The case becomes an obsession for four men as their lives and careers are built and destroyed by the endless trail of clues.
One of the contemporary masters of Japanese film, Kiyoshi Kurosawa here fashions a dark tale that is both a sharp satire of corporate life and a B-movie thriller. A former sumo wrestler now working as a security guard goes on a murderous rampage in the company that's employed him.
The feature-film debut of famed director Louis Malle is an interesting, modern film noir with the classic theme of lovers plotting to kill the husband and make it look like suicide (reminiscent of The Postman Always Rings Twice). Jeanne Moreau gives an astonishing performance, perverse but naive as she leads her young lover down a path that can only lead to doom for both of them.
A bored young woman, a teen living in Santa Rosa, California, Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Wright), is frustrated because nothing seems to be happening in her life and that of her family. Then, she receives wonderful news: her uncle (for whom she was named), Charlie Oakley (Cotten), is arriving for a visit. But Uncle Charlie may not be the man he seems to be.
The region where the borders of North Korea, China, and Russia come together, forms a sort of modern day wild west, where more than half of the population relies on illegal activity in order to survive. In Yanbian, on the Chinese side of the border, Gu-nam (Ha Jung-woo) wiles away his days driving a cab, and spends his nights getting drunk and gambling, and losing horribly. In fact he’s so bad at mahjong that he has built up a sizeable debt to some small-scale hoods. His wife went to Seoul to work and send back money, but it’s been months since he has heard from her, and he’s tortured by visions of her wild, passionate, imagined affairs. So he’s broke and crazy and unraveling at the seams. When local crime lord Myun (Kim Yun-seok) offers to erase Gu-nam’s debt in exchange for a contract killing in Seoul, Gu-nam, at the end of his rope, reluctantly accepts.
A couple having an affair strike a bicyclist with their car and do not offer aid out of fear of their relationship being exposed.
Private Detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love.
Illicit lovers plot to kill the woman's older husband.
Harry Mitchell is a successful Los Angeles manufacturer whose wife is running for city council. His life is turned upside down when three blackmailers confront him with a video tape of him with his young mistress and demand $100,000. Fearing that the story will hurt his wife's political campaign if he goes to the police, Harry pretends that he will pay the men, but does not follow through.
John George Haigh, the notorious "acid bath murderer" in 1940s England, becomes the subject of this dramatisation
Attempting to recover from a recent family trauma by escaping into the woods for a peaceful hiking trip, an ex-lawman and his young son stumble across a dangerous contract killer in director Bruce Beresford's forest-bound thriller.
Immediately after Lisa (Loren) declares that she is leaving her immature, abusive, but easy-going husband Robert (Perkins), he is reported dead in a plane crash. Secretly still alive, he convinces her to collect his life insurance, although she knows that it's a bad idea. Lisa must contend with the complications of the scheme, which involve an aggressive suitor (Young), Robert's jealousy, and her own guilt.
Bruno, a sadistic criminal, wants clever con man Leo out of the way. Leo and his equally clever wife, Lily, are up to something. So too is Julius: he hires Leo to kill Gloria, Julius's wife. Leo does it, but then Julius shows up with the murder on tape, saying Gloria isn't his wife - it's blackmail. Leo's bookie, Troy, is also closing in, wanting to be paid. Bruno and Lily as well as Bruno and Julius have their own scams running, and Leo is their target. Maybe Leo can get Troy off his back, avoid Moose (Bruno's huge enforcer), send Gloria's corpse out of England, turn the tables on Bruno's murderous brother Caspar, and outfox Lily. Or is Lily his fox? It's a three-ring circus.
Marnie is a beautiful kleptomaniac who is in love with businessman Mark Rutland. Marnie who is a compulsive thief is being watched by her new boss Mark who suspects her of stealing from him and thus decides to blackmail her in the most unusual way. A psychological thriller from Alfred Hitchcock based on a novel of the same name by Winston Graham.
A frustrated, unemployed teacher joins forces with a scammer and his girlfriend in a blackmailing scheme.
Lew is a small time loser with a troubled past and a very big secret. Overhearing a couple plan a kidnapping, Lew is tempted to come up with a scheme of his own. He decides to get to the victim first and then blackmail the real criminals. His plan soon spins out of control.
When a seemingly straight-forward drug deal goes awry, XXXX has to break his die-hard rules and turn up the heat, not only to outwit the old regime and come out on top, but to save his own skin...
Richter Boudreau is on a bad streak: Languishing in the shadow of his celebrity mother, he loses his job as a film critic for the town paper, and now he's been approached with a dangerous proposition that ultimately leads to blackmail. Richter's friend Ronnie ropes him into a scheme to steal the inheritance of his wife, Vicky.
Ray, a construction worker trapped in an unhappy marriage, pursues an affair with his neighbor, Carla. Carla's husband, Greg, is a mobster who keeps large sums of drug money in their home. With this in mind, Carla comes up with a plan: She and Ray will steal Greg's money, burn down her house, convince Greg the money was lost in the fire and then run away together. Carla's scheme, however, doesn't go off as planned.
Bounced from her job, Erin Grant needs money if she's to have any chance of winning back custody of her child. But, eventually, she must confront the naked truth: to take on the system, she'll have to take it all off. Erin strips to conquer, but she faces unintended circumstances when a hound dog of a Congressman zeroes in on her and sharpens the shady tools at his fingertips, including blackmail and murder.
Chan Wing Yan, a young police officer, has been sent undercover as a mole in the local mafia. Lau Kin Ming, a young mafia member, infiltrates the police force. Years later, their older counterparts, Chen Wing Yan and Inspector Lau Kin Ming, respectively, race against time to expose the mole within their midst.
A fugitive (Edward G. Robinson) from a chain gang becomes an oil-well firefighter and meets the man (Gene Lockhart) who framed him.
The tale of two brothers with serious financial woes. When a third party proposes they turn to crime, things go bad and the two become enemies.
A powerful entrepreneur wants to build an exclusive resort hotel in Villanova, but he discovers the location he has in mind is protected by local land-use regulations. He hires Maria, a beautiful and elegant prostitute, to seduce the mayor, leaving him open to blackmail if he won't give the entrepreneur what he wants. Maria has no trouble twisting Meireles around her finger, but police detectives Madeira and Neves get wind of the plan and set out to expose the plot...
Young and wide-eyed, Kathie falls in love with charming yet quirky real estate scion Robert Durst, only to find their marriage turning stranger, darker and more disturbing as time passes.
Tom Ripley is a charismatic sociopath who makes his way in mid-'50s New York as a rest room attendant and pianist. His skill however is in impersonating other people, forging handwriting and running second-rate scams. Unhappy with his own life, he kills and takes on the persona of somebody else.
Based on real events, Canada's most notorious serial killers, Paul Bernardo and wife Karla Homolka kidnap, sexually abuse, and murder three young girls.
Police Chief Jesse Stone, who was suspended by the Paradise, Mass. Town Council, begins moonlighting for his friend, State Homicide Commander Healy, by investigating a series of murders in Boston, leaving Rose and Suitcase to handle a crime spree in Paradise on their own. Jesse pours his energy into his work in an effort to push away his twin demons: booze and women. When his investigation leads to notorious mob boss Gino Fish, Jesse's pursuit becomes hazardous.
French village doctor becomes target of poison-pen letters sent to village leaders, accusing him of affairs and practicing abortion.
Charles Dobbs is a British secret agent investigating the apparent suicide of Foreign Office official Samuel Fennan. Dobbs suspects that Fennan's wife, Elsa, a survivor of a Nazi Germany extermination camp, might have some clues, but other officials want Dobbs to drop the case. So Dobbs hires a retiring inspector, Mendel, to quietly make inquiries. Dobbs isn't at all sure as there are a number of anomalies that simply can't be explained away. Dobbs is also having trouble at home with his errant wife, whom he very much loves, having frequent affairs. He's also pleased to see an old friend, Dieter Frey, who he recruited after the war. With the assistance of a colleague and a retired policeman, Dobbs tries to piece together just who is the spy and who in fact assassinated Fennan.
Two women who like control face each other in a battle over jealousy and weaknesses. The US is about to sign a trade treaty with an Asian country; in exchange for friendly relations, the US will loan the Asians money to purchase US goods under contract. Evil siren Ronnie St. Clair tries various ways to find out which US companies will get these contracts, so that she can do some inside trading to make money on the stock market. The CIA hires gun-carrying, man-eating chanteuse and stripper, Ginger MacAllister, to put a stop to Miss St. Clair’s plan. Ginger and her CIA contact, Clay Boyer, an African-American, are attracted to each other. Will they live to ignite this spark?
Joe Moore has a job he loves. He's a thief. His job goes sour when he gets caught on security camera tape. His fence, Bergman reneges on the money he's owed, and his wife may be betraying him with the fence's young lieutenant. Moore and his partner, Bobby Blane and their utility man, Pinky Pincus find themselves broke, betrayed, and blackmailed. Moore is forced to commit his crew to do one last big job.
Los Angeles private-eye Philip Marlowe is trying to locate the brother of his new client, a woman named Orfamay Quest. The trail leads to two men who deny any knowledge of the brother's existence. Both are soon killed by an ice pick, so Marlowe deduces that there's much more to this than a simple missing-person case. Marlowe's path crosses that of a blackmailed movie star, Mavis Wald, and her friend, exotic dancer Delores. A mobster sends karate expert Winslow Wong to bust up Marlowe's office and warn him off the case, while Lieutenant French also cautions the detective to stay out of the police's way.
Keen young Raymold Avila joins the Internal Affairs Department of the Los Angeles police. He and partner Amy Wallace are soon looking closely at the activities of cop Dennis Peck whose financial holdings start to suggest something shady. Indeed Peck is involved in any number of dubious or downright criminal activities. He is also devious, a womaniser, and a clever manipulator, and he starts to turn his attention on Avila.
A revolutionary is sentenced to death for his anti-national activities. And so begins a battle of wits between the prison officer and his comrades, who try to rescues him with the help of the reluctant hangman who has been selected to deliver the punishment.
Set in '50s Spain, a young man (Sanz) leaves the army and looks for a job so he and his fiancée (Verdu) can get married. He rents a room from a widow (Abril), and shortly begins a torrid affair with her. The fiancée figures it out and decides to win him back by offering herself to him and taking him to meet her family. Ultimately he has to make a decision. Based on a true story.
Stanislas Previne is a young sociologist, preparing a thesis on criminal women. He chooses Camille Bliss as his subject of study and begins to visit her in prison for interviews. Camille became acquainted with trouble at a young age and justifies her actions by "fate-bets." She is currently in prison for allegedly murdering one of her lovers. As she tells Stanislas of her life and love affairs, his interest in her grows to more than just professional. Can he resist her charm?
In 1928 Arthur Upfield, Australia’s premier crime writer, plotted the perfect murder for his novel The Sands of Windee. Meanwhile, one of his friends, stockman Snowy Rowles, put the scheme into deadly effect, even before the book was published. This true story resulted in one of Australia’s most sensational murder trials of the 1930’s and catapulted Upfield’s name onto the world stage.
A beautiful showgirl, name "the Canary" is a scheming nightclub singer. Blackmailing is her game and with that she ends up dead. But who killed "the Canary". All the suspects knew and were used by her and everyone had a motive to see her dead. The only witness to the crime has also been 'rubbed out'. Only one man, the keen, fascinating, debonair detective Philo Vance, would be able to figure out who is the killer. Written by Tony Fontana
Paul Gregory (William Sylvester) is an accomplished composer despite his blindness, and his beautiful wife Anne (Barbara Shelley) seems to be the perfect supporting wife. But unknown to Paul, she is having a passionate affair with Ricky (Alexander Davion), a struggling artist. Keen to support her artist lover and give them more time to make love, she persuades Paul to commission Ricky to paint her portrait. But Paul senses their affection for each other, and threatens to cut Anne off without a penny. Desperate to keep both her lover and Paul s money, Anne plots the perfect murder and asks Ricky to carry it out...
Infernal Affairs III is a 2003 Hong Kong crime thriller film directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. It is the third installment in the Infernal Affairs film series, and is both a sequel and a semi-prequel to the original film, as it intercuts events before and after the events in the original.
"At Risk" introduces Win Garano (Sunjata), the rising star of the Massachusetts State Police, when D.A. Monique "Money" Lamont (MacDowell) sends him to Tennessee to investigate a cold case that took place more than 20 years before. The calculating Monique thinks she has found the perfect murder to showcase her new crime initiative and Win has no choice but to follow her lead. With the help of his colleague Sykes (Gish), Win follows the evidence as it leads him to a killer in Knoxville, and then all the way back to Boston and a crime that hits much closer to home.
Kamal and Erin, a couple facing midlife crisis after prolonged lack of real communication, caused by years of failure at trying to have a baby. On their 10th year anniversary, they decide to have a trip to Bako National Park where they had their trip over 10 years ago to reignite their bond of love and marriage.On their way to Bako, Erin inadvertently discovers that Kamal is drafting a note that implies he is planning to end it all. Shocked, she starts feeling sorry for Kamal and also feels guilty about the situation. But later she finds out Kamal's secret, that makes her infuriated and upset, so she begins to plan the perfect murder, using his note as strong evidence of his death. Her plans goes awry, once a local Sarawakian, Jemat, their boatman to the isolated National Park comes into the picture...
After years of faithful supporting-player service to Warner Bros., Jerome Cowan was rewarded with two starring vehicles, the first of which was Find the Blackmailer. Cowan is cast as private eyes D. L. Trees, who is hired by mayoral candidate John M. Rhodes (Gene Lockhart) to prevent any sort of adverse publicity. It seems that, somewhere in town, there's this talking blackbird (!) who insists upon saying that Rhodes will commit a murder. When the killing occurs, Rhodes is implicated, and Trees is off on a hectic pursuit of the incriminating crow-and the actual murderer. Faye Emerson is decorative as the leading lady, while the supporting cast is festooned with such "usual suspects" as John Harmon, Bradley Page and Lou Lubin.
In the middle of the night, deputy Philippe Dubaye wakes up his old friend Xavier Maréchal with disturbing news: he has just killed Serrano, a racketeer with extant political connections. Serrano kept proofs of Dubaye's involvement in corrupt dealings and was poised to use them against the deputy. Xavier readily agrees to cover up for his old pal Philippe, but he soon runs into difficulties. Nobody believes Dubaye's alibi. And everybody -- influential personalities, powerful businessmen, dubious go-betweens and the police -- wants to get hold of the documents that served to blackmail Dubaye; by all possible means...
A womanizer meets his match when he falls for the daughter of a gambling addict who is in debt to the mob.
An American couple, Paul and Marianne, spend their vacation in Italy and and experiences trouble when the wife invites a former lover and his teenage daughter to visit, which leads to jealousy and dangerous sexual scenarios.
Simen (Johan Tinus Lindgren) is strongly influenced by his feelings, and unable to get over the death of his mother four years ago. When one day he learns that his father Vidar (Kim Prisoner) will die of cancer unless he gets an operation abroad which cost 200,000 dollars, he becomes afraid of being orphaned. How will he be able to raise so much money in a few days? After he witnesses a robbery by Ove (Erik Skold), he decides to try and blackmail him for the money he needs for his dad's operation. Since Simen is an amateur at blackmailing people for money, he does everything wrong. Suddenly he finds himself bound in Ove's car. Now it's Ove's turn to push Simen's family for ransom.
Beautiful Noriko Miki works at a cosmetic company. One day, Noriko is murdered. People begin to suspect her co-worker Miki Shirono might have killed her. Television begins to cover her story. A TV show interviews Miki Shirono's colleagues, family, people from her hometown. Rumors turn into fear. Is she a wicked a woman?
The young and self-confident Danny blufs at the local police-station that he will escape out of prison within one hour. What follows is a flashback about his childhood with his uncle and aunt, which are 'vaudeville'-artists themselves.
A man falls in love with a beautiful young woman and begins to suspect that he may have also loved her in a previous life.
A young novelist, Richard Harland, meets beautiful Ellen Berent on a train where they fall in love and are soon married. When tragedies take first his handicapped young brother, then his unborn son from him, Harland gradually realises that his wife's insane jealousy may be the cause of the tragedies in his life. Yet another shock awaits them all, as Ellen's emotions become uncontrollable.
When a man ends a regretful love affair that occurred during his wife's illness, his mistress plots revenge by targeting his family's most treasured possessions, a priceless painting and his son.
Before a criminal lawyer knows what has happened, she is forced to defend a wife killer she knows is guilty.
Can you really get away with murder? Welcome to the world of Katrina, a 19-year-old single mum who's planning to do just that. Katrina lives in a world of petty crime, fast cars, manicures and blow-jobs. A master manipulator of men living at home with her father in suburban Golden Grove, Katrina will stop at nothing to get what she wants - even murder.

© Valossa 2015–2024