Charlie Noir (2002)

Three detectives in the corrupt and brutal L.A. police force of the 1950s use differing methods to uncover a conspiracy behind the shotgun slayings of the patrons at an all-night diner.

Unhappily married Richard Mason concocts a meticulous scheme to kill his shrewish wife so that he'll be free to marry her sister.

Christabel Caine has the face of angel and the heart of a swamp rat. She'll step on anyone to get what she wants, including her own family. A master of manipulation, she covertly breaks off the engagement of her trusting cousin, Donna, to her fabulously wealthy beau, Curtis Carey. Once married to Curtis herself, Christabel continues her affair with novelist Nick Bradley, who knows she's evil, but loves her anyway.

Truck driver Mike Lambert is a down-and-out mining engineer searching for a job. When his rig breaks down in a small town, he happens upon a venomous seductress. When her boyfriend robs a bank, they intend to frame Lambert.

After marrying her long lost love, a pianist finds the relationship threatened by a wealthy composer who is besotted with her.

In London, barrister Anthony Keane takes the case of Maddalena Paradine, a beautiful woman accused of poisoning her blind husband. Though happily married, Keane becomes infatuated with his enigmatic client and convinced of her innocence. His obsession clouds his judgment as he builds a defense implicating her servant, André Latour—an act that leads to devastating consequences both in court and at home.

A young man is plunged into a life of subterfuge, deceit and mistaken identity in pursuit of a femme fatale whose heart is never quite within his grasp.

While watching from her train window, Nikki Collins witnesses a murder in a nearby building. When she alerts the police, they think she has read one too many mystery novels. She then enlists a popular mystery writer to help her solve the crime on her own, but her sleuthing attracts the attentions of suitors and killers.

Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis falls in love with a fishmonger while working for him as a live-in housekeeper.

Over the years, a child's romantic ideals about death blossom into necrophilia, the study of embalming and the most profound relationship of her life.