Excepting 1939’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, perhaps the most famous installment of the 14-film Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone is its second, also from that year: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Not based directly on any one particular story from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle canon, the movie does a great job of culling from Holmes’ overall world, to the point where it seems like it could’ve preceded Hound in theaters.

The joy here is watching Holmes (Rathbone) try to remain one step ahead of his archenemy, Prof. Moriarty (George Zucco, The Mummy’s Hand), who’s declared not guilty of murder by the courts, but only due to lack of evidence. Holmes possesses such evidence, but arrives a minute too late, leaving Moriarty free, since no man can be tried for the same crime twice. He vows to Holmes that he shall pull “the crime of the century,” and that our hero won’t be able to stop him.

A jewel heist is involved, and events culminate in a tussle atop the impressively moody Tower of London. Both Holmes and Moriarty reveal themselves as masters of disguise, suggesting an even match. As with its predecessor, Adventures is a Hollywood classic. It’s not for nothing that Guy Ritchie’s 2009 Sherlock Holmes reboot lifted the amusing scene in which the detective experiments with a fiddle and a glass full of houseflies. —Rod Lott

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Having never seen previous Alex Cross movies (Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider), I cannot comment on their merits. Being otherwise well-acquainted with Morgan Freeman, I’m inclined to believe he serves as a quiet yet commanding centre, lending his power to films that sorely need it (see also: Lucky Number Slevin, Unleashed, Hard Rain … the list goes sadly on).

Having never seen any Tyler Perry films (Diary of a Mad Black Woman, For Colored Girls, many others), I cannot comment on their merits either. I judge Perry solely as an actor, which, based on his Alex Cross performance as replacement Freeman, is akin to swapping Harrison Ford with Taylor Lautner, Sigourney Weaver with Tara Reid, Javier Bardem with a summer squash … you get the idea. In a film riddled with bad, Perry’s casting is the worst offender.

Based on the James Patterson crime novels — a series I am familiar with, beyond atrocious in style, plot, and writing ability — Alex Cross re-images the titular character as a young(ish) police detective with the never-proven-but-always-remarked-upon analytical skills of Sherlock Holmes and the never-remarked-upon-but-always-on-display charisma of unflavored ice milk. A maniacal assassin played by a shredded, illegal-MMA-fighting Matthew Fox (the only actor who realizes how awful the movie is, thus the only actor having any fun) has taken to leaving clues in abstract art sketches.

Cue desperate game of overfed-housecat-and-mouse, directed by hack maestro Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) with all the passion of an insomniac with substance-abuse issues. Cohen is unable to wring even the minutest amount of pleasure from all the ridiculousness. The finale [SPOILER], a fistfight betwixt Perry’s doughy teddy bear and Fox’s zero-percent-body-fat hitman, should be at the very least a laugh riot, like pitting John Candy against Jason Statham.

The only true enjoyment comes (inadvertently) from Perry; while most of his scenes battle to out-dull each other, there are times when his performance nears camp classic value. At one point, while Fox taunts him on the phone, Perry literally huffs and puffs with rage. It’s hilarious, and a pointed reminder of Freeman’s unsurpassed ability to project anger through stillness. Freeman is the calm at the eye of a hurricane; Perry, for all his livid wheezing, barely summons up a breeze. —Corey Redekop

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Two Men in Manhattan is as uniquely New York as Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver or Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon; it just happens to made by the French. Opening with a brassy jazz score — as American an art form as any — un film de Jean-Pierre Melville captures the Big Apple on the brink of Christmas, aka the most wonderful time of the year … unless you happen to be France’s United Nations delegate Fèvre-Berthier.

Absent without explanation for an otherwise unmemorable U.N. vote, Fèvre-Berthier is nowhere to be found, so night-owl journalist Moreau (Melville himself) is tasked with finding him. Taking sleazy photographer Delmas (Pierre Grasset, Rififi) as a booze-soaked sidekick, Moreau presumes that Fèvre-Berthier can be located with ease if they can find the man’s mistress, whomever she may be.

One of the most vital artists of cinema’s French New Wave, Melville (Le Samouraï) shoots the black-and-white film with a tourist’s eye — a focused, determined one vs. easily distracted. On the night of Dec. 23, his Moreau and Delmas run all over the City That Never Sleeps, from tavern to bordello, from the warm studio of Capitol Records to the bustling heart of Times Square. Two Men in Manhattan makes for a pleasurable whirlwind of a roundabout, to a point that the picture’s noir mystery seems almost incidental — an excuse to showcase the still-nascent metropolis. It just so happens that our guide, Melville/Moreau, calibrates audiences’ collective moral compass during the excursion. —Rod Lott

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In Milan, a middle-aged man by the name of Berzaghi (Raf Vallone, 1969’s The Italian Job) is not only widowed, but the sole caregiver for his mentally handicapped daughter, Donatella (Gillian Bray, The Bod Squad). Although she is 25 years old, her mind is stuck at 3; she can’t even put on a brassiere without her father’s help. Innocent flirting on her part is misread as sexual invitation from strangers, so Berzaghi must lock her up in their apartment when he goes to work.

One day, however, he returns to an empty home. The doors and windows remain locked; there’s no sign of forced entry. He fears the worst, as he should: that she has been abducted from his well-intentioned prison to one that has only the worst intentions in mind.

Enter the sinus-infected police captain (Frank Wolff, Once Upon a Time in the West) and his younger, shaggy-haired partner (Gabriele Tinti, Black Emanuelle), who have a feeling Donatella may have been kidnapped into a prostitution ring, so they tour the area’s buy-before-you-try bordellos.

The mystery of Duccio Tessari’s Death Occurred Last Night is not whether Donatella will be found among the whores, but who will find her and/or her captors first: the police or Berzaghi? The increasingly desperate father doesn’t think the authorities are acting fast enough, so he takes matters into his own vengeful hands.

Tessari (A Pistol for Ringo) directs this grim yet gripping polizia picture with a straightforward objective that makes its story timeless: suspense. So do the colorful supporting players who weave in and out of the story, not always by their own volition, including a suicidal “Negro prostitute,” a former pimp stooping to a less respectable career (that of car salesman) and a teddy bear with an ugly face. However, the show belongs to Wolff and Vallone; the former for portraying how a cop’s professional life infringes upon his personal one, and the latter for showing how an honorable man in his position gives up his own life to focus on that of his only child. —Rod Lott

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One of many Edgar Wallace adaptations Alfred Vohrer directed for the big screen, The College-Girl Murders begins with a scene straight out of Business 101: A scientist invents a new, odorless poison that’s 100-percent efficient in causing immediate death in its inhalants. As soon as he sells his find, he’s killed by the buyer.

We know not who this mysterious purchaser is, but we know what he intends to do with it: Annihilate some co-eds. One of those Dr. Mabuse-ian villains who rules over a hideout with a built-in crocodile lair, this enigmatic antagonist has more than one nut doing his bidding, including felons snuck in and out of their prison cells via garbage cans.

Most notable, however, is a whip-wielding monk clad in hooded duds that look like a Ku Klux Klan uniform accidentally got mixed with a load of reds in the wash. The robed menace runs amok in a girls’ dormitory, planting booby-trapped Bibles that spray the deadly gas upon opening. He then exits via the fireplace, which raises to reveal a secret passageway, natch.

Colorful in look and swinging in sound, The College-Girl Murders is such a blast on several levels that I’m willing to overlook the title’s unnecessary hyphen. The German film marks a solid krimi — not just among the Wallace adaptations, which number so many that they make up their own subgenre, but among the country’s thrillers of that era. It boasts a genuine whodunit plot, lovely ladies ripe for the offing, gadgetry galore and one way-out ending in which the authorities scamper out of frame as soon as they notice a card reading “ENDE” floating in the turtle aquarium behind them. —Rod Lott

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