Romeo is Bleeding (1993)

Gary Oldman plays a police sergeant named Jack Grimaldi who has a sideline in corruption and infidelity. His vices inevitably land him in trouble, but the Noirish setting is only half of the story - it's the performances of the cast that make Romeo as good as it is. It goes without saying that Oldman can be fantastic, but just as good was Lena Olin, an actress who held her own as an over-the-top femme fatale with an edge more deadly and unpredictable than most. Annabella Sciorra got less screen time but was also on top form.
It loses some of its momentum in the last third, but there's more than enough threads and ambiguity left to keep fans of this kind of drama happy.

4 locker envelopes out of 5

Cop Land (1997)

Some of Hollywood’s best are gathered together for this tale of a small town Sheriff and his relationship with a tight knit group of city cops who are as corrupt as the day is long.
Stallone gives one of the best performances of his career, which is even more praiseworthy when you consider who he’s up against.
He brings the sensitivity and the heart to a film that builds slowly and purposefully, and remains engaging right to the very end.

4 diagonal lines out of 5

New Rose Hotel (1998)

Some nonsense about corporate extraction and the nature of truth and love. It's based on a short by William Gibson and translates his sense of detachment and cold impersonality to the screen; I'm not sure if that was intentional or just bad filmmaking. It's depressing and empty, but has Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe, so it didn't get the stop button.
Features Japanese illustrator Yoshitaka Amano and daughter of Dario, Asia Argento, who gets on the cover because she has tits. If Walken had tits he'd probably be there too.

1½ style over substance out of 5