Noir Movie

Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island is a break from the dramatic director’s usual array of dramatic films. Though it features Leonardio DiCaprio yet again, it’s a far cry from the gangster movies Scorsese is known for. It veers off into some shockingly dark and twisted horror territory that’s both fun and chilling to visit. Read more

Though I’m sure I’ll be making some fans angry by saying this, The Spirit could have been a decent film—had it included simple concepts such as emotion, dialogue, that sort of thing. Instead, it simply rang of annoyances rather than style.

Rather than a moody, affecting crime drama, what viewers experience is a series of long, repetitive scenes featuring a hero who isn’t very heroic. For a mask-wearing casa nova, The Spirit himself seems much more a doofy klutz than sexual sleuth. Instead of witty, hard-edged dialogue what comes out of his mouth is forced generic gumshoe drivel, and though we’re told that the ladies fawn over his red-tie wearing bod, we’re pretty much left wondering why. Read more

I recently came across this quirky Steven Martin movie called Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982). It is not film noir per say and it's not exactly neo-noir. Rather, the best description is a fitting tribute to all noir classics. Wacky, weird and just downright creative, this was quite an enjoyable movie.

Carl Reiner, Steven Martin and George Gipe put their heads together for the main story. The story follows the pattern of typical 1940s crime dramas. Think cynical detective following the case of a missing person for a beautiful and mysterious client. All the usual ingredients, indeed. What makes DMDWP unique is the direction and its spoof factor. The filmmakers have edited in bits of classic noir footage as part of the actual movie. Read more

Perhaps no genre has a more distinct and inspiring style than the grim, expressionistic Noir. While the genre had its heyday in the 30's and 40's, Noir has never really gone away. Since the late 1960's there have been countless attempts to duplicate, pay homage to, or outright revive the genre. Some of these are great films, some are merely fun. But for every Chinatown there are a dozen other movies that missed the mark.

Romeo is Bleeding

The early 90's saw films becoming ever more entrenched in postmodern irony. While the likes of Quentin Tarantino were churning out the new grit with cool humor, a few projects tried to turn the era into something darker and more oppressive. That's where terminally uncool movies like Peter Medak's Romeo is Bleeding come in. While Romeo is little more than a hackneyed script backed by an indifferent directorial style, it could just as easily be seen as star Gary Oldman's career in microcosm. Read more

After reading a synopsis of any film, I generally feel that I have the ability to deduce the quality of that movie. That apparently isn’t true.

The basic premise to The Hitch-Hiker sounds intriguing. And in-fact it’s at least partially true. The script writer borrowed some current headlines and come up with the basic frame of the narration. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out.

What’s even more surprising is that the person who directed this, Ida Lupino, fared better on a number of other features – both in front of and behind the camera. And perhaps her story is as interesting as the film is – after all, she was the only female director working in Hollywood during the ‘50s.

But back to the film. Read more

It was 1941 and the term Film Noir as applicable to film had yet to be coined but this dimly lit, visually deliberate, character study starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor as the definitive Private Eye/Femme Fatale duo, laid quite a blueprint for such things. So perfect was the pitch and so evocative it was of all things that would soon become Noir, that in 1955 while writing Panorama du Film Noir Américain, the seminal treatise of the sub-genre, that authors Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton dubbed it the original Film Noir. This was not by any means the first adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's calculating detective novel, but as many have said, Noir is not to be looked upon as a genre per se, but as a style.

And what style we see here. Humphrey Bogart is quite possibly the most cool-as-ice he has ever been as detective Sam Spade, which by all accounts is saying quite a bit. Read more

It’s always shocking to find a film so deep with good writing, good acting, beautiful camera work and enough surprises to keep you wide-eyed, but remains largely unknown.

That’s pretty much the back story for The Scar released in 1948.

Coming not all too long after World War II, there is an air of intrigue about the entire film. It’s not spy related, but there are some characters whose identities become intertwined and eventually overlap. Read more

When a viewer is accustomed to seeing an actor in one role, it’s sometimes jarring to watch a movie where that actor plays a drastically different character.

Suddnely gives the viewer that feeling twice, but still turns out to be a well written, acted and produced film.

One of my favorite movies is Dr. Strangelove, directed by Stanley Kubrick. In the film General Jack D. Ripper becomes obsessed with the safety of his bodily fluids at throws the nation into a nuclear war with its enemies. Playing such an iconic part, it’s surprising that Sterling Hayden didn’t achieve wide spread fame. He did, however, turn in a strong performance in Suddenly as the do-right copper who tries to save the day. Read more

There are endless sites by which to get your daily entertainment from all over the interweb and most of them host content that in one way or another, disregards some copyright laws. You probably have gotten over the initial conscience guided decisions to not sample at least some of these sites, but battling your inner voice has just become a bit easier. Archive.org is one for abiding by all federal and international copyright laws.

You can find music, film and a host of images. But now you’re probably asking what does this hafta do with gangsters, hit men, bank robberies and striking femme fatales? Well, the Archive hosts a section strictly dedicated to Noir. Read more

Elia Kazan is known for two things: making movies and ratting folks out to HUAC. We’re only gonna talk about the first thing here.

The 1950 film Panic in the Streets was Kazan’s first of many successes during the decade and also in some ways presaged On the Water Front which would be released a scant four years later. A character in Panic at one point even utters the phrase, “We’ve already combed the water front.” But both films involve the docks in various ways and here Kazan seemed to work out the scenery and different ways to play with the physical nature of that space. Read more