|
I'm going hard as a motherfucker for Noirvember this year, if I can manage it. I'm trying to devote, like, all my free time to movies, and all my movie time to noir. I started a bit early. Here's what I've watched so far: Fury (1936) - Noir precursor, or maybe noir proper, by Fritz Lang - one of his American films. Very cynical in the middle, with some deep dives into all sorts of ugly sides of the human psyche. All of the involved parties, including Spencer Tracy, do a pretty good job keeping the emotions and the emoting rather reasonable, rather than overacting, and the movie does a great job getting you to take everyone's side at various points. Also features a dog. 87/100 Hangover Square (1945) - Period piece British noir starring the indelible Laird Cregar as a composer who has one of those classic movie ailments which makes him into a crazy person sometimes in order to drive the plot, but which makes no sense and has pretty much no use aside from making things happen. That's kind of a bummer but Linda Darnell plays a great sleazy seductress, the period setting keeps things fresh, and there are some very inspired scenes, including a rather nightmarish Guy Fawkes night and a stupendous ending. Also features a cat somewhat prominently. 86/100 Detour (1945) - An incredibly lean (barely more than an hour) and low budget noir starring Tom Neal, who has an incredible face and who Wikipedia describes as "an American actor and boxer best known for appearing in the critically lauded film Detour, for having a tryst with actress Barbara Payton, and for later committing manslaughter." Features some really stellar high contrast shots of faces in light and shadow, some classic '40s fashion, and a great performance by Ann Savage playing a sleazbag woman whom the movie cleverly manages to make just sympathetic enough for us not to want to leave her in the dust. 86/100 The Blue Dahlia (1946) - Screenwriter Raymond Chandler packs all sorts of plot into this twisty post-war movie about a Navy pilot back from the war whose wife has maybe not been faithful and whose buddy has a steel plate in his head which gives him another one of those classic movie ailments. Alan Ladd plays a classic straight man, punching and high moral roading his way through the snaking story, and the dialogue crackles with a fair amount of energy. 83/100 High and Low (1963) - A late Japanese noir/neo-noir by Kurosawa with some great camera work and a bifurcated plot. The first half of the movie worked a lot better for me, with its high drama, moral uncertainty, and claustrophobia. The latter half was fine and has some nice moments, like a visit to Heroin Alley (the alley where everyone is addicted to heroin) and a stupendous ending scene. Features some fun exploration of themes of class and privilege. Not a bad double feature with Parasite, I think. 87/100 There's no way I'll work through all the films I've got lined up, but here's my watch list for the rest of the month, which I'll try to make a good dent in: Kiss of Death (1947) Nightmare Alley (1947) Body and Soul (1947) Cry of the City (1948) Force of Evil (1948) They Live By Night (1948) Moonrise (1948) The Set-Up (1949) White Heat (1949) Night and the City (1950) Gun Crazy (1950) The Breaking Point (1950) Woman on the Run (1950) Appointment with Danger (1950) On Dangerous Ground (1951) The Prowler (1951) Sudden Fear (1952) The Big Heat (1953) Pickup on South Street (1953) House of Bamboo (1955) Mr. Arkadin / Confidential Report (1955) ----------- Approximate Noir/Neo-Noir Dividing Point ----------- Le Doulos (1962) The Killers (1964) Le cercle rouge (1970) The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) Night Moves (1975) Blow Out (1981) Violent Cop (1989) Red Rock West (1993) The Last Seduction (1994) The Salton Sea (2002) Since it's November 2019, and it's neo-noir, and it's my favorite movie, I'll certainly be watching Blade Runner at some point, and I'll probably follow it up with the sequel which I also love.
|
# ? Nov 3, 2019 05:56 |
|
|
# ? Apr 26, 2024 21:23 |
|
Anyone doing neo-noir during this, don't loving sleep on Running Scared with Paul Walker, yes I know, but it's a killer dirty little flick.
|
# ? Nov 3, 2019 07:04 |
|
Jesus. That bookstore scene in The Big Sleep. e: Going to be doing a Bogart run for the next week or two, then diving into other noir nooks and crannies for the rest of the month. Will be keeping an eye on this thread for deeper cuts. Not seeing much in theaters in NYC for the month, but a microcinema I love is doing obscure noir Mondays where they don't reveal the film before the screening. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Nov 4, 2019 |
# ? Nov 4, 2019 01:57 |
|
Skwirl posted:Anyone doing neo-noir during this, don't loving sleep on Running Scared with Paul Walker, yes I know, but it's a killer dirty little flick. Running Scared loving whips rear end and I'm glad I'm not the only person who likes it. I'm not really sure if I'd call it noir or neo-noir, though. It's more of a Tarantino riff than anything. It's just a really loving good Tarantino riff.
|
# ? Nov 4, 2019 06:56 |
|
LORD OF BOOTY posted:Running Scared loving whips rear end and I'm glad I'm not the only person who likes it. It has more in common with Detour than anything Tarantino directed. Edit: what puts it into the neo-noir spectrum more than anything else is it's use of lighting. We recognize a classic noir film for its stark black and white images while the characters are grey on their actions, Running Scared uses blue and orange the same way. It feels like a lost Tony Scott film. Air Skwirl fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Nov 4, 2019 |
# ? Nov 4, 2019 09:57 |
|
Anything notable on The Criterion Channel? I've seen Tourneur's Out of the Past, the classic Detour, and the terrifying Diabolique is listed under their Film Noir section. If you haven't seen those three, get on it, because they're amazing. What else is on here that's essential?
|
# ? Nov 4, 2019 15:37 |
|
Besides the ones already mentioned, I'd say essentials from Criterion Channel are: Brute Force The Naked City The Naked Kiss Odd Man Out Raw Deal Stray Dog Tokyo Drifter They have their reconstruction of Mr. Arkadin too.
|
# ? Nov 4, 2019 17:32 |
|
Skwirl posted:It has more in common with Detour than anything Tarantino directed. That's fair enough. I mostly thought Tarantino due to the sprawling narrative that keeps jumping between various oddball characters, and the loving ridonkulous amounts of gore and swearing; it really felt to me like an ersatz Pulp Fiction. The aesthetic of it is definitely neo-noir as gently caress, though, yeah.
|
# ? Nov 5, 2019 09:12 |
|
LORD OF BOOTY posted:That's fair enough. I mostly thought Tarantino due to the sprawling narrative that keeps jumping between various oddball characters, and the loving ridonkulous amounts of gore and swearing; it really felt to me like an ersatz Pulp Fiction. The complete and total lack of pop culture references is why I think it really isn't like a Tarantino film.
|
# ? Nov 5, 2019 09:22 |
|
Franchescanado posted:Anything notable on The Criterion Channel? Just saw Klute; it's neo-noir, but it's real good, and leaving at the end of the month.
|
# ? Nov 5, 2019 21:24 |
|
resurgam40 posted:Just saw Klute; it's neo-noir, but it's real good, and leaving at the end of the month. I followed your suggestion and gave this a shot. And holy poo poo, I'm glad I did. I loved this movie. Everything about it is great. The music is haunting and suspenseful. Gordon Willis's cinematography captures gritty dilapidated New York City in a fascinating way. Donald Sutherland does a lot with a subdued performance, while Jane Fonda steals the show acting her rear end off. Had a great time with this.
|
# ? Nov 10, 2019 04:52 |
|
Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:Can we talk about neo-noir here? I saw Motherless Brooklyn last night, and it is my second-favorite movie of the year and probably the best neo-noir since my beloved L.A. Confidential in 1997. It accomplishes everything it sets out to, and it's smart and funny and twisty and has a top-notch cast led by the great Edward Norton. Norton also directed and wrote the screenplay, based on Jonathan Lethem's novel (which I really need to read now). Thank you for this advice. I saw it last night and really liked it a lot. I'm not the worlds largest Norton fan but he was great in it.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2019 15:10 |
|
Trying to catch up on a lot of physical media before the end of the year, including some stuff in the noir vein... Night and the City (1950, Jules Dassin) - I loved Dassin's first French film Rififi and his later Topkapi and Uptight are a lot of fun, too. This is another one of those pure noirs. Richard Widmark always plays a great sleaze (Kiss of Death is a great film, but Widmark just sends it to the top). Bob le flambeur (1955, Jean-Pierre Melville) - I've enjoyed or loved all the Melville I've seen so far, this is no exception. Incredible lighting, great characterization. It's almost like the French could be better at noir than we could be. Mikey and Nicky (1975, Elaine May) - This is the sort of film you can almost smell the sweat and ashtrays. It has the hallmarks of a noir, but with the added benefit of John Cassavetes and Peter Falk acting off each other for an hour and a half. They're both bastards, but I'd watch them take turns reading a phone book. Detour (1945, Edgar G. Ulmer) - I saw this years ago, but now with the gorgeous restoration, one can appreciate the incredible little noir this is. In just over an hour, this feels like some sort of fever dream of guilt. One of the great, essential noirs. Also, this would make a good double feature with Lost Highway.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2019 15:37 |
|
The Detour/Lost Highway similarities have to be intentional, right? Like even the names are vaguely similar.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2019 15:59 |
|
Raxivace posted:The Detour/Lost Highway similarities have to be intentional, right? Like even the names are vaguely similar. Yeah lynch has mentioned it repeatedly as one of his favorite movies iirc
|
# ? Nov 12, 2019 23:01 |
|
AFewBricksShy posted:Thank you for this advice. I saw it last night and really liked it a lot. I'm not the worlds largest Norton fan but he was great in it. Glad I didn't steer you wrong!
|
# ? Nov 13, 2019 00:15 |
|
So I've been bouncing around on a lot of different things since October ended, but I did manage to watch Mildred Pierce (1945) for the first time. It was awesome from the beginning to the end. It plays with our sympathies, having to reevaluate each character more than once, and usually finding them more despicable than before, but for one or possibly two. It seemed socially progressive, too.
|
# ? Nov 15, 2019 18:05 |
|
The Narrow Margin (1952) Fast paced and intense 70 minute noir about a police detective hired to keep a mob widow safe from hitmen on her way to testify. Has a plot twist that makes absolutely no goddamn sense whatsoever, but is intense and engaging throughout, with an engaging shootout climax and another great femme fatale turn from Marie Windsor, although I wish we'd seen more of her towards the end. 4/5 Wicked Woman (1953) The title's partly misleading but only partly. Extremely low-budget production featuring Beverly Michaels, who I've never seen in anything before, as said woman. "Wicked" seems decidedly an overstatement, she's a schemer like so many film noir women, but the film is also very blunt about how few options the twin bludgeons of "poverty" and "skeevy dudes" leave her with. The whole thing builds to a deliberate anticlimax that reminds me of my beloved Pitfall. Check this out if you are forgiving of a low budget and want to see a noir do something much more low-key and realistic 3/5 The Red House (1947) Intense psychological rural noir featuring Edward G Robinson as an intense adoptive patriarch who forbids his daughter and her farmhand-boyfriend from ever venturing into the woods containing a spooky abandoned red house. This starts and ends really strongly, with atmosphere evoking a horror movie and Robinson handling the shifts between genial and unhinged extremely well. Unfortunately, I feel like this would be a lot stronger if it were shorter like the other two films I've seen this month, as too many conversations about the woods and the house and not going in them are far too repetitive and give the audience time to piece together the twist before the movie does. Still, this is a neat and atmospheric psychological thriller from a time before they were the norm, and the film is apparently a favorite of Martin Scorsese. 3.5/5
|
# ? Nov 15, 2019 18:12 |
|
smitster posted:So I've been bouncing around on a lot of different things since October ended, but I did manage to watch Mildred Pierce (1945) for the first time. It was awesome from the beginning to the end. It plays with our sympathies, having to reevaluate each character more than once, and usually finding them more despicable than before, but for one or possibly two. It seemed socially progressive, too. It's so good, and so is the HBO miniseries with Kate Winslet.
|
# ? Nov 15, 2019 23:27 |
|
Noirvember continues apace: Kiss of Death (1947) Victor Mature plays an upright stoic jewel thief whose honor among thieves quickly transmutes into squealing when it becomes clear the thieves have no honor. Richard Widmark plays a memorable scumbag who is constantly cackling eerily but he's not in enough of the movie to make it really count, and everyone else is too much of a straight arrow to get anything really going. If you've got more feelings for Mature's character, though, you might go for it. 71/100 Nightmare Alley (1947) A real sleazebag of a carnival worker works his way up from the carnival to something even sleazier. Everyone else is also sleazy. A great story arc with some jabs at religion, psychiatry, small towns, alcoholism, and basically America, featuring one of those all-time great endings. Very good! 87/100 Body and Soul (1947) The trials and travails of a boxer. Childhood friend, parents, girl, alcohol, gangsters... the works. The boxer and his family are explicitly Jewish, a nice rarity in noir. A very gripping tale with a great lead performance. 87/100 Cry of the City (1948) Victor Mature is back, this time as a detective, and he's paired up with Richard Conte, playing a huge scumbucket. This is sort of like DeNiro vs. Pacino in Heat except instead of honor among two people who are great at their job it's a real clusterfuck, with the detective trying to do his best against someone who is really just pure poo poo. Some nice bit players and a great ending too. 86/100 Force of Evil (1948) A jerk of a lawyer has a plan to take over all the illicit numbers ring gambling centers across the state. It predictably does not go smoothly, especially because his brother is involved. A great little movie with an extended tense action scene and, like Cry of the City, some great bit players. 84/100 They Live By Night (1948) Two hardened criminals and one kiddo have broken out of prison and now their plan is to rob banks. Things get slightly more complicated when the kiddo falls for a girl hanging around the safehouse. Will things work out for the two star-crossed lovers? Didn't really grab me. I think you have to get pretty invested in the romance. Cathy O'Donnell is a cutie-pie and she gets some good screen time but ultimately the most interesting characters are the ones who are on the periphery and they don't get filled out much. The main character is kind of inert. Still fine though. 74/100 Moonrise (1948) Evocative Southern Gothic noir which I just couldn't get into because the hero is a real shitbag but the movie doesn't seem to care enough about how lovely he is, nor does his love interest, who ought to have dumped this fucko like a sack of bricks before the opening credits. Featuring a magical negro, some dogs, and of course a deaf-dumb guy with mental disabilities because why not. Some nice swamps and decaying mansions, though. 72/100 The Set-Up (1949) At once tight and languid, spare and rich, this boxing film eschews a soundtrack entirely to give us a night in the life of Stoker Thompson, an over the hill boxer who has a deal with a gangster to take the fall in round 3... except actually his manager made the deal, and failed to inform Stoker, because everyone assumes Stoker isn't going to be able to last past round 3 anyways. An excellent, textured buildup, a brutal central fight, and some stupendous tense scenes in pitch-black shadows afterwards all add up to one of my favorite noirs this month. Between this and Odds Against Tomorrow, Robert Wise is earning a spot as one of my top noir directors. 90/100
|
# ? Nov 16, 2019 13:09 |
|
Are you streaming most of these or just blind buying?
|
# ? Nov 18, 2019 19:39 |
|
about Mildred Pierce, Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:It's so good, and so is the HBO miniseries with Kate Winslet. I saw that existed - I'm definitely looking forward to seeing that!
|
# ? Nov 18, 2019 22:54 |
|
DeimosRising posted:Are you streaming most of these or just blind buying? https://www.criticker.com/films/?filter=e36042 https://www.criticker.com/films/?filter=e19474 https://www.criticker.com/films/?filter=e16370 https://www.criticker.com/films/?filter=e3513
|
# ? Nov 19, 2019 02:42 |
|
Fincher is creating a Chinatown prequel for Netflix with Towne writing.
|
# ? Nov 19, 2019 02:55 |
|
Le Doulos (1962) In this life, you end up either broke or full of lead French noir by Jean-Pierre Melville feels like an unusually accurate portrait of semi-organized crime, as it consists mostly of politicking and scheming broken up by acts of shocking violence. Almost a parody of noir in terms of how dense the plotting is, how irredeemable (but stylish!) its thieves are, and how thoroughly something almost but not quite like karma takes down the cast one by one. As difficult as this can be to follow it's an uncompromising and impeccably made bridge between the classics and neo-noir. 4/5 Bad Lieutenant (1992) Abel Ferrara's neo-noir portrait of a cop who is not so much immoral as addicted, totally in the thrall of drugs, gambling, sex, and violence to the point where he comes across as totally animalistic. While the film's mostly episodic, we're with Keitel's totally uncompromising performance as the violent nature of his work and the spectre of his gambling losses draw him deeper and deeper into his own personal hell. I do feel that the main plot thread involving the possibility of redemption on the part of both him and the criminals he's hunting is perhaps overly symbolic, but Ferrara's work is important to me in how it depicts total depravity and suffering without giving into nihilism. A flawed but fascinating film. 4/5 Nightmare Alley (1947) I had the pleasure of seeing this projected form a silver nitrate print at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood (that's what is used to destroy the theater at the end of Inglorious Basterds) and I feel like I understand what movies meant to pre-50s audiences more. The over the top size and bright sheen (oh so *that's* what "silver screen" means) makes their presentation seem so much more special and mythic than a screening at an AMC seems nowadays. Probably not worth dying in a fire for though. Anyway, this is a tremendous noir no matter how you watch it, with Tyrone Power as a sideshow carny turned spiritualist con artist, wheedling his way into high society as a sort of false prophet. Contains lots of great character turns, and standout visuals of carnival life. Fits easily alongside other great spiritual and political con artist movies like Wise Blood or A Face in the Crowd, but with an atmosphere all its own. 4.5/5
|
# ? Nov 19, 2019 03:59 |
|
feedmyleg posted:Fincher is creating a Chinatown prequel for Netflix with Towne writing.
|
# ? Nov 19, 2019 04:07 |
|
Forget it, Jake, it'll be Chinatown in a few years.
|
# ? Nov 19, 2019 07:20 |
|
*grizzled vet shows his new partner Jake around their beat* Now remember, Jake, this is Chinatown
|
# ? Nov 19, 2019 19:37 |
|
Kind of impressed that Netflix put this out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu5csDmS7BM
|
# ? Nov 23, 2019 03:44 |
|
My Name is Julia Ross (1945) Kind of loved this. Super-efficient and suspenseful low budget noir with a killer hook: a woman wakes up in a strange house with her well-off employers and their maid insisting that she's the lady of the house. And of course these ~delusions~ she's having mean that she has to be locked up for her own good! All of the cat-and-mouse stuff involving Julia's attempts to outwit and escape her captors is good stuff and there's a very class and feminism conscious subtext here for 1945. Super short and easily found too so there's really no excuse for a noir fan not to dig this one up. 4.5/5 Decoy (1946) Twisty and campy B-noir from the good people at Monogram Pictures. If you like your movies seventy minutes long and full of batshit craziness, you're in for a treat. The main plot of this one involves a femme fatale seducing a doctor so he can revive her criminal boyfriend after he gets the gas chamber so they can find out where he buried his loot. Features a tough guy cop named "Jojo", multiple Friday the 13th quality sudden and brutal murders, and probably the most evil woman in film history. This is a lot of fun, naturally. 3.5/5
|
# ? Nov 25, 2019 04:14 |
|
Noirvember part 3: the final noirening. Previous posts: one | two I got pretty busy mid-way through the month and didn't get to watch as much noir as I would've liked. There's always next year... White Heat (1949) A noir with a little bit of everything, featuring James Cagney at his gangster-iest. We've got a heist, we've got a prison, we've got a crazy psychological illness invented in Hollywood, we've got a car chase, etc. Lots of great characters (including Cagney's crime mom), some real deplorable behavior, and also a 15 second sequence that was more or less recreated shot for shot in Red Dead Redemption 2 for some reason. Nice respectable noir. 84/100 Night and the City (1950) Richard Widmark is back in this British noir, playing an American club tout in London with big dreams and an even bigger need to achieve those dreams. He's willing to put himself on the knife's edge to get what he wants and the movie expertly rides that tension with the help of a great supporting cast, like his put-upon girlfriend, the kind artist that she's friendzoned, the sleazy club owner and his sleazy wife, Greek wrestlers, and some serious gangsters, plus the criminal old lady who smuggles nylons on the river or something. Excellent ending too. 89/100 Gun Crazy (1950) A Proto-Bonnie and Clyde with an excellent heist sequence and a great relationship between the two leads, both of whom could probably stand to be slightly less obsessed with guns. 80/100 NEO-NOIR TIME!!!!! I love neo-noir as much as I love noir so late in the month I swapped away from the classics to mix in some newer stuff. Le Doulos (1962) A series of criminals and their inscrutable criminal dealings. Can you even figure out their motives? Do they even know themselves? Bodies pile up and Jean-Paul Belmondo is mesmerizing and charismatic in the lead role. 88/100 Klute (1971) Jane Fonda is a prostitute. Donald Sutherland is Klute. Klute is a cop who doesn't emote a ton, and he's come to the big city looking for his missing friend. Rather seedy affairs commence. Great performances from both leads. 82/100 The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) Ben Gazzara has a masterful turn as the owner of the world's saddest strip club, in which he takes inordinate pride, who gets way in over his head with criminals and spends the rest of the movie not dealing with it very well, practically or emotionally. Lots of high points but mostly this succeeds as a character study of a real sad sack. 87/100 Red Rock West (1992) Nicholas Cage rolls into Nowhere, USA where he meets a cast of characters including Dennis Hopper doing Dennis Hopper stuff and Lara Flynn Boyle as a femme fatale. Dwight Yoakam has a cameo. This Western/noir mashup knows how to get things close enough to ridiculous to play it for laughs but also plays it close enough to the chest to keep from becoming cheesy or trite. 81/100 Shutter Island (2010) What? Shutter Island a neo-noir? Yes, definitely. Also this was a hole in my Scorsese filmography and with the release of The Irishman I figured I'd better start catching up on the few I'm missing. I hadn't watched this because I hate scary movies, but with the help of wheresthejump.com and its subtitles which point out when a jump scare is coming, I did just fine. Why is this a neo-noir? Well I mean first come up, two duly appointed federal mahshuls show up in a prison to look for an escaped convict and its the 1950s! It's a mental institution! The main character is a war veteran and has deep repressed past trauma and there's a storm. They're wearing suits and trenchcoats and fedoras! Classic noir poo poo. Anyways I really ought to dislike this movie because frankly the script is mostly a joke if you ask me (with the possible exception of the conversation in the jeep), but between Scorsese's direction, DiCaprio's acting, great casting on the supporting characters, and a wonderful score, it works pretty well. 80/100
|
# ? Dec 1, 2019 16:10 |
|
Just caught the restoration of The Third Man last night. It'd been a good decade since I'd seen it and... goddamn, what a flick. Has anyone listened to The Lives of Harry Lime by chance? Checking that Wikipedia page I'd had no idea that Welles' Mr. Arkadin was adapted from an episode—is the 2006 Criterion cut worth watching?
|
# ? Dec 6, 2019 16:47 |
|
The Criterion Cut is probably the best version, yeah. Also the production of Arkadin is a pretty bonkers story in of itself.
|
# ? Dec 6, 2019 16:56 |
|
Am I loving crazy or was Klute on criterion last week and now it’s not
|
# ? Dec 6, 2019 17:22 |
|
DeimosRising posted:Am I loving crazy or was Klute on criterion last week and now it’s not Correct. It left the service December 1st. Glad I watched it before it left. It's great.
|
# ? Dec 6, 2019 22:51 |
|
Franchescanado posted:Correct. It left the service December 1st. I must have missed it on the November departure list. Or maybe they put it on December and I didn’t think to check that that. Poop, heck. Darn
|
# ? Dec 6, 2019 23:06 |
|
Yeah, they sometimes remove films before the 1st too because of... something, so I usually make sure to get the ones I want to watch while they're hot. On the noir front, the stuff leving this month is a couple of Anthony Mann's noirs (T-Men and Raw Deal), I Walk Alone, The Hitch-Hiker (this one is really good), and a bunch of movies produced by Val Lewton. ... OK, that last one doesn't really count, they're horror movies, but the atmosphere in all of them is very reminiscent of noir, especially the use of darkness. So I tend to count them anyway.
|
# ? Dec 29, 2019 22:11 |
|
|
# ? Apr 8, 2020 21:55 |
|
Well, that'll be my free trial at least.
|
# ? Apr 8, 2020 22:19 |
|
|
# ? Apr 26, 2024 21:23 |
|
It's Noirvember again, you filthy animals. What noir classics are you planning to watch this month?
|
# ? Nov 1, 2020 16:53 |