Tag: neo-noir
-
A cunning serial killer is on the loose and police are baffled
Bodies are popping up with terrifying regularity in a small South Korean city and the local police force has few clues to go on. Young women are being raped and strangled, their bodies abandoned in little traveled spots, and public hysteria is growing. It’s the late 1980s and Korea has not yet emerged from authoritarian…
-
‘The Long Good Friday’: The British Gangster Classic That Predicted the Future
Mobster’s World Blown to Bits in an Easter Wave of Terror Contains spoilers ‘The Long Good Friday’ (1980) As Good Friday approaches it’s fitting that we look at one of the slender number of crime films set on the holiest of Christian holy days. In filmdom, the connection between religious rites and acts of criminal…
-
Coen Brothers Film : An Ordinary Man Caught in Fate’s Clutches
Contains Spoilers ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’ (2001) Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is the kind of guy who can enter or leave a roomful of people without a single soul taking notice. He’s got a knack for blending into the background, barely leaving an impression on anyone who cares to chat or even glance…
-
Dark Candy in Your Stocking: 25 Christmas Noirs
Sometimes you need relief from the hectic days that close out the year. From Thanksgiving ’til New Year’s Day we live with a sense of renewed optimism and anticipation as the new year approaches — well, some of us do, anyway. Chances are you’ll desire a break from the season of cheer, something to counter-balance…
-
‘The Killers’: Nagging Questions In a Haze of Gunsmoke
In both versions, sports heroes have tragic downfalls and alluring women enter the picture to offer a helping hand — it doesn’t turn out well for the wounded competitors “The Killers” (1946) Robert Siodmak (director) — “The Killers” (1964) Don Siegel (director), The Criterion Collection, [Blu-ray] Why on earth would a man facing the barrel…
-
Murderous Couples: ‘Body Heat,’ vs. ‘Double Indemnity’
After I moved to L.A. in 2008 I got together with a Meetup group that was going to see a screening of “Double Indemnity” (1944) at the ArcLight Theater in Hollywood. I was chomping at the bit in anticipation of watching one of my all-time favorite films with a group of cinema enthusiasts. I pictured…
-
Acting Through Clenched Teeth: Quirky Timothy Carey
Timothy Carey was the kind of actor who refused to fade into the background — even as a movie extra. That cost him a job or two, including one of his earliest acting gigs, an occurrence that would prove all too typical in his professional life. He’d hitchhiked to the New Mexico location where Billy…
-
Femmes Fatale Are Deceptively Charming, and Dangerous
Sure, Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), the husband liquidating murderess of “Double Indemnity” (1944) might be your go-to gal whenever the term “femme fatale” is mentioned. She’s as coolly detached and methodical as a hangman, and wily enough to nudge her fall-guy, insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), into killing her husband, and she even makes…
-
The Key to Marlowe’s Conundrum is In a Can of Cat Food
One of my favorite neo-noirs is “The Long Goodbye” (1973), Robert Altman’s adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title, published 20 years earlier. Altman’s most drastic alteration of Chandler’s opus is placing the story in the 1970s instead of eight years after the end of World War II, when the novel is…
-
When Tinsel Town Turns the Camera on Itself
Face it, scandals make good news copy and the Los Angeles entertainment industry produces a bumper crop of the stuff that keeps gossip writers in business. From Rosco “Fatty” Arbuckle to Harvey Weinstein the press has never been at a loss for words when it comes to movie industry playboys who can’t control their libidos.…