film noir
Blu-ray: This Gun for HireSunday, 20 September 2020
The 1942 thriller This Gun for Hire, which opened five months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was closely adapted from Graham Greene’s 1936 novel A Gun for Sale by Albert Maltz and W.R. Burnett and directed for Paramount by... Read more... |
Ennio Morricone 1928-2020: A lost afternoon in his apartment in RomeTuesday, 07 July 2020
Ennio Morricone was a genius, or as close to that description as makes no odds. If we mean someone who created a unique body of work, one that changed culture, had a distincive style and was massively influential, then Morricone fitted the bill.... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Criss CrossTuesday, 30 June 2020
Criss Cross is a superbly taut film noir, a 1949 drama that unfolds with the inevitable downward spiral of ancient tragedy. Its doomed characters are prisoners of a hopeless struggle for freedom, caught in the web of their transgressive desires.... Read more... |
The Whistlers review – a smart, self-aware noir concerning a crooked copThursday, 07 May 2020
Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu has made a career crafting perceptive and cerebral examinations of his native country. From his 2006 debut 12:08 to Bucharest to The Treasure, they were cerebral films that powerfully... Read more... |
Blu-Ray: CurlingTuesday, 05 May 2020
Curling could be an enigmatic contemporary noir, but for the fact that it was made in the depths of winter in rural Quebec. Shades of brilliant white and murky grey predominate, as witnessed in an early sequence where Jean-François and his 12-year... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Black AngelTuesday, 04 February 2020
Waking at a pivotal moment in Black Angel, alcoholic songwriter-pianist Marty Blair (Dan Duryea) momentarily mistakes his new professional partner Catherine Bennett (June Vincent) for his estranged wife Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling). Each is a... Read more... |
Long Day's Journey into Night review - Chinese art-house stunnerSaturday, 28 December 2019
Marketed as a couples-friendly romance, Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night made a massive $37 million on its opening day in China but was subsequently denounced by irate viewers who felt they’d been conned into watching a neo-noir pastiche that... Read more... |
Motherless Brooklyn review – tic tecThursday, 05 December 2019
Edward Norton has wanted to adapt Motherless Brooklyn since Jonathan Lethem’s acclaimed novel was first published 20 years ago. His film (as producer, writer, director and star) is an obvious labour of love, an evocative, entertaining, old-fashioned... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Fuller at FoxTuesday, 29 October 2019
This new Eureka! boxset of 4K and 2K restorations provides ample evidence as to why Samuel Fuller was venerated by such a wide range of film-makers, including Godard, Wenders, Scorsese and Tarantino. Often characterised as a purveyor of pulp... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The EarSunday, 01 September 2019
Karel Kachyňa’s The Ear (Ucho) begins innocently enough with an affluent couple’s petty squabbles after a boozy night out. He can’t find the house keys and she’s desperate for the toilet. He’s distracted, and she accuses him of having neglected her... Read more... |
The Informer review - tough but tin-eared B-movieThursday, 29 August 2019
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Pete Koslow (Joel Kinnaman) wouldn’t have any luck at all. Being an Iraq special forces veteran jailed for protecting his wife in a bar fight seems wretched karma enough. Released as an undercover informant on the Polish... Read more... |
CD: Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - BandanaMonday, 24 June 2019
Don't let the presence of nerds' favourite Madlib on production duties fool you: this is a big bad bastard of a West Coast rap record. It's a cocaine-wholesaling, n-wording, gun-toting, dog-eat-dog-ing, murderous bastard of a rap record, in fact.... Read more... |
