Year: 2015

Review: Side Street

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Side Street is a film noir from 1949, directed by Anthony Mann based on a story and a screenplay by Sydney Boehm.  This stars Farley Granger as our protagonist and Cathy O’Donnell as his pregnant wife.

This story is confusing and full of plot holes but a fun noir to watch.  This film starts with a women blackmailing some important business man.  A guy behind a door has a gun to make sure this goes down like it is supposed to.  We then find this girl floating in the water, dead!  Granger is working as a part-time mail carrier(because a full-time mail carrier would be too honest to do this?)  He delivers mail to a lawyer’s office and finds a sign which says “out for 15 minutes and will be back soon”.  Granger finds the door is accidentally left unlocked.  He goes in the office and tries to open a filling cabinet, it is locked.  So he leaves, sees an ax for firefighting and brings it back to open the cabinet.  He grabs a file, puts into his bag, not looking at it, and takes off.  Now a voice over for the film is telling us our mail carrier has 50 cents in his pocket and would or wouldn’t you in that situation steal a few hundred dollars? There ends up being $30,000 in the file. This is where you have to start suspending your rational thinking!  Why would a lawyer with $30,000 in his office not lock the door?  But that is not the biggest questions here! How or why does Garager know that in the second drawer down, the last file in the cabinet has any money in it at all?  He grabs it without looking in the file and without looking in any other drawer or file?  Why does he think there is a few hundred dollars in it and not more, or any for that matter?  Anyway he dumps the file, goes to his parent-in-laws where him and his wife now live, because they have lost everything in a failed business and are starting over.  His wife is pregnant and due anytime now.  He gives her some cash and says she can now get a real doctor and a room at the hospital to have her baby.  He tells her, he got a new job up north and a pay advance and has to leave right away to start work.  He gives the cash to a friend telling him it is a present for his wife and needs to hide it with him so she doesn’t find it.  So as the plot thickens our hero has the police, a lawyer and some murdering blackmailers all looking for him while he runs through the streets of New York City to give the money back to its rightful owner and figure out the mystery on his own.

So this synopsis is just part of the suspend disbelief you need to enjoy this film.  If you do I think you will enjoy the ride.  It is stylishly filmed and even though you don’t always know quite what is going on and why, it is a fun watch.  We also get a few cameo appearances worth seeing.  Jean Hagen plays a lounge singer, who is our closest thing to a femme fatale in this film. Charles McGraw plays a small part as a deep voiced hard-nosed cop.  Also Paul Kelly as our police captain is very good.

I think most film noir fans will find this film enjoyable, I did.  Sometimes life doesn’t make sense so why should a classic film noir?

Beach Party Blogathon: Revisiting the Laser Disc Collection: Point Break

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It’s Beach Party Blogathon!  When I seen this, the first film that came to mind for this site was Point Break! Is there any better neo-noir or noir film where the beach is such a big part of the story?

So Kem Nunn writes a book called Tapping the Source(something I have on my to read list), it was bought for the movie rights, soon after publication.  After many re-writes and changes it finally became Point Break.  Because of all the re-writes there was not much left of the original story and Nunn was never given a writing credit for the film, but he started his own sub-genre, surf noir.

Before Vin Diesel took the adrenaline junkie genre film to the absurd in xXx and the Fast and the Furious franchise, this movie inspired a whole generation of adventure athletes to live their dreams instead of working for the man.

This film had a great cast including Gary Busey, Lori Petty and John C. McGinley as well as an uncredited appearance from neo noir regular Tom Sizemore. Lets not forget Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis as a surf nazi. Even with all that talent this film will be known for having two of the biggest stars of the 1990’s going head to head, Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves.  This film is directed by Kathryn Bigelow who hasn’t made a lot of movies, but she sure has made some great ones.

Our story starts with the most famous bank robbers from the 1990’s, The Ex-Presidents(how many times has this been reused in someway since this film).

They rob a bank, in and out in 90 seconds, clean, and they are professional.   Johnny Utah, played by Reeves makes his way to the F.B.I. Headquarters in Los Angles as a rookie agent.  Him and his 22 year vet partner played by Busey are on the case.  Busey has a crazy theory about the Ex-Presidents being surfers.  Soon Johnny Utah is going undercover as a surfer and befriends Tyler, played by Lori Petty, and is introduced to surf guru Bodhi played by Swazye.  Our adventure takes off from here with night surfing, beach football and sky diving.

This may be a rehash of movies where somebody goes undercover in a gang of outlaws, sometimes siding with the bad guys by the end or at least understanding why they do what they do.  This film is original because our outlaws are not doing what they do to get rich or own possessions or buy their next hit of drugs, they are doing it to finance their lifestyle, and it’s a healthy lifestyle if you will.   With the Ex-President masks, were they telling us we all are slaves to the system?  A system they are not willing to be apart of anymore?  Can we see why the All-American quarterback turned F.B.I. agent is seeing the light and does not want to be a cog in the system anymore?  Are the big bad bank robbers the bad guys in this or are the straight-laced suit wearing, living in the system guys, the real baddies here?

So everybody who is a fan of this film, and there is a lot of followers for this cult film, knows we are getting a remake soon. We have two lesser known actors playing the leads and Teresa Palmer playing Tyler.  I guess I’m getting old, because the first thing I thought was “Isn’t it to soon for a remake?”  Then I noticed this film was made almost 25 years ago.  I hope they keep the realism and concentrate on the relationships of our leads and not make a superhero movie, to wild to be believed in the vain of Fast and Furious or xXx, with lots of unbelievable C.G.I. and explosions for no reason.  Sadly based on the box office results of Furious 7, and the first trailer, I think that is exactly what we will get.  I guess I’ll hook up the old Laser Disc Player and pop this in again to get my adrenaline fix.

Review: He Ran All the Way

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He Ran All the Way stars John Garfield in his last role.  Garfield died of coronary thrombosis at the age of 39.  Garfield was a prominent actor in the classic noir period.  Shelley Winters also stars as the female lead early in her illustrious career. Character actor Wallace Ford also appears as Winters’ father.  This film is based on a book by Sam Ross and directed by John Berry.  The film was released in 1951, five years after Garfield’s most famous role in The Post Man Always Rings Twice.

This film starts out with Garfield and his partner robbing a payroll.  They are chased and Garfield’s partner is shot.  Garfield gets away, but shoots a police officer in the process.  He escapes to a public pool and literally runs into Winters.  He quickly knows she may be his way to hide out.  They go back to her apartment where we and Garfield learn she lives with her parents and little brother.  The police officer dies and Garfield is all over the papers as the killer.  Garfield takes the family hostage while he hides out there.  Will Garfield get away with the loot?  Will Winters fall for him as they go off together to live happily ever after?  Will Garfield kill any of the members of the family before he gets away?  Will Garfield even get away?

The tension is strong for this classic and works very well.  It has a simple plot with great performances from the small cast.  This is a very good film noir worthy of any noir fan’s time.  I wish we had a few more of these films from Garfield before he left us, but we can always go back and watch The Postman Always Rings Twice and the handful of other noir films he has starred in.

Re-watching: Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1983

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The Red Riding Trilogy’s conclusion wraps up the story but not quite all the loose ends.  This film is a little different then the other two, in that it concentrates on two characters instead of just one.  This entry is directed by Anand Tucker and like the first two, this one is also based on a book by David Peace and the screenplay is written by Tony Grisoni.

This film starts with a flashback to 1974 where a group of our corrupt cops and Sean Bean’s corrupt business man are meeting at a wedding.  They are taking about events that set in motion this whole trilogy.  This flashback is from David Morrissey’s character Maurice Jobson’s perspective.  Jobson is one of the cops that has been part of all these cases and now he is having second thoughts, after all these years another young girl has gone missing and he is rethinking his actions. In this film we flashback to past events from the first two films all from Jobson’s perspective.  This sheds new light on past events and gives us the audience some new information.

Our second main character is John Piggott played by Mark Addy.  Piggott is a lawyer or solicitor in England.  He is back in town and seems to be a pretty good lawyer.  He is asked to help Michael Myshkin played by Daniel Mays.  If you remember the first movie he was a mentally handicapped man who confessed to the murder of one of the missing girls.  He is also asked by another family to help their son who was just arrested for the murder of one of the other girls.  He starts digging into the story and between him and Jobson we hope to get to the bottom of what has been going on in Yorkshire.  Will we ever find out who the Wolf is?  Will the lawyer be able to help get Myshkin out of prison?  Will they find this latest kidnapped girl before it is too late?  How deep does this case go?

Like I said, this doesn’t tie everything up in a nice little bow for you.  Small characters have little pieces to the puzzle and we get most of that puzzle put together.  Characters like Peter Mullan’s Martin Laws and Robert Sheehan’s DJ who seem to be minor characters have big pieces to this puzzle.

Watch all three of these films in order and enjoy the ride.  Watch them carefully because some small detail in one film can turn out to be a big part of the next one.  Like I said at the beginning of my first review, this is a noir trilogy, based on 3 of the 4 books in a series by David Peace and all 3 films were made in the same year by 3 different directors.  A great story with some amazing talent from England.  To think this is what England is producing for their television is an amazing achievement.

Re-watching: Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980

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This is the second in The Red Riding Trilogy.  This installment is directed by James Marsh.  This is based on the David Peace’s book and the screenplay is from Tony Grisoni as are all three of this series.

This film revolves around Peter Hunter played by Paddy Considine.  He is brought in from a different office to take over the Yorkshire Ripper serial killer case.  Our corrupt Yorkshire police force isn’t having any luck solving the case of now 13 murders.  Hunter was also brought in back in 1974 to investigate what had happened at the end of our last movie.  We find this out in flashback fashion throughout the film.  He had to end that investigation when he found out his wife had a miscarriage and left Yorkshire.  Now he is back in 1980 and he is not welcome.  He assembles his team to start looking at the old cases in the Ripper file to see if they can get to the bottom of this.  One of his team played by Maxine Peake finds a case that may not have been the Ripper.  She also has had an affair with Hunter and this has sidetracked both people throughout the investigation.

A lot of our recurring characters show up again in this one, those of note are Maurice Jobson played by David Morrissey,  BJ played by Robert Sheehan,Martin Laws played by Peter Mullan and Bob Craven played by Sean Harris.

Our story may seem like it is unrelated to the first movie, but we would be wrong.  At the end of this we have more questions than before.  This is another good film for neo noir and noir fans.  I would recommend watching the first film, Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974, which I just reviewed.  You could watch this on its own but I don’t think you would find it as enjoyable as watching it after the first film.

Re-watching: Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974

bryancyr British Noir, Movie, Neo-Noir , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Red Riding Trilogy is an interesting concept, which I like very much.  This Trilogy is based on the books by the same name written by David Peace.  I’ve read the books years ago after watching these movies when they came out on DVD.  There is actually 4 books but they cut one of the books out of this series to make it 3 films.  The books are also very good and worth checking out.  The other thing about this trilogy is that all 3 films were made in the same year, by three different directors.  The directors all have a different feel and look for each of the films.  All three screenplays are written by Tony Grisoni so there is continuity throughout the films.  This works really well, since every film is from a different year and all look unique.

1974 is directed by Julian Jarrold and stars Andrew Garfield as our main character for this installment. As we go we meet what seems to be minor characters, but pop up in the next two films as key parts to the continuing plot.  This installment has a very distinct Yorkshire accent by all the characters.  This can make some parts hard to understand what they are saying and/or what the slang means.

This story revolves around Garfield’s Eddie Dunford who is a rookie journalist.  He is on his way to his Father’s funeral, but stops off first for a press conference for a missing young girl.  He gets assigned to the story and starts to put together that this may be a serial killer.  Two other girls around the same age have gone missing before this one.  He starts to link the three cases and is warned by a co-worker played by Anthony Flanagan to watch his step.  Soon this co-worker is killed in an auto accident, Dunford doesn’t think it’s an accident.  He starts looking into this story as well and finds the two stories may be connected.  The story involves corrupt cops, and corrupt journalists, as well as a business man, played by Sean Bean, that this all revolves around.  Dunford also falls for the mother of one of the little girls that has gone missing, played by Rebecca Hall.  She is definitely Dunford’s femme fatale for this film.

Some of the other character’s you will want to pay attention to in this first installment are Maurice Jobson played by David Morrissey, BJ played by Robert Sheehan,Jack Whitehead played by Eddie Marsan,Michael Myshkin played by Daniel Mays, Martin Laws played by Peter Mullan and Bob Craven played by Sean Harris as well as others.

This film and the other two are well worth your time.  A well sorted out trilogy always designed to be a trilogy and not just a good first film followed by two sequels.  This is something unique to noir, I can not think of three films designed to tell one big story like this in the noir genre.  I think all fans of noir will enjoy these.  They do take some effort to follow but that is part of the joy of these.  I will return with a review of the second film tomorrow.

My First Award: Dragon’s Loyalty Award

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So James over at backtotheviewer.wordpress.com  has nominated me for my first Blogging Award, The Dragon’s Loyalty Award. Since I’ve only been in the blogging world for about 4 months, this is all new to me. I started this blog to bring together all elements of the noir world. I’ve always liked noir, even before I knew what it was exactly, I’m still not sure what it is exactly. I started searching the internet and found some excellent sites on classic film noir, a lot of film sites that covered neo noir films, but also covered other genre films, some great sites that cover noir fiction and crime fiction, but not movies. So since I loved all three worlds of noir equally and could not find a site that covered them all, I thought I would just do it myself.

I had no clue what I was doing or what I was getting into and still don’t! I got on WordPress and just went for it. Now my WordPress Reader is full of great blogs covering every kind of entertainment! I can’t even keep up with all the great blogs I’ve found.

I’ve also learned so much about noir since I’ve started this blog. One thing I’ve learned is nobody has the same definition of what noir is! The classic film noir crowd really gets in an uproar on what films are and are not a film noir. I also recently re-blogged a site’s “Best 75 Neo-Noir Films” and though I didn’t get any arguing on my blog, when I put it on a few Facebook pages the conversation got real interesting. Some people read the first paragraph, disagreed with the author about neo-noir and wouldn’t even look at the list. Another person said there wasn’t even one “true neo-noir film on the whole list.”

So the more I learn about this obscure subject called noir the more confusing it gets! I keep my definition of noir pretty wide and vast and I’m sure I upset more than a few noir fans when I review a film or book that “Isn’t noir” by their definition. I also started an online class on Classic Film Noir in conjunction with The Summer of Darkness on TCM. So in two months I will be college educated in film noir!

I have connected with some amazing people through my blog and on my Facebook page. I have got some books sent to me that are amazing reads, books I may have never even heard about if it wasn’t for this blog. I have become familiar with a lot of great authors, to many to name here. When I got a friend request last week on Facebook from an author I loved before I even started this blog, I was honored and shocked.

I want to thank everybody that has checked out my blog so far and hope you have enjoyed it. I want to thank James for the nomination as well. So visit his blog for some information on some great films.

https://backtotheviewer.wordpress.com/

So here are the rules for this award:

  1. Display the Award Certificate on your website
  2. Announce your win with a post and link to whoever presented your award
  3. Present 15 awards to deserving bloggers
  4. Drop them a comment to tip them off after you’ve linked them in the post
  5. Post 7 interesting things about yourself.     

Four months is a short time to really dive into all the blogs I’ve found so I’m going to nominate the ones that have really stood out to me in this short time.

https://noirencyclopedia.wordpress.com/

Honestly if I found John Grant’s blog before I started mine, I may not have done it. This is a great source of noir information and worth visiting. I bought his book and use it all the time to determine what I want to watch next.

https://garethrhodes.wordpress.com/

If you are looking for a good movie to watch, check out Gareth Rhodes, he has very good taste in film in my opinion.

https://bnoirdetour.wordpress.com/

Talks about some great classic film noir, a lot I have never heard of!

http://mikestakeonthemovies.com/

Mike Perry is a film fan and it shows!

https://yellowedandcreased.wordpress.com/

If you want to discover some forgotten fiction, this is the place. I find all kinds of genre books here and I have added a few old noir and pulp titles to my “To Read List” from this blog.

https://cinematemple.wordpress.com/

The Mad Monk reviews a movie a day so you can always find a new film to watch based on his reviews.

http://hardtickettohomevideo.com/

Brian and Brad add a good sense of humor to their movie reviews, and hey, anybody that loves Hard Ticket to Hawaii this much can not be all that bad.

https://diversfilms.wordpress.com/

Dude the Cleaner covers some great genre films including film noir, and has lots of guilty pleasure movies to check out.

http://pauldbrazill.com/

Paul D. Brazil is a noir author who I look forward to reading really soon. He covers a lot of other authors on his blog as well, so there is always somebody new to discover over there.

Now I have to post 7 interesting things about myself.

1. I’m not that interesting

2. I love to watch movies

3. I love to read good books

4. I love to mountain bike

5. I love sports cars, especially Porsche

6. I love Rock and Roll music and going to good concerts

7. I love to travel

Thanks for taking the time to read all this and hope you check out all these blogs I’ve listed.

Review: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

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Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is a classic film noir from 1956 starring Dana Andrews and Joan Fontaine.  The real story here is this is the last American movie from noir great, Fritz Lang.  I got to say Lang went out with a bang.  This is an intriguing story with a great ending.  This story is written by Douglas Morrow and is amazing.

Dana Andrews is a novelist and ex-newspaperman.  He is dating Fontaine who happens to be the daughter of his ex-boss. His ex-boss and future father-in-law is the owner of a large newspaper.  His future father-in-law is played by Sidney Blackmer.

We open the movie with an execution, yes somebody goes to the chair in the opening scene.  The next scene has Blackmer and Andrews having a drink and discusses capital punishment.  They meet Philip Bourneuf who plays the D.A. responsible for the death sentence we witnessed at the beginning of the film.  Bourneuf and Blackmer are on opposite sides of the capital punishment fence.  Blackmer talks about ways to convert the public to his side of the subject, he only needs the right circumstance.  The right circumstance soon comes up!  A burlesque dancer is found murdered and there is no suspects.  Blackmer talks Andrews into framing himself with the crime.  Then when he is sentenced to death, they will bring out all the evidence they planted and of course the how, when and where they did it.  This proves they sentenced an innocent man to death and will show the public how capital punishment is a bad idea.  Well if your like me, this whole thing sounds like a bad idea!  Will they plant enough evidence to get arrested?  If he does get convicted will they be able to reverse the verdict before it is too late?  What will Andrews’ girl Fontaine think of this when she finds out what is going on?

This is another great noir from Fritz Lang, he was definitely on his game for his last American film, before he goes back to his homeland of Germany.   It is worth watching for any of his fans and fans of classic noir.  Fontaine and Andrews fans will love this as well.  This film has an amazing ending that you will not see coming.

Re-watching: The Lookout

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“Who ever has the money has the power.”

The Lookout is from 2007 and written and directed by Scott Frank.  Frank hasn’t done a lot of directing, but he did do this movie and A Walk Among the Tombstones.  Two really good neo noir films isn’t a bad start for him in the directors chair.  Here is a link to my review of A Walk Among the Tombstones:

https://everythingnoir.com/2015/03/03/review-a-walk-among-the-tombstones/

This film has a great cast with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a brain-damaged young man who has some memory loss issues.  Jeff Daniels plays his roommate who is blind.  Matthew Goode plays our top bad guy and leader of a gang of bank robbers.  Isla Fisher is our femme fatale as part of Goode’s crew.

Our story starts with Gordon-Levitt driving his Mustang down a country road, full of his classmates.  He turns off the headlights, doing what young people do, and wrecks into a combine.  We flash forward 4 years to Gordon-Levitt working at a bank as the night janitor.  We get a sense of his frustration with his memory loss.  He has trouble remembering things and writes them down in a notebook.  We meet our bad guys in a bar where Gordon-Levitt is having a beer.  He soon hits it off with one of the girls in the gang.  This is of course Fisher, being our femme fatale.  We soon find out our gang wants to befriend Gordon-Levitt because then know of his disability and job, he will be an easy mark to help them get into the bank.  Will our hero help our robbers?  Will he stop the robbery before it happens?  With his diminished brain power, will he still be able to out smart the bad guys?

This movie came 2 years after Gordon-Levitt’s other great neo-noir film, Brick.  I think that is why when somebody talks about one of these films somebody will always bring up the other one.  Both are excellent films, but Brick was something special.  These would make for a great double feature next time you want to see a couple of neo-noir flicks in one night.  Here is my review of Brick:

https://everythingnoir.com/2015/01/31/my-review-of-brick/

This is a film any neo-noir buff will love and most film buffs in general will enjoy.  If you have already seen this and Brick, what one do you like better?

Favorite Tidbit:  David Fincher and Sam Mendes where both attached to direct this film.  When both fell through, Frank decided to direct it himself.