Year: 2015

Review: Mulholland Falls

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Mulholland Falls has one of the greatest casts from the 90’s, and all neo-noir favorites.  We got Nick Nolte at the height of his cool, Melanie Griffith as the clueless wife, Jennifer Connelly who just looks like she was made to play the femme fatale in the 1950’s, Chazz Palminteri who fits in the 1950’s just as well as anybody, and what kind of neo-noir film made in the 1990’s would be complete without Michael Madsen.  The stars go on and on including John Malkovich playing the focus of our heroes investigation and Andrew McCarthy as the openly gay photographer that may have more on his film then he wanted. The story comes from Peter Dexter who has written some well received crime novels and has one the National Book Award.  This movie goes back to one of the greatest noir stomping grounds ever,1950’s Los Angles.  We get gangsters, a murder mystery, adult movies(back when they where highly illegal) and powerful men that think they can get away with anything. This movie definitely got it’s inspiration from the “Hat Squad,” a team of detectives that were given free rein to do what they needed to keep the Mafia out of L.A..  We see the “Hat Squad” again, in 2013’s Gangster Squad and TNT’s Mob City.  Maybe it was a little bit of a let down, with a cast like this we were expecting something similar to what we got the next year with L.A. Confidential(we will definitely be looking at this amazing film in a future post) but it’s not fair to compare these two films.  Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5 stars out of 4, so he saw this as a good film that could have been great.  This is a fun neo-noir to watch if you haven’t seen it yet or would like to give it another chance I would like to here your opinion.

Review: Night Film by Marisha Pessl

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Night Film is a book that falls into a bunch of different categories, some may call it a horror book, some a mystery book others may put it on their contemporary fiction  or literature shelf.  I think because of all these elements it makes for a great noir read.  I’ll tell you right now, this is one of my favorite books.  It’s a very unique book with an interactive internet element, I read it as a straight novel and didn’t check out any of the extras on the web. I may re-read this and check out the web extra as I go.

This book’s main character is Scott McGrath, an investigative journalist that has his career ruined by a mysterious director by the name of Stanislas Cordova.  When a new investigation starts involving Cordova, Scott has to find out what is going on, no matter what the consequences.  Cordova is the interesting character that drives the plot, we just get snippets of him as the story progresses and we as readers and our hero Scott has to find what is real and what is legend or myth.  Cordova is a fictional character that seems real and real interesting.  Cordova is part Stanley Kubrick, half Roman Polanski, a bit of David Lynch and maybe a dash of Alfred Hitchcock thrown in for good measure.

Here is a great trailer for the book, and it definitely gives you a feel for what you’re in for:

This isn’t a short book at over 600 pages it takes a bit of time and effort to read, but it’s worth every minute and every page.  When you get done you are wowed and wish it had another 100 to 200 pages.  The writing is great and keeps you up late at night reading “just one more chapter.”  Let’s face it this hits all my hotspots, it’s a great written book, it’s dark and it’s about movies to boot.

I would love to see this turned into a mini series for HBO, Showtime or even an FX or AMC.  I think this would be the best way to give credit to the lengthy story.  Marisha Pessl has a movie deal already for this book and Rupert Wyatt is set to direct.  Let’s hope this is as good as this book deserves and I will be at the theater opening night when it comes out!

Review: The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell

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This is a short book written by Daniel Woodrell, someone I’ve been wanting to read for a while.  I learned of Woodrell because of the movie Winter’s Bone a great southern noir staring Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes(I will re watch this and review it at a later time).  I really enjoyed this gritty real looking movie and was very interested in reading the book(still am).  I picked this book up on my Nook because it was on sale for $2.99. Though this is a short book it was really dense with great language.  The story was good, flashing to different times in the characters lives, made for a puzzle that all came together in the end.  This is one of those books that may be even better on a second read so you can pick up on all the little clues through out.  I hope to check out more of Woodrell’s books, especially Winter’s Bone, Tomato Red and the Bayou Trilogy.

Review: Grand Central Murder

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Grand Central Murder is a film-noir from 1942.  This movie is based on a Sue MacVeigh book and though I’ve never read it, I think this story has more in common with Sherlock Holmes then Phillip Marlowe.  Though this seems to not be a true noir in story the filming is very noir.  The opening scenes visual is one of the coolest in noir. The rest of the movie uses shadows in a very artistic way.  S. Sylvan Simon is the director and looked to me like he showed some promise in the genre but he directed 34 films and it looks like almost all of them except for this one, was comedy and family films.  To bad I would love to see his style in more dark films like this.

Our P.I. detective is played by Van Heflin and is pretty entertaining in this part.  Patricia Dane is the beautiful gold digger that is in the center of the investigation.  There is a long cast of characters that at times are a little hard to keep track of.  This movie has not been rated much in IMDb and is currently at a 6.6, with only 453 people rating it.  I caught this on Turner Classic Movies and it may be hard to find on DVD, but it is available.  It may be worth the effort to find if you are a hard-core noir fan.

Review: The First Two Veronica Mars Books: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line and Mr Kiss and Tell

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Ok I admit it, I’m a Marshmallow, and if you’re a noir fan and have not become a Marshmallow, you should give Veronica Mars a try.  Veronica Mars is a unique character with a unique media formula.  Veronica started as a TV show starring Kristen Bell on the UPN and eventually on the CW and soon grow a cult following.  It was critically well received and had a rabid fan base.  It’s following has award it many accolades through the next ten years including Empire Magazine’s 48th best TV show of all time.  Though all of this helped, its low ratings got it cancelled after 3 seasons.  10 years after it all started came a kickstart campaign to make a movie and they raised more money then they ever hoped to.  Honestly this is where I became interested.  I started watching the TV series with Netflix DVD service and was hooked, watching as mainly episodes as I could as fast as I could.   Then I was able to check out the movie and was excited for the first book.  This review is for the first two books and I hope to come back and re-watch the TV series and movie for a deeper review later. If your new to Mars investigation I highly recommend that you start at the beginning and watch the TV series first.

These books are both written by Rob Thomas the creator of Veronica and co written by Jennifer Graham and they seem to be a great duo, keeping the Mars story going.

The first book: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line starts right after the movie and continues with all our favorite characters.  It’s Spring Break in Neptune and a couple of girls are kidnaped, Veronica is on the case, and we are reintroduced to a character we haven’t seen in a while.  This reads like your watching Veronica, you can hear the voices of the characters, you can  hear the tone and deflection, their sarcasm and their emotions.  It flows very well and you can see the locations from the previous work in your head when they pop up in the book.

The second book:  Mr. Kiss and Tell starts us out in Neptune but we travel to a new college campus, Seattle and Las Vegas, this is more travelling then we normal see.  We get to know another character from the past that we may have forgotten about, but soon remember her sad story that turns into a nightmare in this book.  Though Veronica is hired by the Neptune Grand to clear there wrong doing in a violent attack,Veronica can’t work just for the big company with the money but soon sides with the victim to find her attacker.

Veronica Mars is a unique series, since it has crossed 3 media sources and has stayed true to the characters and one of the reasons this is, is Rob Thomas has had control of his creation from the start.  So with Rob’s new show iZombie coming, is this the end of Mars Investigation?  Well we may have a to wait a bit but it doesn’t sound like it:

http://www.keyetv.com/lifestyle/features/austin-lifestyle/stories/rob-thomas-veronica-mars-886.shtml

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited for some new books, but a TV mini series would be awesome!

If your like me and thought 10 years ago Veronica Mars looks like Nancy Drew in a Beverly Hills 90210 setting, your wrong!  Veronica definitely explores some of the darkest themes I’ve ever seen on network TV and waited 10 years to long to discover this.

Review: The Two Faces of January

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The Two Faces of January is the second movie I’ve reviewed this week based on a Patricia Highsmith book.

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Though I still have not read anything by her(I plan to!), there are some common themes in this work and The Talented Mr. Ripley(the Book “Purple Noon” is based on).  We got rich Americans, a poor con artist, a love triangle of sorts, and an exotic beautiful location.  This story takes place in Greece and follows a married couple on vacation that meet up with a tour guide that is willing to show them around.  We have a May-December relationship, an alcoholic husband, a character with father issues, a murderer that may or may not have done it on accident, a fugitive on the run, a smart con-artist, and that just describes the three main characters, some descriptions match more than one character too.  Throw in a P.I. ex Marine and you got pure chaos.  This defiantly is in a Hitchcockian style and could have just as easily been from 1964 as from 2014.  This is written and directed by Hossein Amini who also wrote the screenplays for Drive and Killshot(both of which I hope to re watch and review in the future).  I look forward to more from him in the future.  We got Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Dunst and Oscar Isaac as our three main characters.  All of them do a great job, as your alliances may change back and forth between the three throughout the movie.  This film has a great score of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and a fair score of 6.2 on IMDb and 66% on Metscore at this time.  This is not the best film of 2014 nor is it even the best noir film of 2014 but is entertaining and worth a view.  I think noir fans will find this more entertaining than the average person.

Review: I Became a Criminal or They Made Me a Fugitive

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I Became a Criminal or how it was named on TCM, They Made Me a Fugitive is a film-noir from Britain in 1947.  The one thing that surprised me about this film is its violence towards women, with two scenes where women were beaten by men.  I didn’t really see if this was a controversy or not, but I can’t image in 1947 it not being controversial.  Trevor Howard stars and had a long career as an actor.  The surprise for me was Sally Gray, I did a little research on her and she had a nervous breakdown and took 5 years off not long before she made this film.  She also only made a few more films after this.  Hollywood did come calling, no surprise, she seems very talented and was a beautiful actress, but decided to leave show business and married.  She stayed married to her husband until his death at 100 years old, so maybe she made the right decision for herself.  The other actress that stood out to me is Mary Merrall, she played the old lady that keeps all the gangsters in line.  She did this with some of the best lines in the movie and was a character I would have liked to see more of, and her background story.  This is a good classic film-noir, worth checking out.

My Review of Brick

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Noir goes to high school!  This movie takes a modern take on the classic film-noir formula, but how do you have the classic dialog of a 30’s movie and put it into a movie made in this century?  I don’t know either but Rian Johnson did it.  Deciphering the language is part of the fun of this film.  Pin, Bull, Tug and of course Brick, what do they mean, why does it sound so cool when these middle class teens talk?  The setting of this film is in today’s suburbia and not the heart of the big city.  The hero is an average teen ex-boyfriend that most seem to be afraid of, or at least respect his reputation, but he seems more of a nerd then a bad ass.  The bad guys are modern versions of a thug and a smart business man who just happens to be in an illegal business.  There are 3! Yes 3 femme fatales in this movie, and of course all three throw our hero off track in different degrees through out, even though he knows they are doing it.  Brick is ten years old already, but it still holds up.  It was great to revisit this movie a decade on and forgot all the talent that this movie has.  Of course I knew Joseph Gordon-Levitt  when I first watched this, but he has become a huge star since. Lukas Haas, Emilie de Ravin and Meagan Good  have all gone on to become stars in their own right.  We get to see Richard Roundtree(Shaft himself!) in a great little role as well.  The greatest launching pad for talent this film had may just be the writer and director himself.  Since Brick, Rian Johnson has gone on to make the Brothers Bloom and the fantastic Sci-Fi Noir(I will review this sometime in the future)Looper.  The biggest news for Rian is the announcement that he will be the writer and director for 2 new Star Wars movies.  Not bad for a guy that wrote a movie, directed it using his old high school as a set and an Apple computer to edit it.  If you’re a fan of noir, new or old and haven’t seen this movie, check it out, if you haven’t seen it in a while it’s worth another viewing.

Review of Sweet Smell of Success

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I finally got a chance to see this classic film-noir and the wait was worth it.  This is a very cool movie that has all the things that make a film-noir so amazing.  I have to say this has some of the best dialog of any movie ever.

“If you’re funny, Walter, I’m a pretzel! Drop dead!”

“Don’t remove the gangplank, Sidney – you may wanna get back onboard.”

“That’s fish four days old. I won’t buy it!”

and of course the most famous line:

“I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”

There is many more great lines in this movie, I could list another 100 and not cover them all.  I can see why this made a few Empire Magazine top 100 lists.  The reason I was so excited to see this film was Burt Lancaster, he is one of my favorite actors and his performance was great as the evil J.J., but Tony Curtis really surprised me and took over this film.

This movie had a lot of controversy when it came out.  It was based on Walter Winchell, a famous columnist in New York City with lots of pull.  Though this film changes Winchell’s daughter for J.J.’s sister, the story is based on some true events.  Winchell was still a powerful man in media when this was made, making it a risk to make.  Burt Lancaster produced this himself to get it made.  This was also Curtis’s first real acting challenge and showed his talent(before this he was thought of more as a pretty face and not a serious actor).  This also was a different role for Lancaster where he was essentially a bad guy, this went against his normal hero role in the film.  It ended up helping his career as well because it showed he had more sides to his acting talents then people thought.  Thank you Turner Classic Movies for still showing these great movies, most of these are not at our local DVD store.  If you haven’t seen this one put it on your Netflix Queue you will not be disappointed.