Movie

In Memory of Lizabeth Scott, Review of Pitfall

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Today the noir world has learned the passing of film-noir legend Lizabeth Scott. Read the LA Times report here:

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-lizabeth-scott-20150206-story.html

Lizabeth was in many film-noir movies and stared with all the big names.  We will be looking at more of her movies on this blog soon.  When I saw the news I checked my DVR for a classic movie with Lizabeth in it to review tonight in her honor.

Pitfall came up, so here is my review.

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Scott starts as our femme fatale alongside Dick Powell in this film from 1948.  Right away I can’t believe how much Scott’s voice sounds like Lauren Bacall.  According to the LA Times, Scott was often compared to Bacall because of their similar look and voice. This movie has a great little plot and kind of ends where most films of this time would have started.  I don’t want to spoil the story so I will stop there.  I watched this on TCM and Robert Osborne had a very interesting story about how this movie was almost not released.  According to the movie code at the time a bad guy can be an adulterer, but a good guy could not be one.  This movie has that situation and director André De Toth used some sneaky tactics with the executives of the studio to show their hypocrisy.  This film is based on a book by Jay Dratler, an author that looks to have much success as a screenwriter.  I looked this book up on Goodreads and nobody has read it on there!  I took a quick look and Barns and Nobel had no copy available.  Has anyone out there read this book? The other high spot of this movie is Raymond Burr as a ex-cop, private investigator.  He really has some presence in this part and you can see his star rising in this movie.

R.I.P. Lizabeth Scott, I look forward to watching more of her work, hope you do the same.

Review: John Wick

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John Wick is a neo-noir with a lot of action!  This has a simple plot and not a very original one.  We’ve seen this in various versions throughout the years.  An innocent man, well maybe not totally innocent man is wronged by some bad guys.  Things that come to mind are Point Blank and Payback(we will look at these two movies based on the Parker books later), as well as maybe a little Death Wish.  The list can go on and on….but is that a bad thing? This isn’t some mind twisting plot with a commentary on society that will make you re-think your life.  Revenge and vengeance are common themes in film and it makes for a fun movie.  I loved John Wick, yeah we know how it’s going to end almost before it begins, in fact the opening scene also happens to be a scene from the end of the movie.   Chad Stahelski and David Leitch made a great film on their first attempt.  The action is amazing, but I really love the way it was shot.  You can tell they have been around the movie industry and know how to make interesting scenes and sets.  A lot of the scenes reminded me of classic noir films in bright color instead of black and white.  I purposely didn’t look into this movie much before I watched it.  All I knew is people liked it and it has Keanu Reeves in it.  I’m glad that’s all I knew, there are some great cameos in this film I didn’t know where coming and liked them.  My three favorites are Willem Dafoe, Kevin Nash and Lance Reddick.  I will not give you anymore so you can be surprised and enjoy the film like I did. If you want a fun movie with some great scenes and an amazing look, look no further, check out John Wick.

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: 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.

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.

Ken Bruen’s Inspector Brant series

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Ken Bruen is better known for his Jack Taylor books and I have not read any of them yet(again on my to read list).  I picked up the first three of this series up in a Black Friday Sale for my Nook.  The first three books are packaged together and called the White Trilogy.

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This is from the Mystery Press, who has a lot of great noir and hardboiled books in there collection.  I read the first 3 books in no time and right away got the next 4 books and read those even faster.  This collection has a total of 7 short books that follow Inspector Brant, but also follows his co-workers in just as much detail.    This 7 books in the series are:

A White Arrest

Taming the Alien

The McDead

Blitz

Vixen

Calibre

Ammunition

The fourth book, Blitz was also made into a movie.  The movie follows the book fairly well except for the ending, which I think made a better movie.

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The movie has Jason Statham as Brant and he does a great job, it is an entertaining movie worth checking out whether you read the books or not.

The book series has not been read much according to goodreads with Blitz having the most reads at a mere 427, but the series has strong reviews and high ratings.  Ken Bruen has quickly become one of my favorite noir authors and I look forward to reading The Guards soon!

Purple Noon

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Purple Noon(Plein soleil) is a film that caught my eye because it is based on the Noir novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.

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 You may know this work from the adaption made in 1999 with Matt Damon (as Ripley), Jude Law (as Greenleaf), and Gwyneth Paltrow (as Marge).  This is a French Production and though in 1960 the classic Film-Noir style was still in favor, this is not one of them.  This is in color with lots of scenes on beautiful blue seas and fashionable city centers rather then dark alleys and grimy bars.   Of course this being based on the classic novel, the themes are very dark, with an early form of identity theft, a strange love triangle, a few murders and lots of con jobs.  This must have been a refreshing look at the classic crime thriller in 1960 when most films of this nature where still in black and white and had a dark tone, this movie didn’t hide in the shadows.  The crimes are committed under the noon sun to those of privilege and of means, but most of the characters are not like-able and you find yourself hoping Ripley gets out of this OK.  I have yet to read the source novel(again on my to read list) but after looking at some of the history of this film both the author Patricia Highsmith and the film critic Roger Ebert did not like the ending.  I will not go into details about the ending(no spoilers if possible on this site) but would love to hear from those that have read the book and seen this film on what they think.Film_637w_PurpleNoon_original 

This film has a current rating of 7.8 on IMDb and 100% on Rotten Tomatoes so it is well liked by those that have seen it.  This is also the first appearance from the character Tom Ripley in the movies, I’m sure we will be looking at some of the other films he appears in on this site.

Bad Turn Worse

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Bad Turn Worse is a great modern Noir.  I really enjoyed this film and it looks like the few people that have watched it so far seem to agree.  Currently it has 82% Rotten Tomatoes rating but only a 5.9 on IMDb with less then 1000 ratings.  The biggest star in this small film is Jeremy Allen White, who is known for playing Lip on Shameless.  This takes place in Texas and revolves around 3 young friends that get caught up in a bad idea that turns worse, ah now I understand that title.  I loved seeing William Devane in this, this guy just knows how to play the rich evil, doesn’t he? This is the first movie written by Dutch Southern(Great name!) and look forward to seeing what else he contributes to.  Easter Egg of Noir note:  Jim Thompson’s book South of Heaven (haven’t read this one yet, but it’s on my to read list now).

If this trailer doesn’t get you excited I don’t know what will!