Neo-Noir

Review: Shiner

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

UKquad

As the poster says “Caine’s back on top form, packing his biggest punch since ‘Get Carter'”

Well this might not be as great as Get Carter, but it is pretty good.  The poster shows Michael Caine staring alongside Martin Landau, but Landau doesn’t play that big a role in this film.  Caine is the one and only star you need to know about in this film.

This film is directed by John Irvin who has done a hodge-podge of action, neo noir, and war movies through his career with some great stuff as well as some I’d rather forget.  Scott Cherry wrote the screenplay, this his first movie, but he has extensive television work.

This film is about Billy ‘Shiner’ Simpson who is a gangster and shady boxing promoter.  He has a contender under his management, his own son, and has gotten him a big title fight. He has everything he owns on the line, his son needs to win and Shiner is looking pretty, if he loses, Shiner loses everything!  Shiner’s son loses….to easily.  Shiner thinks the fix is in, he confronts his son…and the next thing you know this son is shot!  Shiner continues to solve who got to his son? who shot his son?  Why would somebody do this to him?  Besides Caine’s usual great performance we have, Landau playing the American promoter who manages the title holder. Frank Harper as Stoney and Andy Serkis as Mel, both thugs in Shiner’s employ.

This neo noir again has our favorite noir sport, boxing!  We have some police detectives but they pretty much stay out of the picture.  We got a crooked lawyer, some other shady boxing promoters, lots of thugs and a great English back drop.

This film is a good picture, worth watching for any Caine fans out there, but might not be to everyone’s liking.  I gave it a 7 out of 10, IMDb is at a 6 out of 10.  Seems about far for this film.

Re-watching: Kalifonia

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

Re

215px-Kaliforniaposter

Kalifornia is a road trip noir directed by Dominic Sena and written by Stephen Levy and Tim Metcalfe.  This also has an amazing cast of four.  Brad Pitt plays the psychopath Early Grayce and steals the show with his performance.  This is fairly early in his career, just after his break through role in A River Runs Through It.  We will see Pitt in quite a few neo-noir films through the decade of the 1990’s.  Juliette Lewis plays Early’s girlfriend and is no stranger to playing characters who are a little off the wall.  David Duchovny plays our hero, a writer who gets in over his head, and his girlfriend is played by Michelle Forbes.

MV5BMzA1MTU4OTg2N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTA1NjcyMQ@@._V1_SX640_SY720_

Our story starts with Duchovny getting a gig writing a book about serial killers and plans a trip across the country to visit sites of famous murders.  His girlfriend is excited, because as a photographer she wants to go to California and this is their chance.  The don’t have enough money to make it on their own so they advertise to find somebody that will share the ride.  Pitt and Lewis live in a trailer and are down on their luck.  They owe back rent and don’t have a job.  They soon decide to start over in California.  Before they leave Pitt kills the landlord and torches the trailer and his car.  The four all meet at a bus depot and start our adventure across the country.

This film is shot in a very noir style and the story is very dark.  We visit a lot of strange and disturbing locations as the crew traverse the country.  The performances from our four main actors are spot on.

This may not be a classic, but maybe it should be.  Maybe it gets over shadowed by Pitt’s other movies to come like Seven and Fight Club.  If you haven’t seen this in a while you should go back and re-watch it too.  If you haven’t seen it yet, seek it out, you will enjoy it.

Favorite Tidbit:  The four famous murder scene locations all are named after our four main characters in some way.

The Great Villain Blogathon 2015: Catherine Tramell and Re-Watching Basic Instinct

bryancyr Movie, Neo-Noir , , , , ,

Sharon Stone b001

The year was 1992 and I was a young college student.  Basic Instinct was in the news, we learned it was to raw, too much violence and too much sex and nudity.  We had to go see it!  So the controversy and nudity got us into the theater, but would the movie be any good?  The movie was amazing!  We watched it over and over again when it came out on VHS.  Me and my friends discussed it, it was the movie to watch for over a year.  I can’t tell you how many times I watched it back in the early 90’s, but it was a lot.  I was a movie fan, always have been, but at this time in my life I didn’t know what film noir was.  I bought the limited edition ice pick DVD when it came out 10 years later and watched it again, I had to have this in my DVD collection, but I had moved on to other films and haven’t watched this in years.

So I popped in the DVD a few nights ago to revisit a film from my past, would it hold up?  Was it as good as I remember?  Was Catherine Tramell as cool as I remember?

What do I remember?  I remember me and my friends being just like Michael Douglas’ Nick Curran.  We were in love with Sharon Stone’s Catherine Tramell, and no matter how many times we watched this, we argued if she really did the murders.  Some of us always argued she was innocent.  She was to smart, to cool…to good looking to be a murderer.  Jeanne Tripplehorn’s Dr. Beth Garner was the crazy one, the murderer for sure.  As 19-year-old boys we didn’t know what a femme fatale was, but we all knew if Sharon Stone showed up in our home town, we would believe every word she said.

Now that I’m older, I see beyond the beauty of most femme fatales in noir movies and wonder “what the hell is he thinking!”  but then I flash back to this film and realize that men are weak in the presence of a femme fatale.

Now that I’m older and have watched hundreds of femme fatale movies, I re-watched Basic Instinct.  It still holds up, it still is as good as I remember.  I might be smarter than I was the first time I seen it, but I still have a shadow of a doubt if Catherine Tramell is guilty or not.  I guess that is what makes her a truly great villain, even though we know she is evil, we still want to believe she is not.

This post is part of THE GREAT VILLAIN BLOGATHON, hosted by Speakeasy, Shadows & Satin and yours truly. Click HERE for a list of all dastardly entries.

Re-Watching Pathology

bryancyr Horror, Movie, Neo-Noir , , , , , , , , , , ,

220px-Pathologyposter

So I was going down the list of movies classified as neo-noir on IMDb, to see if I can find any hidden gems I wasn’t aware of and to see what films I wanted to re-watch and review on this site.  Quite aways down this list I noticed this movie, Pathology.  I thought “I remember that movie!”  I originally watched this film back in 2008 when it came out on DVD for two reasons, fairly good reviews from horror fans and it had Alyssa Milano in it.  From what I remember I liked this film and thought it was an above average horror movie and Alyssa wasn’t in it as much as I would have hoped.  I would have never thought of this film as a neo-noir though.

On a second viewing I wanted to see why this would be classified as neo-noir and if I would agree.  So here are the elements I picked up on that would make it a neo-noir.  We have a lot of shadow and washed out grey scenes that look almost black and white.  There are a lot of shots filmed from a ground eye view, popular in noir.  We have a femme fatale played by Lauren Lee Smith that sucks our protagonist in.  Our main protagonist gets in a situation that is way over his head and very bleak.  This gives us the sense of doom that all good noir movies posses.  We have heinous crimes committed, though these crimes are not committed for profit like most noir.  There is not a very happy ending, just like most great noir.

This story starts with a gifted doctor, our protagonist, Ted Grey played by Milo Ventimiglia.  He leaves his girlfriend played by Milano to go study Pathology at an unnamed prestigious city morgue.  There he meets a slightly socially awkward Ben played by Keir O’Donnell.  Ben is an outcast and not accepted by the in-crowd led by Jake, played by Michael Weston and includes Smith’s femme fatale character.  Ted is slowly drawn into the popular group of gifted pathologists with nights of drinking and drugs.  They soon drag Ted into their sick game of killing people and then having the others in the group figure out how they did it.  This is just the start of the dark journey we go on.

A few great smaller parts played by Larry Drake and John de Lancie were very entertaining.  This is written by the writing team of Neveldine and Taylor who also brought us the Crank movies.

So is this film a neo-noir?  I think so, it definitely has horror elements, but mostly these are because of the gore, we are dealing with people who cut dead bodies open to see why they died after all.

I think this little film is worth watching for horror fans and noir fans alike.  It’s a pretty good story with a few like-able characters and a lot of unlike-able ones.

Re-watching the Classics: The French Connection

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

French-Connection

The French Connection is a Best Picture winner, directed by William Friedkin who also won Best Director.  This is based on a book by Robin Moore about one of the biggest heroin busts in New York history. Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso are the two narcotics cops who in real life where the center of the investigation.  They both play small roles in the film.  The two cops are played by Gene Hackman as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Roy Scheider as Buddy Russo.  Fernando Rey plays our head French bad guy.

The film starts out with our two heroes working undercover, Popeye dressed as a Santa Claus, chase and bust a small time drug dealer.  He is questioned and talks about a huge shipment coming to New York soon.  They soon find themselves following Sal and Angie Boca (played by Tony Lo Bianco and Arlene Farber) who they believe is part of the huge shipment. We see our heroes using informants and help from the DEA to get to the bottom of the case.

This film has a couple of classic scenes, one is the infamous car chase that is considered one of the best ever.  Soon after this scene is one in which Popeye shoots a man in the back.  This scene was not liked by police officers of the time but was approved by Eddie Egan who was on the set.  When first viewed by audiences they loved the scene.  This ended up on the poster for the film.

the-french-connection-5

This film is often put in “Top 100 Movies of All Time” lists and is a classic by anybody’s standards.  I liked this film the first time I seen it 20 some years ago, and also liked it this time.  I don’t put this in my top 100 films of all time, but it is worth watching.  It is a must see for film fans of any kind, whether you are a neo-noir or crime movie fan or not.   This movie is followed by a sequel with Popeye Doyle going to France and also a spin-off with Roy Scheider playing a version of his character called The Seven-Ups.  I have not seen either of these yet.

Favorite Tidbit: The popular Popeye’s Chicken restaurant chain is named after Popeye Doyle.

Review: Season 1 of Better Call Saul

bryancyr Neo-Noir, Television , , , , , , , ,

better-call-saul-trailer

Better Call Saul is a comedy, drama, neo noir mash-up that is pure gritty fun.  Season 1 has just ended on AMC and I really enjoyed it.  Bob Odenkirk plays our main protagonist, Jimmy McGill, he is a lawyer, con-man, overall good guy?  Not how to classify him.  One minute he is conning some innocent bystander and the next he is returning almost $2 million dollars in cash to its rightful owner.

Our next most interesting character is Mike Ehrmantraut played by Jonathan Banks and he is a bad ass.  He is our normal noir protagonist, you know, ex-cop with issues that wants to get out, but seems to always finding himself in the middle of the mess.

We also have Jimmy’s brother,Chuck, a fancy lawyer who got Jimmy out of trouble before. Chuck is played by Michael McKean.  Chuck has an interesting disease that keeps him basically as a recluse now.

These three characters all have one thing in common, they have all left where they came from because something horrible has happened and ended up in New Mexico to get a fresh start.  Unfortunately a new start just means new problems, with some of their past problems hunting them down to boot.

Rhea Seehorn plays good lawyer and is always looking out for Jimmy and Patrick Fabian plays bad lawyer, always out to get Jimmy for some reason.  We also have minor characters of interest who are too numerous to talk about here.

The first season is only 10 episodes long, and hey I wish more American television would do this.  A good series could be great if it wasn’t forced to use sub-par stories to fill a complete 24 episode season.  All 10 of these episodes are great and even though it is a short season we have a lot of story.  The story starts out with a great looking black and white scene looking very film noirish, of Jimmy after the events of Breaking Bad, we then flash back to 6 years before the events of Breaking Bad, and even have flashbacks from there to tell more back story.

I honestly never got through all of Breaking Bad yet, still need to watch the last few seasons.  I look forward to doing so, but the reason I bring this up is you don’t have to have seen Breaking Bad or even know much about that series to enjoy Better Call Saul.

Better Call Saul is for anybody looking for great television in a sea of reality t.v..  If you like dark comedy, good drama, crime stories, and especially us neo noir fans need to see Better Call Saul!

Review: Where the Truth Lies

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

MV5BMTI2NzQ3ODc3OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjEzMTEzMQ@@._V1_SY317_CR1,0,214,317_AL_

Where the Truth Lies is a movie based on a book by Rupert Holmes.  Holmes is a bit of a talent, he writes mystery-thriller books like this one(I have not read any of his work), He has written plays and won Tony awards for doing so.  He’s produced music for the likes of Barbra Streisand.  He’s written songs for the likes of The Drifters and The Platters.  He wrote the short but well liked television sitcom Remember WENN.  Oh yeah and he’s written and sang his own material, you might know him for a little song Escape (The Pina Colada Song).  So he is a talented entertainer in a lot of ways, he has had success in every field of entertainment.  But can he write a great noir that translates to a great neo noir film?

The Canadian Director Atom Egoyan wrote this screenplay and directed it.  I really like his films and he has made a few really good neo-noir films in his career.

This cast is pretty amazing, especially looking at where some of them are 10 years later.  This film stars Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as a Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin type duo.  Firth has gone on to win an Oscar for The King’s Speech and has become quite the star.  We have two femme fatale’s in this movie, Maureen played by Rachel Blanchard, who has shown up on the very good Fargo television series. The second femme fatale is Karen played by Alison Lohman who has done some amazing work but seems to have gotten married in 2009 and has disappeared from the movies.  Anybody know why she hasn’t been in anything lately?

This film starts out with our showbiz duo doing a telethon but we realize something is a miss right away.  Our team has a love/hate relationship for sure.  We than find our first femme fatale Maureen in a hotel room tub full of ice and long dead.  We than flash forward to our second femme fatale Karen who is a journalist and is writing a book about our entertainment team with an emphasis on the incident of the dead girl.  We continue flashing back and forward as Karen tries to find out what really happened that fateful night to Maureen.  Is she to close to the story?  Will the same fate fall on her?  Will she find out how Maureen died and why?

Favorite Tidbit:  Egoyan made many cuts to this to get it an R rating instead of the NC-17 rating, he failed.  It was later learned that the cut of the film American audiences eventually saw was the same cut that premiered at Cannes.

I really enjoyed this film as I have most of Egoyan’s films.  If you like your neo-noir on the thriller, murder mystery side, you will like this film.  Give it a try if you have not seen it yet.

Review: Go For Sisters

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

9200000024948573

Go for Sisters is a neo-noir from writer, director John Sayles.  Sayles directed a few big budget Hollywood films and then went on to make independent films.  He may be best known in noir and neo-noir circles for Lone Star.  I plan on re-watching and reviewing it in the future.

This film stars LisaGay Hamilton, Yolonda Ross and Edward James Olmos with a few familiar faces in small cameos like Isaiah Washington,Harold Perrineau and Hector Elizondo.

hero_GoForSisters-2013-1

This movie starts with Hamilton as a parole officer and one of her paroles is Ross, who we soon find out where childhood friends.  Hamilton has become estranged from her son, with no way to contact him anymore.  In her search for him, she goes to one of her son’s friends, Fuzzy, to see if he has seen her son.  We find Fuzzy has been murdered and soon find out her son is a suspect.  Hamilton recruits her childhood friend Ross to help her find her son.  They then hire Olmos, a ex-officer who has been terminated from his job and has lost his pension.  He needs funds and is willing to help our two ladies for a price.  The story crosses from Texas to Mexico where things really get dark with adult book stores, dirty cops, a China town in Mexico, and some illegal border crossing.

This border noir debuted at South by Southwest in Austin back in 2013 and made the film festival circuit but never really found an audience.  It got above average reviews from critics and was nominated for a few awards, including the Independent Spirit Award for Supporting Actress for Ross.  The film has recently been released on DVD and should find a wider audience.

For me this film was a little long at almost 2 hours for the story it tells.  It’s a good film and is worth viewing, but don’t expect something as great as Lone Star.

go-for-sisters08

Re-Watching a New Classic: Out of Sight

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

MV5BMjA0MjMwNTE4Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNjExNzQxMTE@._V1_SY1200_CR84,0,630,1200_AL_

Out of Sight is best known for the relationship between George Clooney’s Jack Foley and Jennifer Lopez’s Karen Sisco, but it is so much more than that.  I haven’t seen this since it came out in 1998 and just re-watched it.  I remember that Steven Soderbergh directed this Elmore Leonard story.  I didn’t realize this was Soderbergh’s first big budget film, not a bad first try, Though this was a box office flop for the studio. This is also one of my favorite Leonard adoptions, it’s funny but it’s the classic one liners and a few characters that don’t quite fit into society that make it funny, not trying to make it a comedy, that happens way to much with Leonard’s work.  Leonard is a crime storyteller first, funny second.  What I forgot about this film is the rest of the cast is brilliant! Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Catherine Keener, Dennis Farina,Steve Zahn, Albert Brooks, Nancy Allen and Luis Guzmán!

This movie’s most famous scene happens towards the beginning of the film and sets in motion what is to come.  That scene happens after Foley out smarts the prison guards and escapes prison.  When he is getting picked up by his buddy…Buddy, played by Rhames, FBI Agent Sisco is in the parking lot on an unrelated mater.  They steal her car and throw her in the trunk with Foley for the escape.  Their conversation about movies, which includes the classics Bonnie and Clyde, Network, and Three Days of the Condor, and life in general make for an intimate conversation that changes both of their lives.  We find from this scene that there is chemistry between our two leads, and both have a mutual attraction.  Both know this might just be their downfall.

Jennifer-Lopez-in-Out-of-Sight-jennifer-lopez-23768047-1280-720

This gives a different spin on our plot.  Foley can’t keep away from Sisco even though he knows she will eventually put him back in jail and Sisco can’t stay away from Foley, even though she knows she should put him back in jail.  This is also unique because Lopez is not only our femme fatale, but also our hero for good. We have noir’s favorite sport-boxing, bank robbers, kidnappers, magician assistants, ex-cops, F.B.I., Detroit detectives, and a surprise appearance by none other than Samuel L. Jackson.

Enjoy this Leonard romp in the way a Leonard romp should be done.

Favorite tidbit:  Michael Keaton reprises his role as Ray Nicolette in a cameo, Keaton played Nicolette in Jackie Brown(another of my favorite Leonard adoptions) as well.

Review: In Cold Blood

bryancyr film-noir, Movie, Neo-Noir , , , , , , , , ,

MV5BNTMxMDU3NTU0MF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTg3NDAwMQ@@._V1_SY317_CR2,0,214,317_AL_in_cold_blood_xlg

In Cold Blood is based on the book by Truman Capote, that is based on the true story of the murder of the Clutter family by Perry Smith and “Dick” Hickock.  Smith is played by Robert Blake, later known for his role as Baretta on the T.V. show by the same name, and maybe more so for being accused for the murder of his second wife.  Hickock is played by Scott Wilson, who I know from The Walking Dead and look forward to watching him on the series Bosch.  I did not recognize him at all, as his older bearded self doesn’t look much like he did in his youth, and his voice isn’t as distinctive yet either.  The two actors looked remarkably like the real life killers that they play.

John Forsythe plays our lead detective on the case, Alvin Dewey.  Forsythe already had a pretty decent T.V. career going when he made this movie, but of course he would go on to great heights as the voice of Charlie on Charlie’s Angels and the prime-time soup Dynasty.

Though this is not a classic film-noir, I guess it is to new for that, it was made in 1967.  Richard Brook wrote this for the screen and directed it.  He used black and white and many shadows, it looks like any good noir made in the 1950’s to me.  It is a neo-noir in date alone in my opinion.  Brooks, kept this as close to the book as possible and as accurate as possible, using some of the same jurors and a lot of the locals for extras.  As well as going to the actual locations to film as many scenes as possible

In Cold Blood

The story starts with Perry Smith getting off the bus in Kansas to meet his friend Dick Hickock.  Hickock has a plan for some big money, no witnesses and an escape to Mexico.  The plan doesn’t seem to go well and our duo is on the run, broke and not sure what to do.

The movies Capote and Infamous are both very good movies about Truman Capote and him writing the book “In Cold Blood.”  I have never read the book, but it is one on my long list of “Want to Read.”  This movie makes me want to move it up the list a bit.

Favorite Tidbit:  The character Perry Smith mentions the movie “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” twice, some thought this was written into the script because Smith was played by Robert Blake.  Blake had an uncredited role in the film as a child.  The real reason Smith mentions the movie in the film is because it was the real Perry Smith’s favorite film and he often referred to it.

This movie is for everybody that likes good film.  If you are a noir fan it is a must watch.  Fans of true crime stories should also love it.