Re-Watching the Classics: Heat

March 12, 2015March 12, 2015 bryancyr Movie, Neo-Noir Al Pacino, Ashley Judd, Chuck Adamson, Danny Trejo, Edward Bunker, Hank Azaria, Henry Rollins, Jeremy Piven, Jon Voight, Michael Mann, Natalie Portman, Neil McCauley, Robert De Niro, Tom Sizemore, Val Kilmer

Heat is 20 years old now! That is hard to believe, I didn’t know if I should call it a classic, but after 20 years I think we are safe. This is a Neo-Noir epic with one of the best casts in a noir film ever.

Michael Mann writes and directs, Mann is a legend of neo-noir film making. He got his start in some great television shows and went on to make some amazing movies. This one may be his best.

Lets start with the cast, this is the first time we see two of the greatest actors of our time on the screen at the same time with each other: Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. There seen together was filmed at a restaurant in Los Angles, one where you can actually sit and have a meal at the same table even today. They did appear in another film before this, a little film called Godfather II, but were never on screen together.

This is almost like two films in one, we are rooting for our brilliant thief and hoping he gets away and lives happily ever after. We are also rooting for our hard nosed cop that has to find the violent criminals before they get away clean. It’s a cat and mouse game that we can not pick a side on. The trip is worth it.

Though this is enough to make any movie big, no need to have anyone else in the cast, but we do. A lot of my favorite crime actors are in this film and I’m just going to list them here:

Val Kilmer plays a gambling addict that earns his money stealing.

Ashley Judd plays his wife and our only real femme fatale.

Jon Voight plays the ring leader of the bad guys, interesting note: his character is based on Edward Bunker, a career criminal that has appeared in many crime films and has written many noir books himself. I plan on reading and reviewing some of his books on the website later.

A young Natalie Portman is in here as the angry step daughter, she already showed some amazing talent in this small role.

We also have an all star supporting cast of crime film regulars: Tom Sizemore, Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi,Ted Levine, Dennis Haysbert, William Fichtner, Kevin Gage, Hank Azaria, Danny Trejo, Henry Rollins, and Jeremy Piven.

This movie actually is based on a real life cop and his pursuit of a career thief. The real story is about Chuck Adamson, a real life cop in Chicago who meet in a non violent situation with the real Neil McCauley and chased him for part of his career. Adamson also helped write on some of Mann’s T.V. shows and is also the source for one of Mann’s other movies, Thief.

At almost 3 hours long, this is a long film, but worth it.

Review: The Man with the Golden Arm

March 11, 2015March 11, 2015 bryancyr film-noir, Movie Arnold Stang, Eleanor Parker, Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, Nelson Algren, Otto Preminger, The Man with the Golden Arm

The question I had before viewing this film was “Is this a film-noir or not?” I have no degree in film, and this doesn’t have the traditional technical aspects of a true film noir, and from what research I can find, Otto Preminger didn’t want this to be a traditional film noir. Preminger was a director that knew noir, he made quite a few, some before and some after this one. So could this be the very first neo-noir? All I know is this is filmed in black and white and doesn’t have as much shadow play as most films of this era. The subject matter on the other hand is very noir, it is gritty and dark. The movie is based on the book of the same name written by Nelson Algren.

We have a convict fresh out of prison. He was arrested as a card dealer at an illegal casino and he has a drug problem. He comes out of prison, clean and with a new skill as a drummer. He is looking for a fresh start, but gets pulled into his old ways. His girl is bound to a wheel chair because of a spinal issue, she needs money to go to the doctors to help her find a cure. She is about as close to a femme fatale as you can get. There is also the beautiful neighbor down stairs who is the girl our hero really likes. We have an old boss that wants to control our hero and get him back into dealing cards for him. We got his best friend that is an honest hustler, he feels he is more honest than the criminals around him, but still a criminal. Murder, drugs, gambling, dancing-girls, hustlers, thugs and love triangles, sounds like noir to me.

The film also pushed the boundaries of The Motion Picture Association of America’s film code and is one of the reasons the code was changed. Because of its drug use in this film it almost wasn’t approved. After this film, taboo subjects like drugs, kidnapping, abortion and prostitution were allowed in film. This would of course be big for noir and neo-noir films to come.

This was nominated for 3 Academy Awards including Frank Sinatra’s one and only nomination for his portrayal of Frankie Machine. Eleanor Parker plays Frankie’s wheel chair bound girlfriend. Kim Novak plays their neighbor, Molly. Funny man Arnold Stang plays Frankie’s side kick Sparrow. Darren McGavin plays the underworld boss that is trying to control Frankie.

So for those fans that have seen it, what do you think? Is it a film-noir or a well done crime drama? In either case it is a good film worth watching.

Underrated Noir: Snake Eyes

March 10, 2015March 10, 2015 bryancyr Movie, Neo-Noir Brian De Palma, Carla Gugino, Gary Sinise, Neo-Noir, Nicolas Cage, Stan Shaw

Snake Eyes is from legendary director Brian De Palma. De Palma was one of the best neo-noir directors through the 1980’s and 90’s. In one of the coolest and most underrated scenes in movies is the first 20 minutes of this film. It looks like it is one continues shot, but it is edited together. There are some other really cool shots in this movie as well, I liked the point of view shots and the hotel room pan shot. Our protagonist is Rick Santoro, played by Nicolas Cage. He is a dirty cop with a gambling issue. He is in his town, Atlantic City, where he has ambitions of local politics after his police career ends. The movie starts with Rick coming to the local casino to watch a Heavy Weight Championship fight with his old classmate, Lincoln Tyler played by Stan Shaw. He has ringside seats with his friend and Commander in the Navy, Kevin Dunne played by Gary Sinise. Dunne is there on protection duty for the Secretary of Defense who is there to watch the big fight. Soon Julia Costello, played by Carla Gugino sits next to Rick at the fight and all hell breaks loose. I like Gugino as our femme fatale, as she changes from a platinum blond in all white to a brunette in a black jacket, our prospective of her also changes.

This has a very intricate plot and is well executed. I’m not really sure why this film has such low ratings with a 5.9 on IMDb, 52 on Metascore, and 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. I watched this in the theater when it first came out and just re-watched it tonight. I don’t think this is a masterpiece by any means but feel it should be a sold 3.5 to 4 stars out of 5. If you are a noir fan give this a second chance.

5 Noir Classics That Inspired ‘Dark Rooms’ Author Lili Anolik

March 9, 2015 bryancyr Uncategorized

New book by Lili Anolik and some noir recommendations from her. Looks like she has pretty good taste, look forward to reading this book soon.

Review: Dread Journey by Dorothy B. Hughes

March 9, 2015March 9, 2015 bryancyr Book Dorothy B. Hughes, Dread Journey, Mysterious Press

Dorothy B. Hughes is a well-known hardboiled and noir writer from the 1940’s. Thanks to Mysterious Press for keeping these books in print and available. She had 3 films made from her books: The Fallen Sparrow, Ride the Pink Horse and In a Lonely Place where all made in the classic film noir era. I hope to review all three of these films at some point on this site.

Dread Journey is not as well-known as some of her other work and I actually choose this as my first Hughes book simply because it was on sale for little to nothing on my Nook when I was looking at her books. This book is short, only 140 pages, but very dense, this is not an easy read.

This book is original in a lot of ways, the structure is not your typical murder mystery by any means. This story takes place on a train called the Chief that is going from Los Angeles east to New York. The train is full of entertainment types traveling for work.

The motley crew of characters include:

James Cobbett is a service man for the train and is there for everybody’s beck and call.

Les Augustin an orchestra leader, maybe to smart for his own good.

Hank Cavahaugh an alcoholic newspaper man who still has some pull.

Sidney Pringle was a tie salesman that wrote a book, and it has done fairly well.

Gratia is the beautiful fresh face that everybody is falling in love with and is innocent to the entertainment business.

Viv Spender, the rich and powerful film mogul.

Kitten Agnew is the famous starlet that is also Viv’s current girlfriend and muse.

Mike is Viv’s personal secretary and has been in love with Viv for years, though she is a plain-looking girl and does not catch Viv’s eye.

The interesting part of this story is we don’t have a murder towards the beginning of the story like most who done its. This story revolves around Kitten, who know’s Viv has destroyed or killed his last muses when he was done with them. She knows she is being replaced by Gratia, the new face that Viv has fallen in love with, though Gratia does not know this yet. Kitten is smart and has used lawyers and contracts to make sure she will not be easily fired by Viv and his company. She now realizes that the only way Viv is getting rid of her is killing her. She is scared for her life so she surrounds herself with Hank, Sidney, and Les for protection on the trip. Mike knows that Viv has killed his muses before, but because she has been loyal to him for years, she doesn’t know what to do in this situation. James is our outside perspective of this whole situation.

Will Viv or Kitten win this battle of smarts and murder. Will they all make it to New York, who will not make it? This starts out a little slow as we learn about our characters and how they interact. It’s a slow burn that turns into an inferno in the last third of the book. I liked the originality of the book and think this would have made a great moody film noir in its day, but its first 100 pages of slow build up was a little too much for me. Worth checking out for Hughes fans and I wish I would have went with one of her more popular books first instead of this one.

Re-watching the Classics: Road to Perdition

March 8, 2015March 8, 2015 bryancyr Movie A Road to Perdition, Arthur Fellig, Connor Looney, Conrad L. Hall, Daniel Craig, Frank Nitti, John Looney, Jude Law, Max Allan Collins, Neo-Noir, Paul Newman, Stanley Tucci, Tom Hanks, Tyler Hoechlin

Road to Perdition started as a graphic novel by noir author Max Allan Collins. Max Allan Collins has written many books and worked on television shows and movies over the years. The film is directed by Sam Mendes and is his second film, after American Beauty and is currently directing the James Bond movies, also starring Daniel Craig. I haven’t watched this film since it was in theaters, it was the only Paul Newman film I ever saw in a theater sadly.

This was Conrad L. Hall’s last film, he won an Oscar for this film as well as 2 others. He was nominated for another 7 films through out his career, his career included a number of classic neo-noir films. This has a lot of great classic noir shots thanks to Hall. This is also historic for being the last film Paul Newman starred in. Newman plays John Rooney and Craig plays his son Connor Rooney. The Rooney’s are based on real life gangsters by the name of Looney. This story is also based loosely on actual events of an enforcer going rogue on the Looneys.

Tom Hanks plays that rogue enforcer, Michael Sullivan. Who goes on the run after his son Michael Junior played by Tyler Hoechlin witness a gang land slaying.

Jude Law’s character used a lot of famous photographs from famed crime scene photographer Arthur ‘Weegee’ Fellig. Fellig is portrayed by Joe Pesci in the film “The Public Eye”(I have not seen this film yet) and his first book of photographs inspired the classic film-noir “The Naked City”(great film and hope to re-watch this classic and post about it in the future) and its subsequent television series.

Stanley Tucci plays real life mobster Frank Nitti. Nitti was the right hand man of Al Capone, though Capone is mentioned numerous times in the film, he never makes an on-screen appearance.

Road to Perdition is about 2 sets of fathers and sons, I recently noticed that the father-son dynamic is something more prevalent in today’s noir and not that common in the classic era of film-noir. Has anybody else picked up on this theme? I loved this movie when I seen it in the theater 13 years ago and still love it. If you haven’t seen it, search it out, if you haven’t seen it in a while, re-watch it again.

Review: The Blue Dahlia

March 7, 2015March 7, 2015 bryancyr film-noir, Movie Alan Ladd, Doris Dowling, Film Noir, Howard Da Silva, James Ellroy, Raymond Chandler, The Black Dahlia, The Blue Dahlia, Veronica Lake, William Bendix

So did anybody write better classic noir dialog than Raymond Chandler? I don’t think so, his wise cracking P.I. Phillip Marlowe will always be one of the greatest fictional character of not only noir, but all of fiction. Though we don’t have Marlowe in The Blue Dahlia, we are not missing on the crackling dialog.

Clean sheets every day they tell me. How often do they change the fleas?

Seems I’ve lost my manners or would anyone here know the difference?

Joyce Harwood: Well, don’t you even say ‘Good night’?
Johnny Morrison: It’s good-bye, and it’s tough to say good-bye.
Joyce Harwood: Why is it? You’ve never seen me before tonight.
Johnny Morrison: Every guy’s seen you before somewhere. The trick is to find you.

You’ve got the wrong lipstick on, Mister.

‘Dad’ Newell: [examining Helen’s body] Been dead for hours.
Mr. Hughes, assistant hotel manager: Suicide?
‘Dad’ Newell: Could be.
Mr. Hughes, assistant hotel manager: Better be!
‘Dad’ Newell: Unh-unh! Too much gun!

I know I’ve got lots of faults, but being in love with you isn’t one of them, is it?

These are some of my favorite quotes from this film, and if it was just the dialog this would be a 4 out of 5 star film. But Raymond Chandler doesn’t just write great dialog, he can put together a pretty good plot too. This has three friends coming back from the war. Our hero is played by Alan Ladd, who goes to see his wife. She is having a party and he soon finds out that she has a new beau. The new boyfriend played by Howard Da Silva, owns the night club “The Blue Dahlia” for which the movie is named. Soon our hero’s wife played wonderfully by Doris Dowling, she is just the right amount of evil that we can see why our hero wants free of her, but also the right amount of sadness that we feel sorry for her having to be by herself while her husband was at war. She’s mad, but we understand why. She is found dead and we don’t know if it’s suicide or murder. The police start with the most likely suspects, which includes our hero. Now he has to find the killer before he takes the fall for murder. Along the way we have William Bendix playing Buzz. Buzz is a great character who has some brain damage from the war, does he also have post-traumatic stress syndrome before we really knew what it was? Then of course we have Veronica Lake who plays the night club owners wife. I would call her the femme fatale of this film, but she doesn’t try to decisive anybody, or use anybody, or try to get away with anything, she’s actually a truly good person.

Raymond Chandler had to change his original ending and was not happy about this. I will not tell you why or how it is changed here, because it is a spoiler and we don’t believe in that here, but after you watch it you can probably see what is changed and maybe even why given the time frame of when the film was made.

A couple of historic trivia bits for you.

1. Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake appeared in a number of movies together and rumors started that they where having an affair. Both always denied this, and it is not known if the rumors where true or not.

2. Elizabeth Short got her nickname The Black Dahlia from this film. She embraced her new nickname and took to wearing a black dahlia flower in her hair. She died less than a year after this. She became the subject of the classic James Ellroy book and not-so classic film, “The Black Dahlia” and part of Los Angeles lore forever.

I really liked this film for its sharp dialog and surprising twists and turns. A classic noir that all fans should see.

News: Sundance is one step closer to a Hap and Leonard series!

March 6, 2015 bryancyr News, Television Cold in July, Hap and Leonard, Joe Lansdale, Sundance

It looks like we are one step closer to bringing Hap and Leonard to the small screen. I mentioned this possibility in my recent review of Joe Lansdale book and the movie Cold in July, and now we are getting more good news on the series. Read all the details here:

http://http://www.nola.com/entertainment/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2015/03/hap_leonard_amc_sundance_baton.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Review: Gloria

March 6, 2015March 6, 2015 bryancyr Movie, Neo-Noir Buck Henry, Gena Rowlands, Gloria, John Adames, John Cassavetes, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Gloria is a neo-noir film that showcases the gritty and grimy late 70’s New York City, the film was released in 1980. This film is written and directed by the legendary John Cassavetes. The Independent Spirit Awards, awards presented to independent film. They have an award given every year named after Cassavetes. Blue Ruin, a film I looked at earlier this year, was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award. You can look at that review here:

https://everythingnoir.com/2015/02/10/review-blue-ruin/

Cassavetes only did two neo-noir crime movies, the other was The Killing of a Chinese Bookie from 1976. This was also a good film worth checking out and I hope to re-watch it and review it later on this site.

Gloria is played by Cassavetes wife, Gena Rowlands. Rowlands was nominated for an Academy Award for her role. Gloria is a battle tested mob moll. She shows up at a friend’s apartment to find the family in distress. The family is marked by the mob for death and know it is happening soon. The father played by Buck Henry has evidence in a book and they found out about it. The family asks Gloria to take their son and hide him before the killers get to them. She does and our adventure begins. The son is played by John Adames in his one and only movie role. Adames has flashes of brilliance with some well written lines and other times you can see he is just a kid with no acting experience and looks awkward and out-of-place. You can see Cassavetes got a lot of inspiration from old noir and gangster movies for his dialog in this film.

Gloria is a hardboiled female character, which in itself had to be pretty original for its time. She has a feel of realism in Rowlands portrayal, she isn’t perfect and just, and struggles with what is the right thing to do and what is the smart or easy thing to do.

This film was re-made with Sharron Stone in the lead in 1999, I have not seen this film so I don’t know how it compares. This Gloria is not a perfect film, but is an interesting watch, This is for fans of early independent films and those that like gritty 70’s neo-noir.

News: Luther is back!

March 5, 2015 bryancyr News, Television BBC, Idris Elba, Luther, Neil Cross

Production on a 2 part Luther special is coming to BBC! It has started filming in London and will be on BBC in the fall, hopefully this means on BBC America as well. Both Idris Elba and creator Neil Cross are involved. Hopefully this doesn’t mean we are not getting the planned feature film, but it will obviously delay that. If you have not seen this television series I highly recommend that you do. There is also a book that is a prequel to the show, written by Neil Cross(I have not read the book yet, but look forward to doing so soon). The book is what the basis of the movie will be. Check out more details here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/luther-shoot