Neo-Noir

Re-watching 25th Hour

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25th_Hour_Poster 25th Hour is a neo-noir from a not so likely source, Spike Lee.  This takes place in New York, so Lee isn’t a bad choice.  Lee has actually been making some great neo-noir and crime films before and since this.  I really liked Son of Sam, Inside Man and though it isn’t as good as the original, I thought Oldboy was pretty good.

This film revolves around Monty, played by Edward Norton.  Norton is one of my favorite actors in today’s films.  He usually picks pretty strong scripts and always does a great job.  Monty is going to jail tomorrow and is going out with his friends for one last night of freedom.  Monty is a drug dealer that gets busted and doesn’t know who ratted him out.

His girlfriend is played by Rosario Dawson, is she our femme fatale?  She is another actress I’ve liked in most of the things she has done.  Barry Pepper plays the sleazy stock broker that thinks he’s better than everybody else.  He plays the part well.  Our hero’s other friend is played by the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman who plays a shy teacher with a bit of a dark side.  Other standouts in the cast are Brian Cox as Monty’s father and Anna Paquin as a high school student.  We also see Isiah Whitlock Jr. as the DEA agent and swearing like only he can.

The film is based on a book by David Benioff who also wrote the screenplay, his first. He has gone on to do many more screenplay adoptions for movies and television.

We have a lot of great stuff in this film and one of the things I forgot about was this being made in New York City in 2002, the loss of the Trade Centers is an import part of the back drop.

The movie opens with Monty and one of his mafia friends picking up an abandon dog, left on the street to die.  Monty takes the dog in as his own.  I guess this is to show our hero is a good guy at heart and a drug dealer by necessity.We flash forward to Monty’s last day of freedom and we have the occasional flash back to explain how we got to this point.  Monty needs to make a decision, go to jail for 6 years, run, or suicide, all of which, him and his friends consider on this final night.

Favorite tidbit:  Edward Norton says he believed in this project so much that he used all his earnings from Red Dragon to help make it.  This seems to fit Norton, do a few big films so he can do many small films he believes in.  I always look forward to anything with him in it, and this might not even be in his top 10 films, but it is a good film worth seeing.

A must watch for Norton, Dawson, Hoffman or Spike Lee fans, as well as neo-noir fans.  It’s a film that will make you think and stay with you awhile after you see it.  What would you do in this situation?

Review: Alphaville

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Alphaville is the first sci-fi neo-noir film that I’m aware of.  It is the predecessor for films like 12 Monkeys, Donnie Darko, and Predestination, but it may be closer to Matrix, Terminator and Blade Runner.  Why? you ask…, the theme.  The Theme of this movie and the other three are not time travel but machines taking over and running the humans.  This film is very strange, beautiful, unique, challenging, and trippy.  I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t understand a lot of this film.  I think each person that watches it may take something different away from the experience.  A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution is the tag line of this film and seems to be a far assessment.

This film is written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, a french director that started directing in 1955 and is still going strong today.  He has made a few noir type films and I look forward to reviewing some of those later on this blog.  This film is filmed in a classic film-noir fashion, black and white, interesting angles and lighting, an odd perspective that makes it interesting to watch.  It takes place in the future in the city of Alphaville, but is just filmed in than modern-day 1965 Paris.  This gives it a unique look, its futuristic for classic noir era, but probably felt old-looking to 1965 viewers.

Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy Caution in this film, he also played this character in 13 other films.  Though I have never seen any of these other movies, they look to range from traditional crime dramas in the 1950’s to musicals to a drama in 1991, also directed by Godard.  This is interesting to me and would like to see a few of these to see how the character evolves over time.

Anna Karina plays our femme fatale, we never know if we can trust her, if she is just a pawn for the computer Alpha 60, or she is working with her engineer father to take down Caution. Karina was married to Godard at this time and starred in many of his films in the 1960’s.

I still don’t know what to think of this film, it will definitely stay with you and make you think.  It may be a movie worth watching a couple of times to get all the subtleties.  I would not recommend this film to just anybody, but if you find the science fiction neo-noir movies I listed above interesting and some of your favorites, I would check it out.  Would this replace any of the above movies on my favorite 1001 movies of all time?  No, but this movie gave me some prospective of where they came from.

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Underrated Noir: Snake Eyes

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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.

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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.

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Re-watching the Classics: Road to Perdition

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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.

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Review: Predestination

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Predestination is a SciFi Neo-Noir from The Spierig Brothers.  The brothers don’t turn out movies to fast, but they make good films.  Their first film was Undead, a zombie comedy, maybe a little ahead of its time.  Then they waited 6 years to do the very unique neo noir take on vampires in Daybreakers.  Then they waited another 5 years to release Predestination.  I look forward to seeing more from these guys, I just hope I don’t have to wait another 5 years.  The source material for this film is from my favorite science fiction author of all time, Robert A. Heinlein.  Heinlein has written some amazing novels in his career, they really make you think about the world you’re in, based on a world he created.  While watching this you will see a few Heinlein Easter Eggs in the film.  If you have not read Heinlein, please do not base your opinion of his work from the movie Starship Troopers. His story “All You Zombies” is an amazing plot for this film.  I have not read this short story yet, but will be hunting it down to read it as soon as possible.

I purposely did not read any reviews of this movie so I could watch it fresh and without spoilers.  As always I will not post any spoilers in this review so you can enjoy it fresh as well.  This is a movie about time travel, you can see influences from other great neo noir films with time travel, like 12 Monkeys and Looper.  The filming style in some parts of the movie reminded me of Dark City (another movie influenced heavily by Heinlein’s work).

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Though this may remind me of some of the best science fiction noir films of the past, it is something uniquely its own.

This movie has two great stars that have amazing performances in this.  Ethan Hawke is our big name star.  I got to say Hawke has one of the best track records so far this century!  He hasn’t been in a big Hollywood movie, probably since the mid 90’s.  Besides the horrible Selena Gomez vehicle, The Getaway, he has made nothing but above average to mind blowingly great smaller films.  Our other outstanding performance and really the one that steals the show is by Sarah Snook.  I have not seen Snook in anything else yet, but look forward to seeing this rising star in more movies. Noah Taylor plays a smaller role but a very pivotal one.

I seen an interview with Hawke about this film and he says something to the effect that you will not understand this film on the first viewing.  I have only watched this once, but Predestination is a film where, I think, the more you watch it the more little bits of information you pick up on and a film that maybe even better the second and third time you see it.

I highly recommend Predestination if you like science fiction mixed in with your noir.  A sure thing to be a cult classic.

Review: Blue Ruin

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Blue Ruin is a film made by two friends on a small budget…and it makes it even more gritty and dark because of it.  This is a southern neo noir that has a simple story that will twist and turn as you go.  Though we only really get to know the main character Dwight played by Macon Blair, an average guy in every sense of the word.  Dwight is homeless at the beginning and wants revenge on a man who killed his family.  He has no experience dealing with weapons, he’s not an ex-gangster or any kind of bad ass at all.  He just needs revenge for his family and has no idea how he’s going to do it, he just knows he has to.  This is noir in the best sense, it’s a character put in a situation over his head, now what is he going to do to get out of it.  Jeremy Saulnier is a great talent, he wrote and directed this film and is already working on his next movie “Green Room.”  I look forward to seeing this when it is available.  The one supporting character I loved is Ben Gaffney played by Devin Ratray.  Ben is a bad ass!  He had some of the greatest lines and had an interesting look.  Hard to believe that Devin played Macaulay Culkin mean older brother in Home Alone and Home Alone two.  Amy Hargreaves as Sam,Kevin Kolack as Teddy and David W. Thompson as William all stood out in the film. The reason I checked out this film is, it was on a bunch of blog posts by other people into crime, hardboiled and noir movies.  This made a lot of their top 10 lists, so I had to see it.  Glad I did!

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This movie got big praise at Cannes as well as a lot of smaller film festivals throughout the world and nominated for some Independent Film awards.  It is definitely worth a look, I hope you enjoy it.

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.