Neo noir
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ROLLING THUNDER (Dir. John Flynn, 1977, US)
* * William Devane is one of those dependable character actors who got around but never quite broke through as a main lead. Clearly, Rolling Thunder was an exception. Maybe it was Devane’s nose; weaselly and needle like that made him somewhat unlikable. Devane had that finely tuned yet somewhat irritating softly spoken art of Continue reading
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THE MEAN SEASON (Dir. Phillip Borsos, 1985)
Long before Tom Cruise decided to patent the running on screen just to look cool thing, Kurt Russell was busting similar sprint speed marathons in many of his films. In The Mean Season, Russell really goes for it, bombing it through the streets of Miami so he can try and save his girlfriend from the Continue reading
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BLACK WIDOW (Dir. Bob Rafelson, 1987)
The enigmatic Debra Winger was a reluctant film star who maintained a low public profile, evading the gaze of the media, perhaps to the detriment of longevity. A career restricted to just one decade, Winger seemed to fade out of view by the early 1990s. With a tightly written script by Ron Bass, steely cinematography Continue reading
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HELL OR HIGH WATER (Dir. David Mackenzie, 2016, US)
With a title straight out of a Sam Fuller film, Hell or High Water is a delicious neo-noir Western, or a ‘film soleil’ as film writer Adam Batty pointed out to me, unexpectedly emerging as one of the most political films of the year. The political sensibilities of Taylor Sheridan’s very brilliant script tap into Continue reading
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MOH MAYA MONEY / In Greed We Trust (Dir. Munish Bhardwaj, India, 2016) – Delhi Noir
In the traditional film noir universe the destruction of the male protagonist is manifested in a downward spiral of paranoia, guilt and death. And it becomes a virtual impossibility to attain redemption. No matter what one does to rectify an earlier regret usually leads to certain calamity from which there is no return. Thematically, a Continue reading
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