Wee-ow! I am just flying through noir month, and every new movie exceeds my expectations. Why have I waited so long to do this? Good question, Me… we may never know the answer.
Pickup on South Street opens with a man lifting a woman’s wallet out of her purse on a subway train. It begins as a simple pull, but he stole more than he bargained for, and his arrogance lands him in a deadly confrontation with communist spies. Sure, the love story in the film is particularly ridiculous (which by the standards of the 40’s and 50’s is really saying something), but almost everything else is great!
I really enjoyed Sam Fuller’s direction. The way he showcased faces captures how fantastic most of the film’s performances are. The best two performances are Richard Widmark (making his second appearance this month) and Thelma Ritter.
Widmark plays the pickpocket. The character is a huge dick, and is so different than Widmark’s character in Night and the City, yet he disappears into each role wonderfully.
Ritter plays a professional snitch, and offers all the film’s heart. She’s the only character you’d probably want to hang out with, even though she’d try to sell you a cheap tie she claims matches your personality.
Based on the sort of lists the film has been included on, it is delightful but not surprising that Pickup on South Street is another winner.
There are so many great television shows to watch these days. Now that cable stations, both premium and basic, are creating quality original programming, and that we have access to tv from around the world at the click of a button… the possibilities are endless. I haven’t even gotten around to watching shows from non-English speaking countries, but I hear there are some pretty amazing offerings from Asia and much of Europe. As it is, I always have an enormously long list of television shows I need to get around to seeing, or get around to catching up on, or get around to finishing. Then again, the list of culture I want to consume is enormously long regardless of which medium you are talking about, whether it be books, tv, movies, etc.
Lately, I’ve finally gotten around to a few shows I’d been neglecting for a while, and I thought I would share my recommendations with you.
Here are five shows which, if you aren’t already watching, you should be.
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1. Sherlock
I’m pretty sure everyone already watches this, but I finally saw the end of series two after taking way too long away from this Stephen Moffat brilliance after series one. I was a really early adopter of the first series, but then it took me forever to finally watch the second offering.
Also, try to avoid the American re-edits of the show that aired here in the States. They edit quite a bit out for time, and it sucks. Do whatever it takes to get your greedy little hands on the original BBC edits of the show, to enjoy all 90 minutes of each episode.
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2. Luther
Personal favorite Idris Elba is John Luther, a badass Detective Chief Inspector who will do anything to catch any proper villain who made the mistake of letting Luther catch his or her scent. From a major decision Luther makes that opens the series, to his unconventional relationship with someone from a previous case, the show is an excellent departure from your run of the mill cop show.
There are only ten episodes so far, divided up over two seasons. I’ve seen seven thus far, and shit gets real at the end of series one. It’s not a perfect show, with several annoying plot holes at times, and episode three didn’t make much sense (although it is as creepy as fuck), but it sure is entertaining. The performances are also stellar across the board, including those of characters only around for a single episode.
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3. Breaking Bad
The combination of the massive number of good shows to watch and my own habits of procrastination resulted in it taking me until now to finally start watching Breaking Bad. I’m only through the first season, but you can already count me amongst the show’s believers. Smart, dark, well-acted, and unlike anything else on television.
Well, I guess it is like Weeds, but it’s about a potentially dying chemistry teacher who is selling drugs because he is trying to leave something for his family instead of being about a rich white widow who is selling drugs because she doesn’t want to move into a smaller house or get a job. With the exception of Mary-Louise Parker’s insane hotness, Weeds is inferior in every way when it comes to stories about unlikely people building drug empires.
The Breaking Bad hype is well-deserved.
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4. The Newsroom
Another Aaron Sorkin show that is going to create polar opposites in people’s opinions. They had me at “Sam Waterston delivering Aaron Sorkin lines once a week.” Add to that the rest of the strong cast, and my heart was just a series of dominoes waiting for Sorkin to knock them down. He wins.
The show isn’t perfect… yet. Still, I will never understand Sorkin haters. Sure, he’ll never be subtle, and his idealism and hope that people can be better than they usually are will always bleed through, but why is that so terrible?
Another Sorkin complaint I’ve heard is that his characters never talk like real people. Right, because I’m sure the people on your favorite show talk exactly like fucking real people. No one talks like real people in film, books, tv shows… they speak an approximation of regular speech that serves a narrative and dialogue. Whedon characters all talk like Whedon characters, Wes Anderson characters all talk like Wes Anderson characters, etc. Having a voice isn’t bad. Shakespeare characters didn’t talk like regular people, neither did Jane Austen characters, or Dickens characters. No, my friend, characters in culture don’t talk like regular people, it’s really the other way around, we start speaking like the characters on the things we consume. I’d much rather have some Sorkin intelligence rub off on me than whatever other dumb shit makes up most of what’s on television.
Also, why do some people like to rag on Sorkin shows for the idealistic monologues? What’s wrong with being passionate enough about something that we get carried away and share ideas, hopes, and dreams for how the world might be better? We could all stand to be more articulate, more thoughtful orators in our daily lives. Especially when we are championing in favor of logic and reasonableness, which Sorkin’s characters always are. Tyrants and assholes are always willing to stand up and voice their ideas, if reasonable people aren’t willing to do it as well then we are allowing the tyrants and assholes to frame the entire conversation.
I’ll take Sorkin any day of the week and twice on Sunday, which just so happens to be when Newsroom airs on HBO.
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5. 30 Rock
It isn’t a show I’ve recently caught up with, but it is the show I’ve been watching every night when I am trying to trick my brain into sleeping. Not because the show is boring… that’s not how it works. Most nights, er… mornings, to fall asleep, it helps me to distract my overactive brain with a show I’ve seen over half a dozen times.
I love this show so much.
And speaking of Tina Fey, she makes a guest appearance on the last track of Childish Gambino’s new mix tape R O Y A L T Y, which you can download for free here.
The Big Sleep, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, is the second film in a row that I’d already seen before. Only four films that I’d seen previously made the list, and The Big Sleep made the cut because it played no small part in making me want to do a month like this to begin with. I love this movie! With a screenplay by the William Faulkner, directing by Howard Hawks, and Bogart and Bacall delivering line after memorable line, it’s the sort of perfect storm that can often result in cherished classic films.
In this wonderfully complex plot, with all sorts of mysteries and surprises, Humphrey Bogart plays Philip Marlowe, a private detective who gets a job from a wealthy, sick, old client to begin the film. The client has two beautiful daughters who figure in heavily to the plot’s twists and turns, none of which will I spoil here. Suffice it to say that every time Marlowe gets a handle on what’s happening, something happens to convolute the situation and turn everything upside down again.
I fell in love with Philip Marlowe from the very beginning of the film, when Marlowe meets one of said beautiful daughters in the first scene and she coyly says, “You’re not very tall are you?”, and he responds with a straight, “Well, I try to be.” He’s a hard-boiled, hard-drinking, lady loving, quick-witted, clever, smart-ass with a heart of gold. It’s Humphrey Bogart at his very best. It makes me sad that he never returned to the character, since Marlowe is the protagonist of many Raymond Chandler crime novels.
Also notable is the chemistry between Bogart and Bacall. Electric! It may have been even more electric if it weren’t for that silly Hays Code, which severely limited what you could show or say on screen during a movie (apparently much of the novel had to be altered on its way to film because of how strict the Hays Code was, since you couldn’t make any reference to pornography or homosexuality, and of course, there couldn’t be any nudity). Bacall and Bogart had met during filming of their previous film (To Have and Have Not), and the beginning of their world-famous love affair bled onto the screen in this film. If you’ve never seen film noir before, this would be a great place to start!
This is the first film of the month that I’d already seen before, but decided to revisit for noir month. On no fewer than a whopping26 of the official lists compiled at iCheckMovies, Sunset Boulevard isn’t just one of the most celebrated noir films of all time, it is one of the most celebrated films of any genre or type. In the opening we, along with our narrator, follow police to a murder scene on Sunset Blvd. We find a body in a pool, the camera appearing to rest at the bottom of the water, shooting up at our victim. From there our narrator, the victim himself, takes us back to tell us his sad, deranged, ghoulish story.
Darkly and sarcastically funny at times, the film plays as much like a horror film as it does like a noir, with former silent film megastar and Cecil B. DeMille cohort Gloria Swanson delivering a chilling performance as the mentally unhinged former silent film megastar and Cecil B. DeMille cohort Norma Desmond. The story takes place mostly in a huge, decrepit 20’s era Hollywood mansion in which Desmond keeps herself hidden from the world, with an organ that plays by itself when the wind blows through the pipes. Surrounded by photos of her youth, Desmond is desperately trying to cling to immortality. It’s as if she wants to be Dracula, but isn’t actually immortal, making her creepiness pathetic rather than terrifying. Her butler is a bizarre sycophant, an Igor type. And the entire film is narrated by a dead man. Horror themes abound.
The performances of Swanson and her butler, played by Erich von Stroheim, are also unapologetically informed more by horror than noir. It’s somewhat like times when great comedy is funnier because the actors play it like a drama, although in this case it is a great noir film in which some of the actors play it like a horror movie, yet only the actors playing characters in the weird little make believe world of Norma Desmond, into which our protagonist is pulled by his own mild greed.
Unlike any film I’ve ever seen, and featuring iconic lines that rank among the most famous in film history, (such as the film’s most famous line, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”) Sunset Boulevard is singular, not only as film noir, but within film history.
Also, Buster Keaton (among others) plays one of Desmond’s bridge partners, as an unnamed former silent film great. Just a little wink, you know, for the fans.
Another day of noir, another fateful tragedy. Night and the City is a film that wasn’t on my radar at all before making the list for this month, which is exactly why I love doing things like this. Featured in the Criterion Collection, it is an American film, but shot on location in London. It seems pretty common to erroneously call this a British film. It’s a 20th Century Fox film with American stars and an American director. However, the internets are full of people listing it as great British noir. There actually is a British version which is five-minutes longer, features an entirely different score, and apparently had a happier ending, but Dassin said the American version is closer to what he actually had in mind.
As seems to be the case with many of these films, there is an interesting story behind the camera as well. In the case of The Night and the City, director Jules Dassin was blacklisted during production, and wasn’t allowed on set for editing or to oversee the score.
The film itself is the story of a man too desperate to make a name for himself and live “a life of ease and plenty” for his own good. He’s cocky and delusional enough that he never seems to realize how pathetically over his head he gets himself until events are screaming out of control.
Starring noir mainstays Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney (neither of whom have made their final appearance this month), the film transcended any of my expectations. It was wonderful, aside from featuring the worst lip-synched song performance in the history of the universe. Maybe that had something to do with Dassin not being allowed on set for that audio work. The cinematography was my favorite of any of the films so far (although there were several impressive shots in Hitchcock’s Notorious to be sure). You could watch this film on mute and still get your money’s worth, especially during the final 30 minutes.
Three days in, and so far noir month is even better than I’d hoped.
One of the most exciting things about this upcoming month of all things classic noir is the remarkable talent involved. It wasn’t a true genre, but instead a stream of films with a particular mood, themes, or generally dark worldview. However, it was enormously popular, and it seems just about everyone wanted to get their hand in, often multiple times. Thus, after Bogie for day one, day two upped the ante with Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains (you probably know him as the Vichy Captain from Casablanca).
As a brief aside: I’m still a noir novice, it’s an extremely difficult type of film to nail down, so you often find contention as to what counts as a noir and what does not. There are the easy ones, like, Maltese Falcon, Sunset Blvd., Double Indemnity. The films in that mode are so iconic as noir films, and everybody agrees. However, beyond the easy ones, I am still incapable of deciding what is and isn’t film noir. The primary source I am using to sidestep this problem is the They Shoot Picture, Don’t They noir list: They Shot Dark Pictures, Didn’t They? 250 Quintessential Noir Films (1940-1964). It’s a compilation of the most cited films in noir history during that era, based on TSP’s research. You should check out the linked article if you want a helpful primer on film noir. TSP loves noir movies so much, making it a really enjoyable resource.
Anyway, I mention that because I never would have guessed that Notorious counted as a noir film if it weren’t selected by TSP. It is also listed on the wikipedia page for film noir as one of the four consensus noir films by Hitchcock (along with Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, and The Wrong Man).
Suffice it to say, I still have a lot to learn, and I love it.
Notorious is a story of post WWII espionage. Alicia Huberman’s (Ingrid Bergman) father has just been convicted of treason for working with the Nazi’s, but knowing she is loyal to the great old USA, she is approached by the perfectly handsome T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) to get chummy with her father’s Nazi friends to thwart any plans they may have. The two fall in love on their way to Brazil, which is where the Nazi’s are hanging out, only to discover that her mission involves seducing an old friend of her father’s. He’s pissed she’s willing to do it, she’s pissed he didn’t ask her not to, and we set off on a dangerous story of lies and betrayal. Good times.
The film is on 19 official lists on iCheckMovies, has been selected for preservation by the National Film Registry, and has been selected (separately) by both Time and Entertainment Weekly as one of the 100 greatest films of all time.
Who better to kick things off with than quintessential noir star Humphrey Bogart? That’s right, no one.
High Sierra is the story of Roy Earle, a bank robber who gets pardoned from prison as the film opens. Turns out, he was pardoned because a mob boss greased the wheels of the system so that Roy could perform a heist at a resort not far from LA. That is where our noir action takes off.
This was Bogart’s first big lead role, as before this he was just a supporting actor. See that poster above? Yeah, you see that correctly, he doesn’t have top billing! So, he made the most of his big break, bringing to life a character the audience could care about (believing he really just wanted a simple life back on the farm with a nice girl) while also loving every second when he flipped the badass switch (believing that though he was short in stature, he was the laaaaaaast mobster you wanted to piss off by running your mouth or being rough with the ladies… careful, he just might hit you with his gun, that’s his move). This film kicked off one of the most iconic careers of film history.
As noir films go, it has much of what you would expect. Sure, missing was the smoky rooms, the rainy and shadowy streets, etc. Yet, it still had the tragic twists of fate, the awful wages of crime, there’s even a dog that embodies the danger looming for our protagonist.
Minus the inexplicable three minutes of racism, it was a solid start to noir-fest.
Note to self: The world would be a happier place if there were more slightly crazy people willing to be ridiculous on a regular basis. Act accordingly.
Back in December, when I released my annual list of movies I am most excited about heading into the year, I only did through the first half. I promised a second list to follow in June. Well, believe it or not, June is now over, and so here is my list.
The reason for two lists is that while compiling the first list, I noticed the futility of someone like myself trying to forecast the second half of a year in film so early. It’s fairly impossible anyway, but I certainly didn’t have enough information back in December to know what interesting movies might be coming out in November. Even now, in June, I’ll still miss some movies I don’t even know about yet (the way I missed this month’s Beasts of the Southern Wild back in December), while also picking some films, that by the time they are released, I don’t even bother seeing (like what happened with March’s John Carter).
Here is the original list for the first six months of 2012. As a brief review of that list, a great majority of the films I listed in the main list were well worth my excitement, and I loved almost all of them, almost. However, there is a second part of the list, and I haven’t seen a single film from that list, so I guess I wasn’t so excited after all (although, one never came out, and has been pushed back to 2013… bonus points if you can identify which one?) As those films got closer, and more information was released, they just turned out to look really horrible.
Since the list is going to be hit or miss anyway, I’ve just included 30 films that are on my radar, to varying degrees, for one reason or another. I only embedded trailers I’ve never embedded before. Thus, if you see a trailer for a movie on this list, it’s a newer version than the ones I’ve shared in the past.
Awaaaay we go:
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1. The Amazing Spider-Man – July 3rd
This film comes out just a few days after this list will finally be posted. Buzz from late this week has been fairly strong, with many people apologetically supporting the movie, as if they were dishonoring the Raimi series. Don’t get me wrong, I liked those films. It’s just that it was pretty far away from all of the things I’ve always loved about Spider-Man. I have a feeling this is going to reintroduce those elements back into the character. I’m excited.
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2. Easy Money – July 11th
Martin Scorsese loved this Swedish film so much that he personally took responsibility for making sure American audiences took notice, and that the film got a theatrical release here in the States. I’ll be seeing this one post-haste.
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3. The Dark Knight Rises – July 20th
Does anything need to be said? What does Nolan have up his sleeve for us as he ends this remarkable series? The answer is less than a month away.
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4. The Watch – July 27th
This film, original titled Neighborhood Watch until the Trayvon Martin tragedy, could be hilarious, action oriented fun… or it could be awful. I’ll be taking my chances.
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5. Ruby Sparks – July 27th
I’ve shared the trailer before for this film about a writer whose invented female character somehow comes to life in this indie summer counter-programming.
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6. Total Recall – August 3rd
I must confess, I’ve never seen the first film adaptation of Total Recall. I find it really hard to enjoy Arnold movies, so chances are it will be a while before I finally get around to it. However, based on the trailers, I honestly believe this film has some potential, especially if they borrow more from Philip K. Dick’s original source material, and less from the Gubenator. Although, the first film could be amazing, since I’ve never seen it.
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7. The Bourne Legacy – August 3rd
Many of the folks I’ve read in early responses to this film’s existence have used the word ‘unnecessary.’ “Do we really need another Bourne movie?” they ask. No, of course we don’t, but that’s a really stupid way to gauge a movie’s value… we don’t need any movies. You could ask that question about just about every movie ever made, and the answer will always be ‘No, we don’t need it.’
The only questions that matter are whether or not a film is good in its own right. Does it tell a good story? Does it engage us on one level or another? What is our experience of the film as we watch it? Whether a film is a sequel, a reboot, an adaptation, or an original screenplay doesn’t matter as much as whether or not the film is good. Also, let us all stop bitching about so many movies being based on something else, and not original ideas. 1. There is no such thing as an entirely original idea. 2. The vast majority of the most celebrated films of all time were based on something else, whether it be a book, a play, true events, or a previous film.
The Hangover 2 wasn’t bad because it was a sequel, it was bad because it was a lazy rehashing of the first film that failed to tell a compelling story, or be funny. Was a sequel to Star Wars necessary? No, the first movie was a complete story. Yet, Empire Strikes Back was fricking amazing. Was The Godfather enough on its own? Yes. A sequel wasn’t necessary, and yet, many believe the sequel transcended the original… also, the entire series is based on books. On the other hand, Gigli, one of the consensus worst movies of all time, was completely original in terms of not being based on anything else.
This film could be really great, or it could fall flat and be an injustice to the previous three films. Yet, the quality of the film will have nothing to do with whether or not the film was necessary. It will either be a good story and an exciting film, or it won’t.
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8. The Campaign – August 10th
The trailers for this film have been fairly underwhelming to me. Yet, I’m holding out hope it will be good, because I really want it to be.
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9. ParaNorman – August 17th
Why is this film coming out in August? I don’t know. I guess they want to avoid competing with Frankenweenie in October. Either way, I’m excited it means I don’t have to wait as long to see it.
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10. Lawless – August 29th
Again, I’ve shared the trailer before. As far as I’m concerned, the involvement of Hardy, Chastain, Oldman, Wasikowska, and Pearce is more than enough to get me excited. Also, I don’t hate Shia the way so many do.
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11. Gangster Squad – September 7th
The trailer is suprisingly lackluster in my opinion, based on all the talent involved. However, I really hope the film is actually as good as it should be when all is said and done. Either way, at least Josh Brolin is an international badass, and Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, and Anthony Mackie are dreamy.
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12. Killing Them Softly – September 21st
Brad Pitt as a mob enforcer, brought in to get to the bottom of a heist which hit a high-stakes, mob poker game. Once he gets to the bottom, he’ll kill everyone he finds there. No trailers yet, but there are brief clips. Here’s one:
PT Anderson is back. Case closed. Trailers here and here.
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19. Wreck-it Ralph – November 2nd
I really hope that all the classic game character appearances in the trailer are just the tip of the iceberg. Either way, there is so much awesome here. Please don’t suck!
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20. Seven Psychopaths – November 2nd
Hasn’t it been a while since there’s been a really well-executed dark crime-caper comedy? Well, this might fit the bill.
The story: A struggling screenwriter inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster’s beloved Shih Tzu.
The cast: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko
Also, the poster has Tom Waits holding a rabbit. So far, so good.
The director of Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and Hanna, adapting Anna Karenina with a strong cast? Yes, please.
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23. Life of Pi – November 21st
I adored the book, and it has one of my favorite final lines of any book I’ve ever read. Let’s hope the movie does the novel justice.
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24. Silver Linings Playbook – November 21st
I like movies about lovable people with mental illness, because I have a mental illness, and I hope at least to be lovable. Now, if only all of us who suffer from mental illness could be crazy hot like the folks in this movie.
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25. High Park on Hudson – December 7th
When you have a movie starring Bill Murray, set in the Hudson Valley where I grew up, I’ll see it. End of story.
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26. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – December 14th
One of my favorite stories ever, one of my two favorite musicals. If they get this right, it will be glorious. Trailer here.
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28. This is Forty – December 21st
I just hope they can create the same energy, chemistry, and improvised line-o-rama back and forth from Knocked-Up.
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29. Django Unchained – December 25th
Come quickly, December. Come quickly. Trailer here and here.
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30. The Great Gatsby – December 25th
My only hesitation is that I don’t believe that Tobey Maguire can act. Trailer here.
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Bonus: Dredd – September 21st.
While writing this post two weeks ago, I was still just really curious to learn more about Dredd. The first was abominable by consensus, to the point that Sly later apologized for it. Yep, a movie that was so bad that Sylvester Stallone actually apologized for it… However, that has no bearing on how good the reboot might be. Believing otherwise is akin to believing that Batman Begins would suck because of how bad Batman and Robin was.
However, during a brief writing hiatus while I took a trip to Southern California, the trailer came out. Now that there is a trailer, it seems Dredd could genuinely turn out to be a gritty, enjoyable sci-fi action movie… but it could also still turn out to be a weak, shallow, mentally handicapped explosion festival á la Michael Bay.
