The Best and Worst of Neo-Noir - Page 2

Noir wasn't specifically identified as a genre until the 60s, right? By the French, no less? So I'd say the dividing line is the point at which the genre became self-aware. Once people set out to make a noir, they were really making neo-noir.

1946. But that doesn't mean that every noir made after that was a neo-noir. Just because they didn't know what it was called doesn't mean they didn't know what type of movie it was. Being self-aware about the genre has something to do with it, just not everything.

I see you, and raise you Tough Guys Don't Dance.

He's also terrific in Homeboy. Bonus: Sleazy Christopher Walken.

What the hell more do you want?

I'd like to bring Alan Rudolph to the discussion. Trouble In Mind is most relevant, as a slightly more cartoony example of the 'retro-noir' style basically established by Blade Runner.

Worst: Barb Wire. Even worse because it tried to be a sci-fi dystopian Casablanca.

Thanks for the info. That makes sense to me. I guess I was put off by putting CHINATOWN in the same sub-genre as RED ROCK WEST. Maybe WEST should be in a genre for itself, sensible haircut cage noir.

Parker is the only guy in the thread who knows his shit. The rest are just listing movies.

But plenty of the suggestions folks have mentioned have been great, many of which I either haven't seen or forgotten about. Thanks for the compliment all the same, though.

EDIT: Since Fat Elvis asked a couple of times, I think a great example of neo-noir that knows the moves but not the song (or whatever that analogy was) is The Good German. It's meant to be a dark bookend to Casablanca; an examination of the guilt one is left with post-war (rather than the thrilling enthusiasm of making a decision to do what's necessary pre-war). It's shot like a noir, but almost so obsessively that it loses credibility and the modern touches throw me off every time, as do many of the performances (Tobey Maguire is particularly bad).

If LA Confidential or Chinatown were shot painstakingly to look like a real noir I don't know if I could take them as seriously. They'd come across as too gimmicky or leaden. I think that's the mistake Soderbergh made here. It's strange, because he's also made one of my favorite neo-noirs (a plug for the Underneath again) and I love the Limey as well.

So, it seems we have two parallel subgenres going here. There are the contemporary, 'realistic' crime stories like Eddie Coyle and then there are the stylistic exercises meant to recall or update 'classic' films, like Body Heat.

I'm inclined to apply the 'neo-noir' tag to the latter group only. Although during the '80s I referred to them simply as Exploding Yacht movies, for obvious reasons.

Point Blank is definitely the turning point where the classic genre faded and the new blood of noir cinema emerged.

Cutter's Way more exists in that it's the last great "70's noir" in spite of being released in 1981.

I think Hammerhead's explanation is the most succinct so far, I'd place most neo-noir's in the stylistic camp, it seems like once the classic noir period ended, it jumped ship and ended up in Europe where the french new wave picked up the slack with films like Shoot the Piano Player and Le Samourai (although that's more likely to fall into the gangster genre)

I would argue that Good German is more a take on The Third Man, which is its biggest fault -- when you're trying to ape not only one of the best noirs, but one of the best movies, of all time, you have your work cut out for you. However, I think that The Good German is an interesting failure, as it gets a lot of the aesthetic and style right. It also has a good eye for casting; Clooney works, Blanchett doesn't, but supporting players like Leland Orser just have those faces. I've wanted to watch it again for a while, if only to see Tobey Maguire punch a lady in the babymaker.

Body Heat is a film to me knows the words but not the song of noir. For everything that it gets right -- and it gets a lot right -- overall, it seems like Kasdan is going through the motions of its plot. People seem to remember it as a very sweaty movie, which is all well and good, but as others have mentioned, I think Wild Things, as trashy-great as it is, gets the inherent sleaziness of much of noir better than Body Heat. This might also have to do with the fact I think Kasdan is a tremendously overrated filmmaker.

There's been a lot of talk about where the cut-off is, and for me, the demarcation is Bunny Lake is Missing, from 1965. That's a little later than most, but I think Bunny Lake is one of the last great "true" noirs, with enough of a current sensibilty that you can see the form growing and changing into something new. It's also from Otto Preminger, who directed Laura, one of the earliest and best noirs. And Greg Clark is right -- the truly underseen and underappreciated Blast of Silence is another early film that seems to be taking noir conventions and fucking around with them, but to me, that's always been more of a film where the acting is what's new -- the director/actor/writer was from the Method school, so it's interesting to see him apply those concepts and techniques to what usually is a very stylistic and formal type of acting.

Film noir and neo-noir is probably my favorite genre of all time, and I've written a couple of pictures myself in the genre. I'm of the belief, though, that like punk rock, film noir really only existed for a brief period, that what makes it noir has a lot to do with the culture of the time....and more later.

 

How dare you! Yes that movie might be the best movie ever made, BUT... ok, it's awful by every conceivable standard, but still I love it. And for whatever shit you can throw at it, Wings Hauser is a goddamn blast, and seems to be the only one  trying at all.

As far as neo noir, the 90's was rife with good/great ones. Most of them have already been mentioned, my favorites being One False Move, After Dar, My Sweet, Miami Blues, and anything the Coens did, but I'll throw out perhaps the most underrated of them all: The Woman Chaser. It's an adaptation of the great Charles WIlleford, and stars Patrick Warburtun in the performance of his career. It's shot B&W, tongue firmly in cheek, and is just this deranged little flick that feels like a Coen bros. film without being at all derivative of their style. It's hard to find, but those who haven't seen it should seek it out.

The movie within a movie idea in The Woman Chaser is pure gold.  Great choice. 

For worst I'd say Basic Instinct. I'd also add Lonestar in the good pile.

I finally listened to Netflix and watched Brick. I stopped kicking myself for not coming up with the "hard boiled P.I. story set in high school" idea after five minutes and just enjoyed it. They really pushed that beyond a gimmick and made a great film.

Really? I'm not a huge fan of Basic Instinct, it's certainly a lesser film that Verhoeven's earlier, brilliant Dutch film, The Fourth Man, but in a world where Body of Evidence and Sliver are more or less Neo-Noir films, comparatively, Basic Instinct isn't that bad.

Done right, you can make all the changes you want. If you couldn't, we wouldn't have Brick or Blade Runner or great TV like Veronica Mars, which was Chandler to Brick's Hammett.

One of the better neo-noirs not mentioned is David Mamet's House of Games, It feels like a better version of The Grifters.

Shallow Effing Grave.

One of the best neo noirs.

 

Lock Stock, etc.

this one too.

 

A Life Less Ordinary

One of the worst.

 

Revolver

One of the worst

Good = Bound

 

Okay = The Last Seduction

 

Bad = Jade

anyone remember this?

Love it, but never really considered it noir, neo or otherwise.

 Would Taxi Driver be considered neo-noir??? The music/setting/pacing/narration feels like one but again he's not a detective of some sort, no???

Would The Minus Man (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151582/) be considered a neo-noir?  It has that feeling or mood for me, it's definitely introspective and follows a falling/fallen character.  but it is also a dream-like surreal pastoral drama about a wandering congenial killer.

 

I think I am sucker for the NN genre, I love almost every movie listed including the one's people listed as worst.  my sense of the genre is also heavily informed by books.  jim thompson, hammett, chandler, john D. MacDonald, patricia highsmith, david goodis, lawrence block, donald westlake, and later generation knock offs of all of the above.  so for me, style is anoticable aspect of noir and neo noir, but its more about themes, the kinds of characters, the essential chaos and helplessness in their lives and the doomed-to-fail endeavours to either get away, get rich or at its best, bids for redemption.

oh, and if we are thinking about films that really blend and bend genres, I would submit Duncan Jones' Moon.  Our protagonist is the detective, after a fashion.  his stability and well-being are disintegrating as he goes down the rabbit hole of searching for the truth.  it is claustrophobic, there is an impending sense of doom, and no matter how you come to sympathize for the 'hero', things will not go well for him.

Moon is not neo-noir, sorry.

I hadn't realised it was such a black and white thing that you could just declare false.  I guess there aren't movies that combine genres.  Alien is either sci-fi or horror, Shaun of the Dead is either comedy or horror.  Neither are both.  Dark City is not a noirish sci-fi, and neither is Moon.  Is that it then?

 

I appreciate your spirit of debate and the thought you put into nay argument.  cheers.