Noir

Killer Heat

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  • Title: Killer Heat
  • IMDb: link

Killer Heat is a flaccid attempt at neo-noir starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a private detective hired by a widow (Shailene Woodley) to look into the death of her husband (Richard Madden). The film is also burdened with a subplot of the family life our private investigator fled from which haunts him (when convient to the script). Adapted from a Norwegian short story, I don’t know if something got lost in translation or if there just wasn’t much here to begin with.

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In a Lonely Place

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  • Title: In a Lonely Place
  • IMDb: link

Throwback Tuesday takes us back 75 years to the 1950 thriller featuring Humphrey Bogart as the temperamental screenwriter Dixon Steele who local police wrongly believe is responsible for the murder of a young cocktail waitress (Martha Stewart) which leads to continued harassment, although the events of that night do introduce him to his lovely neighbor Laurel (Gloria Grahame) and the beginning of a love affair. Despite the amount of time spent on its aftermath, including a memorable scene in the police station where Dix is first questioned, it’s actually little more than an unusual setup to our two leads together.

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The Great Films – The Third Man

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  • Title: The Third Man
  • IMDb: link

Set in post-WWII Europe, director Carol Reed‘s cinematic masterpiece begins with the arrival of American pulp writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) in occupied Austria only to learn the friend he had come to visit on his last dime, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), is dead. Despite everyone he meets telling him he should return home, Holly sticks around the city playing amateur detective hoping to learn more about how and why Harry died.

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Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

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  • Title: Chinatown
  • IMDb: link

I don’t know if 1974’s Chinatown is without doubt the best film for everyone involved, both in front and behind the camera, but one could certainly make the case. Director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne come together with a neo-noir staple which provided Jack Nicholson one of his most famous roles as private investigator J. J. Gittes who struggles to find the truth surrounding the death of chief engineer at the Department of Water and Power (Darrell Zwerling), who Gittes was hired to surveil by a woman (Diane Ladd) pretending to be his wife (Faye Dunaway), and uncover how that death plays into a larger conspiracy of the Los Angeles draught and a land scheme which allows 30s Los Angeles to become a major character in the film.

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Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown. Read More »