Akira Kurosawa knew how to tell stories that last. The simple story of a ronin (Toshirō Mifune) wandering into a small town and causing chaos to solve a larger problem has been remade, adapted, and inspired dozens (if not hundreds) of projects over the years from spaghetti westerns to samurai science fiction. My favorite, however, has always been Stan Sakai‘s Usagi Yojimbo which owes much to Kurosawa’s tale.
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You can feel the influence of 1944’s Laura over the years in everything from Twin Peaks to There’s Something About Mary. The film noir stars Gene Tierney in the title role as a woman who falls a bit too easily into love and who men become almost immediately obsessed with, even after her death.
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There’s Something About Laura Read More »
Distinctly different than the original comic character or the character shown in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (also voiced by Cage), the opening episode of Amazon Prime’s Spider-Noir series introduces Private Detective Ben Reilly (Nicolas Cage) as a former super-hero turned struggling gumshoe just trying to make a living in the big city which is still reeling from the Great Depression and machinations of crime lord Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson).
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2020’s Last Moment of Clarity is a failed attempt at a neo-noir thriller from writer/directors James and Colin Krisel that eventually limps to the finish line after failing to hit its mark. The film is far more notable for the amount of skin shown by Samara Weaving than anything having to do with the film’s plot or its performances that otherwise would feel right at home as throwaway TV-movie of the week.
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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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