Wednesday, November 9 2011
Batman and “Bitches”
In noir, men do bad things to women, women do bad things to men, people do bad things to each other. One of the central conceits of noir is very simple: people are creeps.
Friday, July 22 2011
‘Pale Flower’: Living for Death
Into this movie's milieu of prison terms, all-night gambling sessions and literal and figurative back-stabbings arrives a dewy young woman named Saeko (pronounced, more or less, 'psycho') who is very young and very tired of life.
Tuesday, June 7 2011
Deadly Cocktail, Perfect Mix: Styles Clash in Blue Estate 3
Even in meeting the demands of the crime noir genre, and giving the story a cooling off period Viktor Kalvachev brings an intensity to Blue Estate.
Wednesday, June 1 2011
‘L.A. Noire’: The Fatalism of American Sticktoitiveness
You can get through the entire story by being the least competent detective in the world. The story will unfold, as it were, despite you.
Friday, March 11 2011
The Darkness of “Passion”: Visuals and Voiceovers, Sound and Shadow
In this essay, Rhonda V. Wilcox provides a penetrating commentary on one of the greatest Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes that Joss Whedon neither wrote nor directed.
Tuesday, November 16 2010
‘Winter’s Bone’: Where Crime and Loss are the Only Family
A tough 17-year-old dropout searches for her missing father in the poverty- and meth-scared hills of the Missouri Ozarks.
Wednesday, September 8 2010
‘The Wire’ As American Noir
The Wire’s intentional difficulty and rigor -- along with academia’s ongoing love affair with cultural studies -- might very well explain its emerging as a centerpiece in a growing number of courses at many colleges and universities in the United States.
Friday, April 23 2010
‘Elegy for April’: Benjamin Black’s New Dublin Noir
John Banville's alter ego resurrects Quirke in another 1950s Dublin noir adventure.
Monday, March 29 2010
The Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta by Paul Theroux
Writing a novel about writer’s block is a bit like cleaning a revolver when you’re not entirely incapable of suicide. Paul Theroux’s new book, a clumsy attempt at the mystery novel, goes off in his own hand.
Wednesday, November 18 2009
Chinatown (Centennial Collection)
Despite bringing film noir into the daylight and into color, this is among the darkest of Southern California tales.
