‘Breathing Through the Wound’ Will Leave You Gasping for Air
As dizzying as Víctor Del Árbol's philosophy of crime may appear, the layering of motifs in Breathing Through the Wound is vertiginous.
noir
Godard’s Sci-fi/Noir Alphaville’ Is Witty and Subversive
Alphaville's pulpy sci-fi plot acts as a warm coat of familiarity as Godard slyly subverts one genre trope after another.
‘Detour’ and ‘The Big Clock’ Cross Noir with Absurdity
Like a match made in Purgatory, Edgar Ulmer's Detour and John Farrow's The Big Clock are ingenious films with different but self-aware approaches to noir.
Dignity and the Death Penalty: On Borzage’s ‘Moonrise’
In the nearly eight decades since Moonrise‘s release, Borzage’s melodrama-noir-styled meditations on social causality, dignity, and redemption have lost none of their potency.
‘Smoking Kills’ Revels in the Many Joys to Be Found in Death
Antoine Laurain's Smoking Kills is provocative and funny, but its meditations remain consistently mature.
Outrageousness Takes a Holiday in ‘Archer S8: Dreamland’
This may be a clever homage to classic hard-boiled detective fiction from the '40s, but Archer in Dreamland is not the wild man we've come to love/hate.
Matthew Weiner’s ‘Heather, the Totality’ Is Chillingly Empty
The Mad Men creator's debut novel has noir roots but plumbs his familiar territory of modernist anxiety with a savage precision.
‘The Best of Richard Matheson’ Is Among the Best of Pop Culture
Richard Matheson's work has so permeated modern pop culture that it can be hard to find works not at least partially indebted to an idea of his or, as is more often the case, someone influenced by him.
‘Gotham: Season 2’ Is a Muddled, Middling, and Messy Fare
Gotham steeps itself in Batman lore without ever becoming too faithful, its piety only extending far enough to communicate its loose ties to the source material.
Moving Pixels Podcast: ‘White Night’, White Noir
White Night tells the story of a haunted house and a decaying American economy.
Scarcely Seeing: Light as a Limited Resource in Survival-Horror
In White Night, it is not a shotgun, but light itself, that is your only ally, and light in in this game is in terrifyingly short supply.
From Tehran to Tel Aviv: Of Crime and the Cities
Akashic Noir series continues to serve up delightful and disturbing gems that offer remarkable insights into the world’s great (and not-so-great) cities.