Rian Johnson combines classic noir components with an enthralling story in Brick to create a memorable pastiche to the genre and welcome neo-noir addition.
Features
‘My Amityville Horror’ Revisits The Legend, And The Boy Who Lived Through It
When I was in elementary school way back in the seventies, there was a rumor floating around the playground that Christopher Lutz, the middle child from the family that was immortalized in The Amityville Horror, went to our school. He would have been in the same grade as my older sister but, of course, he […]
Film Rave (Or Rant?): Pablo Berger’s ‘Blancanieves’
After ten years of working on Blancanieves, writer-director Pablo Berger must have had mixed feelings about the appearance of The Artist last year. That film’s runaway success was undeniably a useful ice-breaker, however, for they are similar beasts, modern silent films made (largely) according to the conventions and constraints of the 1920s. Berger even gives […]
Touch Of Noir: The End Of Film Noir And ‘Touch Of Evil’
Continuing the exploration of the outer limits of film noir I will now discuss one of the last examples of the genre with Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958). In the seventeen year period between 1941 and 1958, film noir had come to dominate Hollywood. Loosely based on the novel “Badge of Evil” by Whit […]
The Great Possibilities And Great Disappointment In Juan Solaris’ ‘Upside Down’
There is a great deal that can be inferred by writer-director Juan Solaris’ Upside Down, depending on the context in which you view the film. At the simplest level it is a love story about two people from different stations in life who desperately want to be together even though it is forbidden–a tale as […]