Contemporary Film Noir -- My Top Fifteen

My first feature, The Last Lullaby, just released on DVD on Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and in a bunch of other places.  It's a hybrid of genres, probably, but it's also probably a film noir.  So to mark this big occasion for the film, I thought I would throw out a list of my personal favorites from the contemporary noir period (I started it, as many people do, after 1958.) 


Pierrot Le Fou
Shoot the Piano Player
Blue Velvet
Mulholland Dr. 
Techine's Thieves
Fargo
Straight Time
King of New York
Chinatown
Heat
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Night Moves
Blow Out
Carlito's Way
Godard's Breathless

1990: Trust (Hal Hartley)

1990: Trust (Hal Hartley)
I'll never forget reading the liner notes for Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers album and seeing their music described as "angular".  It seemed such a strange word at the time.  Yet, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed apt for their music and apt for a few other things I'd experienced, as well.  In fact, it's the best word I can think of to describe Hal Hartley's work.  

Trust and some of the other Hartley movies from this period possess some of the most unique rhythms and cadences of any work in the history of film.  It's almost as if they invented a whole new time signature.  They don't cut when it seems normal to cut, the camera doesn't move when it seems like it should, and everything seems to be just a little bit off.  But, at the same time, it all coheres into something that is clearly conceived and purposeful.

This is my favorite of all of Hartley's work.  It's the one where Hartley seems to hear that skewed metronome the clearest and lets it guide him the most.  Hartley is definitely not for everyone.  But if you like the rhythms of Jarmusch or Kitano, I would think you'd love this one, too. For me, it's one of the most beautiful and accomplished films of this entire period.  

Other contenders for 1990:  I still have some things to see.  These include: Jean-Luc Godard's Nouvelle vague, Charles Burnett's To Sleep with Anger, Hal Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth, Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart, Peter Bogdanovich's Texasville, Mike Leigh's Life Is Sweet, James Ivory's Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, and Idrissa Ouedraogo's Tilai.  I really like Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up, The Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, Wong Kar-Wai's Days of Being Wild, and Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table.  I love Whit Stillman's Metropolitan, John Woo's Bullet in the Head, and David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" Pilot.  And my closest runner-up is Abel Ferrara's King of New York.

4/5/11 I watched Sidney Lumet's Q & A.  It's an impressive work from Lumet.  A bit talky for my taste, and Lumet proves once again that he's not a very cinematic filmmaker.  But Nolte is excellent, and the film really starts buzzing along as the third act unfolds.  

9/4/11 I watched Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart.  Interesting in that it doesn't go where you would expect in its final thirty minutes.  Also seems to add to Eastwood's ongoing late ruminations on violence.  But Eastwood's performance as Huston seems mannered to the point of distraction.  

9/13/11 I watched James Ivory's Mr. & Mrs. Bridge.  Two wonderful performances remind us of the wonderful nuance, depth, and humanity that can happen when a filmmaker decides to make a work for real, aging adults (think Make Way For Tomorrow).  Woodward is particularly memorable here, and of the Ivory films I've seen so far, this one seems the most sophisticated and ambiguous, in the best of ways.  

11/24/19 I rewatched Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild.  It's not my favorite of his films, emotionally it's pretty distant.  But it's an interesting watch to see where Wong was early on in his career, thematically and stylistically.  One of the things that I became aware of when rewatching it that I really like in Wong's films is there seems to be a dialogue between the films in his body of work.  For instance, the cop here reminds one of Chungking and the "aunt's" high-necked outfits recall Maggie Cheung's stunning dresses in In the Mood for Love.  

12/13/21 I watched Charles Burnett's To Sleep with Anger.  It only makes sense that because African-Americans have their own history and culture their story should be told using a style that is different and unique.  Burnett might be the first African-American filmmaker to bring that style to cinema.  I do not claim to have seen work by all of the African-American directors, but I can say that neither Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks Jr., Spike Lee, John Singleton, Carl Franklin, Antoine Fuqua, Barry Jenkins nor any of the other films directed by African-American filmmakers that I have seen to date bear a style as tailored and seemingly conceived to fit African-American stories as the work of Burnett.  

A broad statement but it can be seen in the way the sets look and the way that the characters move, sweat and speak.  Burnett's style is naturalistic but mannered and accented in ways that make it feel even more capable of capturing the plight of the black experience in America.     

1/8/22 I watched Jean-Luc Godard's Nouvelle vague.  A highly regarded work by JLG.  I have to admit while watching that I felt very little, understood very little and will have to read to see what others found that I did not.

1/19/22 I watched Claire Denis and Serge Daney's Jacques Rivette, le veilleur.  This dream of a documentary consists mostly of Denis filming the great film critic Daney talking with the great filmmaker Rivette.  It is by far the most thorough portrait of Rivette I have experienced to date and ranks as one of the most enlightening documentaries I have ever seen on a filmmaker.  

Favorites of My Favorites #8 -- Abel Ferrara

“…they (the audience) like the pictures to be cheaply done, they enjoy the crudeness; it’s a breather, a vacation from proper behavior and good taste and required responses.”  - Pauline Kael, Trash, Art, and the Movies

Abel Ferrara, at times, demonstrates as much artistic grace and skill as anyone, but he never completely lets you forget where he started.  First it was porn and then the slasher film; Ferrara understands that a large part of the audience go to movies for sex, violence, profanity, and whatever else they might not be getting from their daily lives. 

And sure the cinema has always given us plenty of this.  But, in Ferrara’s work, it’s different.  There’s no gloss, it’s not “movie-ish”, you feel like it’s more real, like you’re seeing these things for the first time.  In Ferrara’s work, these things are also more than mere diversions.  They’re harsh, heavy, and often times so visceral they force you to engage with them.   His films are not escapist fantasies, their essays on something dark, deep, and troubling.

His work with rapper Schoolly D is one of my favorite Director/Musician collaborations.  I also love the naturalism of his work.  After Scorsese and some of the other guys decided to abandon the visual grit of their earlier work (think Mean Streets and Taxi Driver), along comes Ferrara to keep the tradition alive.  Almost all of Ferrara’s work is palpably rooted in a specific time and place. 

He’s not for everyone.  And he’s not even always for me.  But, when he’s on, he’s one of my very favorites.

*Pauline Kael probably influenced me more than any other film critic.  She passed away in 2001, and I miss her dearly.  I thought she was a fantastic writer with wonderful taste.  But, more important, I thought she was a mentor and guide for filmmakers.  She took a real interest in their careers and would try to help them understand when they did something well and when they went off course.  De Palma was one of her favorites, and I hate that I’ll never have the opportunity to read her thoughts on Femme Fatale (I have the feeling that she would have really loved it.)  I also would have really liked to hear her talk about Lynch, Ferrara, Tarantino, Jarmusch, Bujalski, David Gordon Green, and other filmmakers who have emerged, for the most part, since she stopped writing in 1991.  

ABEL FERRARA (in preferential order):

1.  King of New York
2.  The Funeral
3.  Bad Lieutenant
4.  Crime Story (pilot)
5.  Go Go Tales watched 2/5/10
6.  Dangerous Game
7.  Chelsea on the Rocks watched 3/24/11
8.  ‘R Xmas
9.  The Driller Killer
10.  New Rose Hotel
11.  Ms. 45
12.  Body Snatchers watched 4/30/10
13.  The Blackout watched 4/25/10
14.  China Girl
15.  The Addiction
16.  Fear City
17.  Cat Chaser (90-minute version)
18.  The Hold Up watched 10/15/11
19.  Nicky's Film watched 10/15/11
20.  Mary
21.  Subway Stories (segment “Love on the A Train”)
22. Could This Be Love watched 10/16/11

Never seen:
Napoli, Napoli, Napoli
Chelsea on the Rocks
Go Go Tales
The Blackout
Body Snatchers
California (short)
Not Guilty:  For Keith Richards (documentary short)
9 Lives of a Wet Pussy
Could This Be Love (short)
The Hold Up (short)
Nicky's Film (short)