“I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
The Scoop: 2008 PG-13 Directed by Pierre Morel and starring Liam Neeson and Famke Janssen
Tagline: They took his daughter. He’ll take their lives.
Summary Capsule: EX CIA spook goes on a 90 minute killing spree to get back his kidnapped daughter.
“However cleverly you sneak up on a mirror, your reflection always looks you straight in the eye.”
The Scoop: 1987 R, directed by Alan Parker, starring Mickey Rourke, Robert DeNiro and Lisa Bonet
Tagline: Harry Angel has been hired to search for the truth… pray he doesn’t find it.
Summary Capsule: If we were to combine Noir Week and Stephen King Week, this is the film we’d review.
“I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
The Scoop: 2008 PG-13 Directed by Pierre Morel and starring Liam Neeson and Famke Janssen
Tagline: They took his daughter. He’ll take their lives.
Summary Capsule: EX CIA spook goes on a 90 minute killing spree to get back his kidnapped daughter.
“You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone. “
The Scoop: 1983 PG, directed by Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller and Steven Spielberg
Tagline: You’re travelling through another dimension. A dimension, not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!
Summary Capsule: Four mini-movies attempt to recapture the classic touch of Rod Serling’s series. Doesn’t work so much.
“It’s just like the first time I came here, isn’t it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.”
The Scoop: 1944, Unrated, Directed by Billy Wilder and starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson
Tagline: It’s Love And Murder At First Sight!
Summary Capsule: An insurance salesman with a taste for someone else’s wife gets mixed up with a rotten dame that might be the death of him.
“Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.”
The Scoop: 1990 R, directed by Joel Coen and starring Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney and Marcia Gay Harden.
Tagline: Up is down, black is white, and nothing is what it seems.
Summary Capsule: Gabriel Byrne stretches his acting chops to play an Irish criminal who gets entangled in a complex web of deceit and betrayal.
”’I don’t care who’s fault it is; his, hers, or the milkman’s. If one of them comes to me, it means they’re both miserable. That’s my job-putting people out of their misery.“
The Scoop: 1990 R, directed by Jack Nicholson and starring Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel.
Tagline: They say money makes the world go round. But sex was invented before money.
Summary Capsule: The unloved little brother of Chinatown throws JJ Gittes into a world of money, murder, and mineral rights as the ghosts of his past come back to haunt him.
Just a scant week ago, I made the type of discovery that wouldn’t exactly spark off a successful noir film but would be an excellent start for a zany comedy: I found the film Brick in the $3 DVD bin at my local Big Lots.
At first, I was consumed with disbelief and minor rage. How could such a monumentally innovative and refreshingly well-made film end up consigned to the bargain bin at the most barginous of bargain stores? What shortsighted middle manager arbitrarily chose $3 as the ultimate value for this, one of the best films I’ve seen within the past decade? Should I logically infer by its presence here in the $3 bin that Brick’s popularity and influence had already reached its apex and would now languish in wire bins gathering dust from here to eternity?
It’s a Raymond Chandler evening
At the end of someone’s day
And I’m standing in my pocket
And I’m slowly turning grey
“Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.”
The Scoop: 1990 R, directed by Joel Coen and starring Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney and Marcia Gay Harden.
Tagline: Up is down, black is white, and nothing is what it seems.
Summary Capsule: Gabriel Byrne stretches his acting chops to play an Irish criminal who gets entangled in a complex web of deceit and betrayal.
