Word: noir
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Near the end of Pedro Almodovar’s newest film, Bad Education, two of the principal characters emerge from a movie theatre screening a series of classic film noir. One of the characters says, “I feel like we were watching ourselves.” Considering that the two men were hiding out at the theatre after performing a grisly murder, the comment becomes an obviously self-referential wink. Almodovar’s camera lingers on the vampy posters as they leave the theatre, putting the stylistic cap on yet another strange piece of meta-cinema that...
...quality to his films that empowered and qualified his criticism. “He was a filmmaker who displayed the conflict in classical American liberalism in the starkest possible form,” says Connor, referring to the harsh journalistic style of Fuller’s classic 1953 film noir Pickup on South Street...
...addition to being one of the most important and cutting-edge examples of 1950s film noir, Pickup highlights the disparity and paradox between the two most prominent American values of the time: individual ambition and blindly patriotic anti-Communism. In one of the film’s most potent moments, the police threateningly ask the protagonist if he knows what treason is, to which he responds with “Who cares?” Released in the year of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executions, Pickup is rife with political daring, both endangering and enabling Fuller?...
...actor pal Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is a less learned oenophile. "Pinot Noir?" he asks, guzzling it as if it were Gatorade. "Then how come it's white...
...Passion of the Christ: The suspense in this film could be cut. With a knife. Any sane viewer of Mel Gibson’s neo-noir thriller will be on the edge of their seat from the moment the Sinead O’Connor-esque Satan figure appears. Will Jesus die? The answer to this question requires two hours of scary, seat-jumping sequences that will leave you disturbed for days. It’s hard to know where to begin with the scares in The Passion—but highlights include 2000 year-old stereotypes about Jews and visuals...