Word: noir
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Parker has filmed the story in the suave, dark tones of a film-noir musical. Buenos Aires becomes a character in the movie less by re-creating period exteriors than by focusing on the extras' faces--gorgeous, pensive reflections of Eva's sultry magnetism. But this is, essentially, a three-character play, demanding that the stars must sing, swagger and act with style. Pryce, consummate pro, lives fully in all three realms. Banderas parades his sex appeal as the one man who is not a father figure to Evita; he is the skeptical stud who can match her arrogance with...
...with men off at war and women taking their place in the factories, Hollywood turned paranoid. Film noir made the black widow an embodiment of evil as seductive as she was destructive. What man wouldn't want to go to hell with Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice? What man wouldn't prefer hell to two days in a motel room with the spectacularly shrewish Ann Savage in Detour...
...world of the grisley murder, a genre which owes a lot to the Coens, who have written and directed five films together. Back when Quentin Tarantino and John Dahl were still just film geeks, Joel and Ethan Coen made "Blood Simple," a completely original and seductively seedy neo-noir. The film propelled them into the spotlight, where, for a time, they were "the" cool independant filmmakers. Now, of course, we have lesser directors hosting "Saturday Night Live" and telling us what is hip and what...
...AMERICAN TABLOID by James Ellroy (Knopf). This big, brazenly entertaining novel begins in 1958 and ends seconds before the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. In between, James Ellroy--a crime-noir cult writer making his mainstream debut--propels two rogue FBI agents and a former Los Angeles County deputy sheriff through a fictionalized, nightmarish tour of five tumultuous years in U.S. history. Life is seldom horrifying and hilarious at the same moment. On nearly all its 576 pages, American Tabloid manages to be both...
...film's early scenes, Scorsese and Richardson are at their best. Scorsese's smooth camera moves are perfect for the blinding pace of the Casino floor, and Richardson's neo-noir lighting adds texture to an other-wise plastic environment. Initially, the shots combining rolling dice, shuffling cards, spinning slots and elusive chips make up for the absence of a meaningful story...