Word: noire
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Best Screenplay: There's nothing like sitting around with your friends trying to figure out the twists of a great film noir. L.A. Confidential was awfully sunny for the genre, but it had the omnipresent sense of uneasiness necessary to give you the shivers. Plus, it had more surprises than any movie since The Usual Suspects...
SHOULD WINL.A. Confidential. A smart, taut throwback to the best tradition of noir, it far outranks its competitors in subtlety and style...
...plays Harry Ross, an alcoholic former detective in Los Angeles dependent on his employers, retired actors Jack and Catherine Ames (Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon). Harry becomes involved in a murder investigation after Hackman sends him to deliver a package to a mysterious woman. The essential features of film noir are in place in Twilight, which dutifully follows nearly every single convention of the genre. The inconsistencies in the film could be forgivable if the film had any dramatic urgency. Fortunately, nothing in Twilight fails prominently enough to completely doom the film. --Jeremy J. Ross...
Since the mental calendar of filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen is often turned back to the 1940s, Dude is a shambling version of Philip Marlowe, the incomprehensible plot and the all-too-comprehensible visual references homages to the film-noir tradition--as if we needed more. Happily, however, the Coens have established a tradition of their own: deeply weird characters (let John Goodman's great portrait of one of those paranoid know-it-alls who actually know nothing stand for the mad multitude this movie contains) embedded in profoundly banal settings (much of the film is set in a bowling...
...westerns, the hero rode alone. The villains always had a gang. Think Gary Cooper. High Noon (1952). The hero always won. In international politics, though, that elegance disappears. Too many cooks? Try too many allies. The common enemy suddenly gets complicated. The Third Man (1949) knows this. A film noir with real profundity, the movie is home to one of moviedom's great villains: Harry Lime. Yet Orson Welles' performance is very nearly secondary; Harry Lime is a creation of his American friend (Joseph Cotten), his lover (Alida Valli), his pursuer (Trevor Howard). Of the Americans, the British, the Russians...