Kinemalogue: Noir

Showing posts with label Noir. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 9, 2025

I got trouble, Mr. T

TROUBLE MAN

1972

Directed by Ivan Dixon

Written by John D.F. Black

Spoilers: moderate

Love you. Go Giants.

CAUGHT STEALING

2025

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Written by Charlie Huston (based on the novel by Huston)

Spoilers: moderate

Well, not wholly unfavorable

A SIMPLE FAVOR

2018

Directed by Paul Feig

Written by Jessica Sharzer

Spoilers: moderate (maybe high although I presume you could get at least that far ahead of it)

Humphrey Bogart in Argument!... or Disagreement!... or Quarrel!... or Dispute!... or...

CONFLICT

1945

Directed by Curtis Bernhardt

Written by Robert Siodmak, Alfred Neumann, Arthur T. Horman, and Dwight Taylor

Spoilers: moderate (or a touch more than moderate, but, anyway, not high)

I know you've seen enough of the Falls for one trip, but don't cross us off your list

NIAGARA

1953

Directed by Henry Hathaway

Written by Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, and Richard Breen

Spoilers: moderate (maybe a teensy bit high, but one generally knows how these things go, right?)

In the light, everybody needs the light

UNDER THE LIGHT

Jianrupanshi (Solid As a Rock)

2023

Directed by Zhang Yimou

Written by Chen Yu

Spoilers: moderate

Reviews from gulag: Police abuses

Well, it's probably not the most inappropriate connection I've drawn between two films, but we are trying to do an end-of-year wrap-up here with barely 48 more hours to go before it's moot, so that's what we're going with. Today's subjects: I'm Still Here and Hit Man.

I'M STILL HERE

Ainda Estou Aqui

I'm Still Here, concerning the extrajudicial murder undertaken by the Medici-led military government in Brazil that triggered the mid-life ascendance of famed human rights lawyer Eunice Paiza to prominence, is exactly the kind of movie you'd guess it was from the "I'd never heard of it till it was nominated for Best Picture" thing it's got going on, and even then you'd probably ask "of the movies broadly like it, why this one?", though a more charitable response would be "why not?" Maybe it's because it looks alright, albeit mostly by virtue of being shot on film (a 35mm so grainy I thought it was 16, and now I'm a little unsettled about it); maybe it's because it couldn't possibly offend anyone, though it does come off categorically anti-military coup, and I think that's just awfully closed-minded of it.

Still, I can't help but think it's sort of wrongheaded, as a matter of its overall narrative strategy. Which isn't to let the tactics off the hook: take, for instance, the extended pre-inciting incident first act that's just this naturalistic slice-of-life for a Brazilian family, one that I assume was this large and of this composition in real life, because there are, like, at least three more children than the actual film can handle in its extant configuration (something the film even sub rosa acknowledges in numerous ways throughout, for instance being noticeably relieved to have gotten rid of the eldest daughter by way of a long trip abroad once her function of "being a politically-conscious teen" and "providing some almost nauseatingly-shaky Super 8 home movies" has been accomplished), but this is a slice-of-life that has no goal whatsoever besides impressing on you that bad things can still happen to nice people. And they are, for sure, nice: with the obvious exceptions, it seems like it'd be cool to be in this family, and live in their cool beach neighborhood, and enjoy the 70s Brazilian lifestyle of wearing underwear or overclothes but not both simultaneously, but this does not, by itself, make them all that interesting to watch. (And as long as we're talking small stuff, then the constant reference to period pop cultural signifiers is a routine example of the movie's naturalistic tolerance of dead air—I assure you, I do get that it's right at the transition to the 1970s.)