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Genre: Neo Noir

Films that take the fatalism, moral compromise, and visual language of classic film noir and rebuild it in color, in later decades, and often in genres noir never touched. What carries over is the structure: a protagonist who investigates and is damaged by what he finds, a world already corrupt before the story starts, and an ending that resolves the case without repairing anything. The reviews here trace that inheritance through crime films, science fiction, and small independent productions.

A woman in dark clothing lies on a snow-covered Montreal street at night, a reversed crucifix visible around her neck.Horror

The Pyx (1973) Review

The Pyx (1973) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A Canadian film in which a woman falls from a Montreal balcony and the investigation runs backward through her last days, intercut, with Karen Black singing her own…

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Burt Reynolds as Detective Sharky in a surveillance scene from the 1981 Atlanta police thriller, monitoring a target throughCrime

Sharky’s Machine (1981) Review

Sharky's Machine (1981) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Burt Reynolds directed himself in an Atlanta police thriller with a jazz score, a surveillance structure and a genuinely nasty streak, and it is the best film he…

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Kurt Russell as Detective Eldon Perry in a scene from the 2002 film Dark Blue, wearing LAPD uniform in an interior setting.Crime

Dark Blue (2002) Review

Dark Blue (2002) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Kurt Russell plays a third-generation LAPD officer who plants evidence as a matter of routine, set in the week before the Rodney King verdict. James Ellroy wrote the…

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Nicolas Cage as a private investigator in a dark room, watching film reels on a projector in a scene from the 1999 thrillerCrime

8MM (1999) Review

8MM (1999) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Joel Schumacher directing Andrew Kevin Walker's script about a private investigator tracing a snuff film, with Nicolas Cage restrained and Joaquin Phoenix excellent, undone by a third act that…

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Lee Marvin in a dark suit stands in a stark modernist interior with geometric shadows across the walls, his face composedCrime

Point Blank (1967) Review

Point Blank (1967) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Lee Marvin threw the script in the bin, handed his script and casting approval to a British director who had never worked in Hollywood, and the result is…

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Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury in a tense scene from the 1962 political thriller, with shadowy lighting and black andDrama

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) Review

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Frankenheimer made a political thriller that is also a comedy, a nightmare and a story about a mother, released it thirteen months before Dallas, and Angela Lansbury…

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Keanu Reeves as John Wick in a dark suit, holding a gun in a combat stance during an action sequence.Action

John Wick (2014) Review

John Wick (2014) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two stuntmen directed it for twenty million dollars, put the camera far enough back to see the whole body, and built an entire criminal economy out of about…

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Jane Fonda as Bree Daniels in a dimly lit scene, her face partially shadowed, framed through a doorway or corridor in aDrama

Klute (1971) Review

Klute (1971) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The film is called Klute and it is not about Klute. Jane Fonda won the Academy Award for a performance built out of therapy sessions and a tape recorder,…

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Bruce Willis in a dark futuristic setting, wearing tattered clothes and looking confused or distressed in a scene from theDystopian

12 Monkeys (1995) Review

12 Monkeys (1995) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A time travel film in which the loop cannot be broken and everybody involved eventually works that out. Gilliam made it for twenty-nine million dollars in Philadelphia and…

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Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck sit across from each other in a scene from Gone Girl, their faces tense and guarded. TITLEDrama

Gone Girl (2014) Review

Gone Girl (2014) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Gillian Flynn adapted her own novel and took a hammer to her own third act. Fincher shot it mostly in one small Missouri town for sixty-one million dollars,…

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