The Pre-Code Era of Hollywood is a very interesting time in Hollywood and film history. It was a time of limited, if any, censorship in Hollywood and therefore filmmakers and the stars were able to produce much more risque and unique movies. The Pre Code era started in 1927 with […]
film noir
Peter Five Eight (2024) An Attempt was Made by Spacey (Review)
I The Executioner (1968) A Brutal Neo Noir Directed by Akira Kurosawa’s Former Apprentice (Review)
Happy New Year and Happy New Radiance Films Release Day to all those who celebrate. After falling head over heels for Elegant Beast (1962), I was delighted to be jumping back into 60’s Japan for Radiance’s latest release I, The Executioner (1968), a neo-noir directed by former Akira Kurosawa protégée […]
World Noir Vol. 1 (1957-59) Long May These Radiance Boxsets Continue (Review)
It was the French critic Nino Frank who famously first applied the term ‘film noir’ to the series of hardboiled Hollywood crime pictures that finally appeared in France after the Occupation. He was acting under the influence of the acclaimed, and rightfully famous, Gallimard crime fiction imprint Série noire – […]
One False Move (1992) – A cyclical tale of lingering violence [Review]
Film Noir Collection Vol. 3: Calcutta, Ride the Pink Horse, Outside the Law, The Female Animal (1946-1958) (Blu-Ray Review)
Twilight (1990): an irresistible challenge that upends the detective genre (Review)
There are many mysteries to unpick in the new Second Run release, but the one that had me the most perplexed is this: what were people watching before this restoration? Because, as Stanley Schtinter’s booklet and several of the interviews on this disc attest, György Fehér’s debut theatrical release was […]
The Breaking Point (1950) Dark, Sweaty Classic Noir Lost in the Shadow of Howard Hawks (Blu-Ray Review)
To Sleep So As To Dream (1986): silent Japanese dream detectives! (Review)
The fictional detective is a rational creature. As soon as detective stories were invented, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle were using their sleuths to reveal the mundane truth behind apparently supernatural events; the latter’s maxim that when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains – however improbable – […]
Pale Flower (1964) Humble, Contrarian Anti-Yakuza Classic (Review)
In the solitary extra of Criterion’s new Blu-ray of 1964’s Pale Flower, Masahiro Shinoda says that his writers wanted to make something fresh, something Shochiku studio wasn’t doing. In the 1960s, Yakuza cinema was full of rough boys driven by anger and anachronistic musical numbers. The leading men were manly […]