by K Hogaboom | Jan 25, 2021 | featured
I am a sucker for an older noir probably because I love the formula: the dramatic lighting, the at-once brute simple but utterly confounding plot, the histrionic scores. Our actors (character and otherwise): alternatively glamorous or grotesque. Hard to imagine these...
by K Hogaboom | Jun 20, 2016 | blog
In this underrated crime thriller Ray Milland plays George Stroud, a hardworking magazine editor who after seven hard years laboring under media mogul Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton) is starting to feel a bit resentful. The night before his vacation with his...
by K Hogaboom | Dec 28, 2015 | featured
An incredibly understated, border-town noir film that is surprisingly compelling despite serious drawbacks. In its favor: breathtaking cinematography, a perfectly spare score, beautiful production design, genuinely creepy crime – and a fabulous actress. Those...
by K Hogaboom | Oct 21, 2015 | featured
My favorite Michael Mann film – so far. James Caan stars as Frank – a brisk, extremely cloistered high-end jewel thief who rather suddenly stumbles on an idea for a better life. Only in his thirties – but with almost a third of his life spent behind...
by K Hogaboom | Oct 21, 2015 | featured
A somewhat self-involved bit of noir drama, this film a principle charm that surprised me: John Heard. The “That Guy” actor nails it – absolutely NAILS it – in the eponymous role of Alex Cutter, a troubled-but-brilliant alcoholic Vietnam War...
