I first saw You've Got Mail (1998) in the theater when I was home on Christmas Break during my freshman year of college.  I went to see it with my high school bestie, and I knew it was going to be a long-time favorite by the time we finished that first viewing.  

1. Ben-Hur (1959) When Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) is unjustly imprisoned by his former best friend (Stephen Boyd), he vows revenge, but eventually learns revenge is less sweet than he'd expected. If you ever get the chance to see this in the theater, run, don't walk!  Spectacular stuff.

That Thing You Do! (1996) came out right when I was starting to pay lots of attention to current movies. Although I didn't get to see it in the theater, I rented it as soon as I could. I was already a huge fan of Apollo 13 (1995), and I loved how Tom Hanks incorporated lots of names from it into this movie, which he wrote, directed, and had a pivotal role in.

Tom Hanks set this film in 1964, which he said was the last summer of American innocence, before the country began to divide over issues like the war in Vietnam. He even co-wrote many of the songs for it! Here are a few of my favorites.

This is the title song (written by Adam Schlesinger), the one that makes small-town band The Wonders into a short-lived sensation. It's a smile-inducing song, like a sweet popsicle on a hot summer day.

"Dance With Me Tonight" (by Scott Rogness and Rick Elias) is my other favorite number on the soundtrack -- I used to dance around my room to it when I was a teen. I love how well it captures the feel of '60s music, which I spent my teen years listening to instead of what was on modern radio at the time. 

The Wonders can do slow and tender too, like in "All My Only Dreams" (by Scott Rogness and Rick Elias).

Not all the music in the movie is '60s-style pop, though. Check out this cheerful jazz number (by Steve Tyrell and Robert F. Mann):

I hope you dug some of this music, and if you have never seen That Thing You Do!, do yourself a favor and give it a whirl. It's sweet and funny, and great for a quick end-of-summer escape.

(This review originally appeared here at J and J Productions on July 22, 2015.)

I really didn't know much about News of the World when I went to see it today, aside from the fact that it has Tom Hanks in it, it's a western, and it involves him on a journey with a young girl.  That was it.  That's pretty minimal for me going into a movie, to be honest, as I usually have at least a general idea of a movie's plot, going in.  But sometimes it's nice just to go in cold and see what happens.  No expectations.  Just take it as it's played.

I think that was a good choice for this movie, because that's very much how the characters have to deal with its events -- just deal with each thing as it happens.

Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks) makes his living reading aloud out of newspapers in little towns across Texas.  He takes a collection of recent periodicals from town to town, charges people ten cents each to attend his reading, and then reads aloud all sorts of news from all over the country and the world.  He's got a showman's instincts to help him select stories that will appeal to each audience and, if it's a lonely and unusual way to earn a living, it's certainly an honest and useful one.

On the way from one town to the next, he comes upon an overturned wagon.  The person who'd been driving it was strung up from a tree nearby, no explanation ever made of why.  Kidd finds a young girl (Helena Zengel) hiding nearby.  Blonde, blue-eyed, freckled, and very obviously white, the girl speaks only Kiowa.  Kidd searches through the wagon's wreckage until he finds official orders the dead man was carrying, orders to take this girl to an aunt and uncle living hundreds of miles away.  Orders that tell the girl's story -- taken by Kiowa's during a raid on her family when she was three, raised by them, then taken again by soldiers during a raid on her Kiowa family.

The papers list the girl's name as Johanna, but she won't answer to it.  A passing Cavalry troop tells Kidd to take her to a nearby town, where the local Indian agent can take charge of her.  But when it turns out the agent won't be back for months and months, Kidd determines to take Johanna home to her kinfolk himself.

Thus begins a quest/journey story that pulls a lot from classic myths while reminding me of everything from The Mandalorian (2019- ) to Road to Perdition (2002) to a sort of reverse version of The Searchers (1956).  Kidd and Johanna cross would-be child-traffickers (and a very tense gunfight ensues).  Kidd and Johanna get caught up in a weird town where one random dude is trying to build himself his own little empire (and another gunfight ensues).  Kidd and Johanna stop in several places so Kidd can read the news and earn some money.  And Kidd and Johanna gradually come to understand each other.

Kidd teaches Johanna some English.  Johanna teaches him some Kiowa.  They both know a little broken German, she because her birth family was German, and he because he is a wordsmith and a storyteller and he communicates however he can with those he meets.

Kidd's really on two missions, on this journey.  He's got to take Johanna to her aunt and uncle, and he's got to say goodbye to his wife.  He accomplishes both.  But then (SPOILERS!) he realizes that one of those goodbyes was a mistake, and he begins a new life built upon the old.

One of the central themes of this movie is that you can't find your future by ignoring and forgetting your past.  You have to accept, embrace, and try to understand what has happened to you and those you love.  Only when you do that can you move forward.  I think that's a very timely lesson for this particular moment in time.  We can't move forward by denying, canceling, or trying to erase our history, both personal history and our nation's history.  Only by accepting what has happened, wrong and right alike, and by learning from and trying to understand it can we move forward.  Those who just decry and deny those who came before us will be stuck here, wheels spinning but going nowhere.

Anyway, is this movie family friendly?  Nope.  Like I said, there's some attempted child-trafficking, in that some men try to buy Johanna from Kidd for unstated but obviously immoral purposes.  There's shooting and killing, with visible blood spatter but no gory wounds dwelt upon.  There are some very scary moments, with danger presented by people, by the elements, and by a runaway wagon.  A horse falls horribly and must be put out of its misery.  There's also a scene where a woman is lying in her underclothes in a man's bed and having a conversation with him, though he is dressed and not in the bed, but the implication of their previous activities is clear to adults and teens.  There's also discussion of massacres and scalpings.  And a lot of dead buffalo carcasses being skinned.  So, no, it is not a family friendly movie.  But I think it is a good one, and I would rather like to see it again.

Like my new list of favorite western films, the list of my favorite noir films has changed a lot since I first posted one six years ago, all because of one certain actor.

I mean, how was I NOT going to love Alan Ladd when the majority of his films are in my two favorite genres?  It was inevitable.

Anyway.  Here is my current list of ten favorite noir films!  Titles linked to my reviews where applicable.


1. Laura (1944) While solving the murder of beautiful Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) falls in love with her memory. The most haunting murder mystery of all time.

2. This Gun for Hire (1942) A remorseless killer-for-hire (Alan Ladd) teams up with a singing magician (Veronica Lake) to help the government stop bad guys from selling American military secrets to the enemy. This is the movie that turned Ladd into a star, and it's not hard to see why -- he's riveting.

3. Dead Again (1991) A kindhearted PI (Kenneth Branagh) tries to help an amnesiac (Emma Thompson) remember who she is, only to learn that they may have been intimately linked to each other in a past life.  This is a twisty thriller involving reincarnation and it never fails to thrill me, even though I obviously don't believe reincarnation is a real thing.

4. The Great Gatsby (1949) F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic story gets a film noir twist. A successful gangster (Alan Ladd) buys a new house across the water from an old flame (Betty Field) whose cousin (Macdonald Carey) just happens to be Gatsby's next-door neighbor. I've yet to see another portrayal of Gatsby as haunting and heartfelt as Ladd's.

5. To Have and Have Not (1944) Fisherman Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) gets tangled up with a wandering woman (Lauren Bacall) and a bunch of anti-Nazi French patriots during WWII. Loosely based on characters from the Ernest Hemingway novel by the same title.

6. The Blue Dahlia (1946) A weary veteran (Alan Ladd) returns home and finds his wife (Doris Dowling) is cheating on him with a nightclub owner (Howard da Silva). When she turns up dead, he's the prime suspect. The nightclub owner's wife (Veronica Lake) tries to help him solve the murder. It's the only original screenplay written by my favorite author, Raymond Chandler, and its dialog sizzles delightfully.

7. The Big Sleep (1946) PI Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) takes a case for a wealthy family with a lot of secrets. Pairs Bogart again with the love of his real life, Lauren Bacall, and is based on the novel by my favorite author, Raymond Chandler.

8. LA Confidential (1997) Three Hollywood cops (Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, and Guy Pearce) wrestle with corruption, vice, murder, and conspiracy. One of the most intricately plotted movies ever, with all kinds of disparate strands woven together to form a dazzling whole.

9. Road to Perdition (2002) A hitman (Tom Hanks) takes his son (Tyler Hoechlin) on the run, seeking vengeance for the brutal murder of his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and other son. Brilliant acting from all involved, including Paul Newman, Jude Law, and Daniel Craig.

10. Brick (2005) High school loner Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) investigates the murder of the girl he may have loved, discovering a teenage underworld in the process. One of the most creative movies I've ever seen.

NOTE:  Dead Again, LA Confidential, Road to Perdition, and Brick are all rated R.  With good reason.  Proceed with caution.

My family didn't go to movies much when I was a kid.  We preferred to rent videos so my parents could manage the content a little better -- watch them before the kids, fast-forward through iffy scenes, or stop them to talk things through with us.  So at the age of 15, I had seen only 4 or 5 movies in the theater.  I'd seen one with friends in the spring of 1995, but I hadn't seen a movie in the theater with my parents since 1988.

I'm just telling you this so you understand what a HUGE deal it was when, in the middle of July, my parents decided to take my brother and me to see Apollo 13 in the theater.  My aunt and uncle had told them it was good, and my brother and I were already somewhat nuts about astronauts (no lie, I still kinda wish I was an astronaut), and the air conditioning at my grandparents' house where we were staying was on the fritz.  It was mid-July in Iowa.  Not a great time for there to be no A/C, especially in one small house with six people, two of whom were ten and fifteen.

So my parents decided to treat us to a night at the movie theater.  It was probably my brother's second time ever in a theater, and the first time would have been when he was three.  We were beyond excited.  Just about out of our tiny minds with anticipation.

This was 22 years ago, but I can still remember that theater so vividly.  It was small, much smaller than any of the auditoriums at the megaplex I go to now.  But in my memory, the screen was massive.  There were quite a few other people there, but it wasn't full by any means -- the movie had been out for a few weeks.

Toward the end of the film (this is a SPOILER if you haven't seen the movie and don't know the history behind it), when the astronauts survive reentry and make contact with NASA again, the people in the movie stand up and cheer and clap and hug and cry.


The people in that little theater, mostly stoic Iowa farmers... also cheered and clapped.  I have tears in my eyes just remembering it.  I've been to hundreds of movies in the theater since that night, but I have never seen an audience react to a movie so strongly.  Sure, sometimes people clap at the end of a film (Connecticut audiences do that a lot, I noticed -- that was cool).  But they never cheer and clap in the middle out of the sheer emotional need to respond to what's happening on-screen.

That's the kind of movie Apollo 13 is.  The kind that celebrates humanity's ability to rise above tragedy and despair, to achieve things they didn't know they were capable of in order to save someone else, maybe someone they've never met.


The story opens in 1969, with the families of various astronauts gathered the house of Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) to watch the live footage of Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon.  Lovell can't wait to get to the moon himself -- he was on the backup crew for Apollo 11, and is now slated for not the next mission, but the one after that.


Less than a year later, Lovell's prepping for his own mission, Apollo 13.  He and his fellow astronauts, Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise), are fine-tuned, honed, so ready for their mission they can taste it.  And then Mattingly gets exposed to measles, and NASA takes him off the mission, replacing him with playboy Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon).  Swigert and Haise don't get along particularly well, adding tension to the final days of preparation.


Still, the mission starts well, with a breathtaking lift-off.  Haise and Lovell's wives attend the lift-off, supporting each other as they watch their husbands leave earth.  Mary Haise (Tracy Reiner) is pregnant, due not long after their husbands return.  Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan) has been increasingly anxious about this mission, especially the fact that this mission bears the unlucky number of thirteen.

At first, all goes fine.  But of course, terrible stuff happens eventually, because otherwise it wouldn't be such a triumphant, glorious movie with people overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles and being all heroic.  (I'M TOTALLY SPOILING EVERYTHING FROM HERE ON OUT.  You've Been Warned.)


A tiny malfunction in a tiny part of the spacecraft causes an explosion that rocks the whole ship.


And that's when Lovell utters the immortal line that's on the poster:  "Houston, we have a problem."


A major problem, as it turns out -- their spacecraft is damaged, it's off course, and they're suddenly short on oxygen.  The three astronauts are going to have to figure out how to survive in space, not to mention get safely back to earth again.


Back in Houston, the NASA people band step right up to the task of solving all the problems involved in bringing three men in a crippled ship back home.  Flight director Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) tells them, "Failure is not an option."


Ken Mattingly gets pulled back in to help run reentry scenarios in their simulators.  (And he never gets the measles.)


Lovell, Haise, and Swigert are certainly heroic as they refuse to panic, work together on the various tasks needed to stabilize their ship, and attempt to reenter earth's atmosphere in a crippled space ship.  But they really have no choice -- they're stuck where they are and just have to do what they're told.


It's the people on the ground that I find particularly inspirational.


Scientists, mathematicians, programmers, engineers, and other astronauts all dealing with an unexpected situation.


They pour their collective intelligence, knowledge, and creativity into saving the lives of three men that many of them have never even met.


And they succeed.  Lovell, Haise, and Swigert return safely to earth.  The real Jim Lovell even gets a cameo as the captain of the Naval vessel that retrieves them from the ocean.  The events of Apollo 13 really happened, which makes the valiant ingenuity of the people involved all the more remarkable.

Is this movie family friendly?  Yes, for teens and up.  It's pretty intense throughout, and I think that some scenes would scare kids under 12 or so.  There's some language -- more than usual for a PG movie.  And there's a bit of mild innuendo here and there.  No nudity (one scene of Jack Swigert stepping out of a shower with only a towel wrapped around him, and there's an unseen woman still in the shower, but he's not married), no violence.


This has been my contribution to the Inspirational Heroes Blogathon hosted by myself and Quiggy.  Head to this post for the list of other posts revolving around characters who inspire us.

When a lonely train fare collector (Sandra Bullock) rescues a handsome stranger (Peter Gallagher) from being hit by a train, his family thinks she's his fiancee. I love the entire cast, from Sandra Bullock to Glynis Johns, and it's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.

When Sabrina (Julia Ormond) returns from Paris, suddenly dazzling instead of dowdy, her father's employer (Harrison Ford) pretends to woo her to prevent his younger brother (Greg Kinnear) from having a fling with her.  A lot sweeter than it sounds, and I much prefer it to the 1954 original because the cast has better chemistry and the whole thing works better.

Kathleen (Meg Ryan) and Joe (Tom Hanks) are online penpals and real-life bookstore-owning rivals, and they don't realize who each other is until they've started falling in love.  Another remake, this time of a Jimmy Stewart movie called The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and another Greg Kinnear movie where he doesn't get the girl.  Sensing a trend here!

Kate (Meg Ryan) chases her fiance (Timothy Hutton) to Paris to win him back, and enlists the help of impossible Frenchman Luc (Kevin Kline) on the way.  Another Meg Ryan movie -- yeah, I'm a fan, especially of her '90s work.  Also, this is the only rom-com I've ever seen that involves smuggling and chase scenes.


Jane (Ashley Judd) gets dumped and develops a theory that she thinks explains why men leave women, but her co-worker Eddie (Hugh Jackman) thinks she's both adorable and wrong.  The trend is official!  Greg Kinnear loses the girl again.  This time he's a a bit of a jerk, though, so I don't care.  

Widowed Sam (Tom Hanks) and complete stranger Annie (Meg Ryan) are clearly M.F.E.O (made for each other) even though they don't meet until the end of the movie.  Far-fetched, implausible, and delicious.

Single, homeless, and pregnant, Connie (Ricki Lake) is mistaken for a dead man's wife and taken in by his wealthy mother (Shirley MacLaine), though his brother (Brendan Fraser) remains skeptical of her.  Also far-fetched and implausible, but very sweet anyway.  Especially the tango scene!


Maggie (Julia Roberts) has been to the altar three times, but never married, and newspaper columnist Ike (Richard Gere) stakes his career on her running away from her fourth fiance too.  I like this way better than the first Roberts/Gere movie, Pretty Woman (1990).

Loretta (Cher) falls for her fiance's weird brother Ronny (Nicholas Cage), which throws her Italian family into turmoil.  More turmoil than usual, anyway.  This has all the big-ethnic-family charm that My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) needed more of.

10. A Life Less Ordinary (1997)

Don't you love January?  I know I do.  All those movies that came out in December, that I really wanted to see but didn't have time for because I was busy baking and decorating and wrapping presents... they're all still in the theaters because nothing new comes out in January!  It's awesome!

Which means I got to see Saving Mr. Banks in the theater after all.  I was so convinced I would have to Redbox it or something, but nope!  And what a treat it is.  Particularly because, to be perfectly honest, I spent so much of my childhood wishing I was living in the 1960s.  (Or the 1950s.  Or the 1940s.  Or the wild west.)  I think it's because I watched The Parent Trap (1961) and The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and The Shaggy Dog (1959) and That Darn Cat! (1965) so often.  Especially The Parent Trap -- I used to imagine that Haley Mills' twin characters, Susan and Sharon, were my best friends, and that we'd have sleep-overs and go swimming and go to the movies together.  Come on -- Susan had a picture of Bobby Darin on the wall in that tent she had to share with Sharon in camp, so we would have been best friends, right?  Anyway, the majority of this movie was like me getting to step into a world I'd imagined so very often.  The cars, the clothes, the buildings, the slang, the hair, the fonts used for the names on buildings, for crying out loud!  I loved it all!

But the story is what really sucked me in.  You know what it's about by now:  the story of how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) charmed P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson) into letting him make the movie Mary Poppins (1964) from her series of beloved children's books.  The amazing thing is that even though I obviously knew that he succeeded, since I've seen Mary Poppins many times (especially lately, as it's one of the few movies my kids all like), I was quite on the edge of my seat as to whether or not he could convince her to sign over the rights!  Very deft writing and acting as far as that's concerned.

So let's talk about the writing and acting, shall we?  I think one of the things I liked best is that the filmmakers didn't try to pit the audience for or against either Disney or Travers.  In fact, I felt like they worked very hard to make Disney not entirely sympathetic, and Travers understandable despite her fierceness.  I found myself rooting for both of them, oddly enough.  I could totally relate to Travers and her desire to protect her characters and her vision of their world, but I really wanted Disney to get to make that movie because I really like that movie.  Which doesn't make total sense, since obviously the movie did get made.  But you know what I mean.


Tom Hanks has played a lot of lovable characters over the years, and I think what's most remarkable here is that his Walt Disney is not all that lovable!  He exudes niceness and cheer, but it's that forced niceness and cheer that you often get from people who make their money by being friendly.  In fact, I started to kind of dislike him for a while, as he tries to find ways around, over, under, or through Travers' defenses.  But then, in a quiet moment, he confides in someone else that he understands what she's going through because someone once tried to convince him to sell Mickey Mouse... and I liked him again.


As for Emma Thompson, she plays P. L. Travers like a tangled ball of yarn.  Every time you think you know what's going on, that string you're pulling on snarls up with what seems like an entirely unrelated strand.  We get lots of flashbacks to her childhood in Australia, where her banker father, Travers Goff (Colin Farrell), over-doted on her, and her mother Margaret (Ruth Wilson) struggled to survive her unraveling marriage to an alcoholic.  I did wish that Margaret would have gotten a bit more fleshing out, but the movie focused more on the father-daughter bond, and the mother remained mostly an enigma.

(Spoilers in the next two paragraphs.)

Also an enigma in those flashbacks is Aunt Ellie (Rachel Griffiths), who arrives to help Margaret manage her three daughters and ailing husband.  She's clearly the inspiration for Mary Poppins, but Travers Goff seems to dislike her, and young Ginty (as P. L. Travers is called in the flashbacks -- her real name was Helen Goff) blames Aunt Ellie for not saving her father.

Of course, Walt Disney finally convinces P. L. Travers to sign over the movie rights, and he does it by convincing her that by giving the father figure in the movie a happy ending, she will somehow be able to rewrite her own sad family history and give herself a happy ending too.  It kind of sort of makes sense, but whatever.  By that point, I was just all relieved that they would finally get to make the movie, and not worrying too much about logic.

(End of spoilage.)

The very best part of this movie, for me, is one small moment when Disney reminds Travers what it is that storytellers do.  He tells her that they "restore order" and "instill hope."  And I spent the rest of the movie repeating those four words over and over in my head.  Because that is exactly what I try to do with my own writing, only I'd never put it into words before.  Restore order and instill hope.  It was a revelation, an unexpected moment of clarity that has focused my writing energy like never before.  I'm going to print that up in huge letters and post it on the wall behind my computer.

And so a movie that I expected to entertain and amuse me for a couple of hours instead provided one of the greatest creative epiphanies I've ever had.  How unexpectedly delightful!

Anyway, is this a family-friendly movie?  Mostly.  There are 4 or 5 curse words, the "traditional" type.  There's a bit of smoking, quite a bit of drinking in the flashbacks, death, and (spoiler alert!) an attempted suicide (end spoiler alert!).  Not a movie for young kids, as it has some very serious things going on.  I was in tears several times.

Oh, and I even survived all the Colin Farrell parts!  I really do not care for him at all, but he played a slippery and imperfect father just fine.  Helped that he was only in the flashbacks.

And I was so excited to see Ruth Wilson again!  I liked her a lot in this, though not as much as in The Lone Ranger.  But now I'm quite determined to see her version of Jane Eyre soon.

I don't know quite what to say about this movie.  The acting was rather brilliant.  Some of the dialog was atrocious.  I spent half the movie wishing I wasn't watching it, and the other half forgetting that I was only watching a movie and not actually in grave danger.  Three-quarters of the way through it, a very minor character popped up and had me fervently wishing he would be in more and more and more scenes.  So I guess I can say it's an uneven movie, worth seeing if you're a devoted fan of Tom Hanks, dramas based on real-life situations, or very shaky camerawork.

Spoilage below.

Okay, by the end of the first ten minutes, I was almost ready to walk out.  And I have never walked out on a movie.  Ever.  I'm too much of a skinflint -- I'm going to get my $7 worth, blast it!  But the opening scenes contained some of the worst dialog I have ever heard in a major motion picture.  Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) and his wife Andrea (Catherine Keener) have a conversation in their minivan on the way to the airport that made me want to jump into the movie and put my hands over their mouths.  This conversation might not bother you at all, so don't stay away just because it drove me nuts.

Once Phillips got aboard his ship, things improved a lot.  The rest of the dialog was fine, if not inspired.  We got to know the pirates a little, we got to know the crew a little, the pirates attacked, and things got exciting.  All good.

The pirates

And then the Navy SEALS got called in to assist some Navy ships in rescuing Phillips, who wound up as a hostage, and things improved vastly.  Because the SEAL Commander is played by Max Martini, and as soon as he strode on screen, I remembered him from a couple eps of Castle, where he played a terrible bad guy that I found disturbingly fascinating.

I'm not sure if this is actually from Captain Phillips

And he kind of hijacked my brain, or half of it anyway.  And while half of me was paying attention to the movie, half of me was whirling around as a brand new character took shape before my inner eyes, Max Martini in a dark brown duster and cowboy hat, with a mean look and really nice boots.  By the time the credits finished, I had all kinds of ideas for a new western story, with four characters and the beginnings of a plot.

But anyway, I actually kind of hated the movie's ending.  They rescue Phillips at last, in a pretty gruesome and horrible way, and they take him aboard the Navy ship, and he's all in shock and breaking down in tears, and I wanted someone -- anyone! -- to put their arms around him and let him cry.  And no one did!  He so obviously needed the comfort of human touch, just a simple hug, and nope, he had to tough it out, sorry, buddy.  Grr.

That's probably a kind of incoherent review, but it's about all I've got for you, sorry.

EDIT:  Forgot to say if this was family-friendly.  There's some bad language, but not The Biggie, and a lot of danger and suspense.  The violence is mostly threatened, not enacted, though there's a scene of someone getting beaten up.  There's a good bit of blood here and there from non-life-threatening wounds.  And at the end, the "gruesome and horrible" rescue I just mentioned is mostly implied.  You don't see dead bodies.

Time for the latest installment in my "Ten Favorite" series.  This time, it's all about the dames, the dinguses, the shamuses, the femmes fatale.  Back alleys and broken dreams all the way.

I first encountered film noir when I was in high school.  Our local PBS station showed classic movies on Saturday nights, and I would record them if they sounded interesting, then watch them later.  One week, they showed The Big Sleep (1946).  I'd recently read the book, my first taste of Raymond Chandler's amazing writing.  I found the movie entrancing, this completely new-to-me style of gritty locations, tough characters, unsavory goings-on, and breathtakingly beautiful cinematography.  With just that one movie, I fell in love with a whole film style I hadn't known existed.

In case you're not familiar with it, film noir means "black/dark film" in French, and these movies are generally very dark indeed.  Usually, there's a crime committed and someone trying to right the wrong or solve the case.  Usually, there are tough men and tougher women -- some evil and some good and most in the grey area in between.  Usually, there's a sad ending, though not always -- most of my favorites end relatively happily.  But always, there is darkness.

So anyway, here are my ten favorite noir films.  Six are classic noir from the '40s, three are amazing neo-noir films, and one you could kind of call kiddie-noir, I guess.  As usual, I've provided my own descriptions and comments, and a link to my review if I've done one here before.



1. Laura (1944)

While solving the murder of beautiful Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) falls in love with her memory.  One of the most haunting murder mysteries with one of the biggest plot twists.

2. Road to Perdition (2002)

A hitman (Tom Hanks) takes his son (Tyler Hoechlin) on the run, seeking vengeance for the brutal murder of his wife and other son.  Brilliant acting from all involved, including Paul Newman, Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and some dude named Daniel Craig.

3. The Maltese Falcon (1941)

PI Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) searches for a missing statue, going up against every archetypical noir character in the process.  Gunsels, damsels in distress, femmes fatale, eccentric criminals -- they're all here, and all terrific.

4. LA Confidential (1997)

Three Hollywood cops (Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, and Guy Pearce) wrestle with corruption, vice, murder, and conspiracy.  One of the most intricately plotted movies ever, with all kinds of disparate strands woven together to form a dazzling whole.

5. To Have and Have Not (1944)

Fisherman Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) gets tangled up with a wandering woman (Lauren Bacall) and a bunch of anti-Nazi French patriots during WWII.  Loosely based on characters from the Ernest Hemingway novel by the same title.

6. Brick (2005)

Highschool loner Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) investigates the murder of the girl he may have loved, discovering a teenage underworld in the process.  One of the most creative movies I've ever seen.

7. The Big Sleep (1946)

PI Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) takes a case for a wealthy family with a lot of secrets.  Pairs Bogart again with the love of his real life, Lauren Bacall.

8. Swamp Water (1941)

An innocent bayou dweller (Dana Andrews) gets mixed up with a fugitive (Walter Brennan) and his daughter in the Okefenokee Swamp.  A very sweet movie in many ways.

9. Dick Tracy (1990)

Straight-as-an-arrow police detective Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) battles mobsters with names like Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino), 88 Keys (Mandy Patinkin), Breathless Mahoney (Madonna), and Mumbles (Dustin Hoffman).  The best film adaptation of a comic strip I've ever seen.  The funny names and bright colors make it seem like child's play, but it's got a pretty serious storyline.

10. Fallen Angel (1945)

A con man (Dana Andrews) hits town intending to seduce a lonely spinster (Alice Faye) out of her money while carrying on with a waitress (Linda Darnell) on the side.  Nothing goes as he planned.  This is noir, after all.

EDIT:  I feel like I need to post a warning here.  Brick, L.A. Confidential, and Road to Perdition are rated R.  Brick and Road to Perdition are R for violence and strong language.  L.A. Confidential is R for violence, strong language, and sexual content, and it very much earns that R rating.  It looks like Clearplay has filters for all three, and I strongly recommend using one for L.A. Confidential if you decide you want to see it.  But it is not in any way a "family friendly" movie.  The other two would clean up fairly easily.

I kind of put all movies that don't fit in another category into "drama."  Not enough action to be action/adventure?  Not funny enough to be comedy?  Not enough cowboyness to be a western?  Into drama it goes!

Like before, I've linked titles to previous posts I've done on those movies and included my own one-sentence synopsis of each movie.



1.  Ben-Hur (1959)

When Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) is unjustly imprisoned by his former best friend (Stephen Boyd), he vows revenge, but eventually learns revenge is less sweet than he'd expected.  Possibly the greatest spectacle epic ever filmed.

2.  The Man without a Face (1993)

A lonely boy (Nick Stahl) finds an unlikely mentor and friend one summer in the sixties.  My favorite Mel Gibson movie, and one of the first movies I bought when I went to college.

3.  Chocolat (2000)

A mysterious woman (Juliette Binoche) opens a chocolate shop in a sedate French village and teaches its inhabitants to reexamine their attitudes and customs.  The yummiest Johnny Depp movie ever -- do not watch this without a good supply of chocolate on hand!

4.  Apollo 13 (1995)

The true story of three astronauts (Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon) who must survive a space ship malfunction on the way to the moon.  I saw this in the theater when I was 15 with my parents.  It's amazing.

5.  Jane Eyre (1983)

A young governess (Zelah Clarke) teaches her employer (Timothy Dalton) about love and honor.  My favorite adaptation of my favorite novel.

6.  Giant (1956)

A spoiled East Coast beauty (Elizabeth Taylor) marries a stubborn Texas rancher (Rock Hudson), and they spend twenty-five years trying to figure each other out.  One of the first movies I can remember seeing, and my favorite James Dean movie.

7.  Witness (1985)

Detective John Book (Harrison Ford) goes undercover to protect a little Amish boy who is the only witness to a murder.  Taut and sweet at the same time.

8.  The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Three veterans (Dana Andrews, Frederic March, Harold Russell) find returning to civilian life much harder than they'd expected.  An amazingly frank look at post-war America.

9.  The Sheik (1921)

A willful English socialite (Agnes Ayres) catches the eye of a handsome desert sheik (Rudolph Valentino), then captures his heart with her refusal of his attentions.  Trust me, it makes a lot more sense on-screen.

10. The Sting (1973)

Two con men (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) try to con a ruthless businessman (Robert Shaw) who had their good friend murdered.  Try really hard to see this spoiler-free, it's a lot more fun that way!

Well, there we have it, my second list in this series.  Have you seen any of these?  Did you like or dislike them?  What are your favorite dramas?  Do you have a better way of classifying them than mine?