Flicker Alley debuts two brand-new restorations this week with the DVD/Blu-ray combo release of Too Late for Tears (1949) and Woman on the Run (1950). Public domain victims whose copies have proliferated on YouTube and other sites, Flicker Alley shows why, at least in the case of Woman on the Run, what an assured thriller…
Oft-considered one of the greatest film noirs ever made, John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle is a story about the perils of city life…with the added bonus of a jewel heist. John Huston’s story is a dark and twisty tale that isn’t so much about law and order, but the crimes people commit against each other. Newly…
By 1946 actor Humphrey Bogart fit into the role of detective Philip Marlowe so perfectly it might as well have been his favorite pair of shoes. Though this was Bogie’s own time playing the detective, The Big Sleep was simply a culmination of his past films coming together in perfect unison. He’d played another famous…
Despite the ingrained conventions of film noir some films can leave you surprised. So it is with director Phil Karlson’s Kansas City Confidential. What starts as a typical heist film becomes a story of duplicity between good guys and bad about the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell to spare others. Filled with a…
Last year I reviewed the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) starring James Stewart and Doris Day. I wasn’t in love with it, but Day was solid and the sweeping cinematography captivated me. During the recent TCM Classic Film Festival I was able to watch the original installment of Hitchcock’s kidnapping…
There’s a formula to film noirs, and while not strictly enforced there are particular elements one looks for – the morally ambiguous hero, interplay between light and shadow, an evil femme fatale. It is both this adherence to and divergence from convention that makes director Andre de Toth’s Pitfall so special. Recently released on a…
The Phantom of Crestwood is the equivalent of watching a radio serial play out on-screen. Maybe that’s because it was! As the film’s introduction states, the series was broadcast via radio with the final episode, solving the murder, revealed in the film. Call it deceptive or ingenious, The Phantom of Crestwood would attract just as…
