“Channeled through science and machines, good ol’ American ‘know-how’ had helped win the war, save democracy and crush tyranny. It’s understandable that a similar story would percolate through to the small-scale conflicts of cops and criminals.”
“Kusama skillfully reinterprets the stylistics of classic film noir to explore the genre’s timeless and heady themes: obsession, loneliness, guilt and (most of all) identity…”
“It’s telling that all of the human interactions in ‘Murder by Contract’ involve either money or business. The illusions of the profit motive and market forces have alienated Claude from his own emotions and left him broken and alone.”
“Where is our own cinema of madness?”
“In ‘Pitfall’ and ‘Crime Wave,’ two seminal films bookending the classic noir cycle, director André De Toth develops a more nuanced view of marriage and the married couple.”
“Kitano possesses an eye for color and mise-en-scène. Passages often become works of visual art in themselves.”
“The movie isn’t just about the way it was, the prudish hypocrisy of an earlier time, or outdated sexual mores. For all its provincialism, ‘Splendor in the Grass’ is a story for the ages.”
“This isn’t simple hypocrisy. It’s a reversal of expected roles. Children in ‘The Square’ are equated with a moral courage that has been stripped from the film’s adults.”
“Lending the story a rarefied patina is the cinematography.”
“In us all lurks a potential Franck — desperate for intimacy, willing to risk oblivion for a moment’s embrace.”
“Film noir is all about questioning assumptions, and several of such films that feature portraits of women do nothing less.”
