“In the end, there can be no simple feelings of joy or satisfaction in seeing Batman defeat the Penguin — in seeing the good guy defeat the bad guy — because who’s the winner here, really?”
“In ‘Night Falls on Manhattan,’ Lumet arrives at acceptance — the system is what it is. He is resigned to his inability to chronicle any meaningful change through his work.”
“In the cinema of Michael Mann, romance comes fast or not at all, often smothered by the anonymous network of mankind itself or maybe just your job.”
“In Fassbinder’s conception of West Germany following its chaotic autumn, terror takes on the tenor of performance art; like addicts lusting after a fix, the groupuscule seeks ennobling sensation; they must be satiated by “Something symbolic…”
“‘Miss & Mrs. Cops’ is a genuinely light-hearted movie which never strays into the emotional register of real life or real pain.”
“‘Prince of the City’ is a taxing, draining experience, but one that is ultimately rooted in very real despair; the system, it argues, has failed. If these characters are the products of the American criminal justice system, then it ought to be blown up.”
“Kusama skillfully reinterprets the stylistics of classic film noir — mannered lighting, unusual camera angles and a bleak, existential tone — to explore the genre’s timeless and heady themes: obsession, loneliness, guilt and (most of all) identity…”
“By creating such a sympathetic, human subject, Lumet deepens the impact of his institutional critique of the justice system; its dehumanizing effect on American society seems all the more tragic when Sonny is its victim.”
“In dramatizing themes of absence and presence so thoroughly, ‘Klute’ embodies a central feature of neo-noir; as a self-conscious revision of a classic film cycle, noir is always both absent and present in neo-noir films.”
“From the moment Ramona first appears, ‘Hustlers’ announces itself as a new addition to the neo-noir cannon — a film about bright lights in dark places.”