Place Vendôme (1998)

Place Vendôme (1998) fits the bill for French neo-noir in that the key female characters are glamorous blondes while the men are all weathered looking mutts. The cinematography feels very 1990s “movie for adults” in the dark hues of the interiors, and its overall polished feeling, reminiscent of a Grisham or Le Carre adaption from […]

Silent Trigger (1996)

Dreaming about a YouTube ambient video titled, “Meditating with Dolph Lundgren in his high rise building sniper’s nest while raining.” While Silent Trigger (1996) is an action movie that gives fans what they want – Dolph using a massive sniper rifle to take down masked mercenaries who are toting sub-machine guns – it also aims […]

Automatic (1995)

“This guy is cool!” – security guard under his breath, watching a cyborg on a monitor wipe the floor with a crack team of mercenaries. Automatic (1995) is a sci-fi action flick Die Hard knock-off which is mostly shot in the shadowy interiors of a corporate building, the HQ for robot/manufacturing company RobGen. Some movies […]

Dark Breed (1996)

Delving further into the world of PM Entertainment productions was a highlight for me of 2023, a repository for direct-to-video B-grade action schlock from the 1980s and 1990s, where they put the money on the screen with the amount of explosions featured, cars flipped on the streets and stunt-people flung through the air. My compulsion […]

Liebestraum (1991)

Liebestraum (1991) takes its title from the Franz Liszt composition; we hear a swing-era version playing on a turntable when a couple are murdered during their after-hours affair. The titular piece of music is one fetish object in director-writer Mike Figgis’ neo-noir narrative, but it is supplanted another fetish object – the building itself. A […]