The Hot Spot (1990)

Look, I always knew about The Hot Spot (1990) because of an adolescent crush on Jennifer Connelly. A neo-noir directed by Dennis Hopper was also an alluring proposition, Don Johnson in the lead as an opportunistic drifter in a small Texan town, caught between two archetypical babes, the girl next door (Connelly) and the southern […]

Yokohama BJ Blues (1982)

Only after I finished watching Yokohama BJ Blues (1982) did I realise that the lead actor, Yusaku Matsuda, played the role of Sato the villain in the Michael Douglas action flick, Black Rain. I knew Matsuda was a Japanese movie star and was known for action films himself in the 1970s, and yet I just didn’t connect him […]

Eileen (2023)

Eileen (2023) is a character study. It’s also about stretching out the tension. The question keeps occurring: where is all this going? It’s the mid-1960s, it’s wintery and grey Massachusetts. Eileen works as a secretary in a prison. She looks after an alcoholic ex-cop father. She has daydreams about sex, or about killing her father. As […]

The Empty Beach (1985)

Bogie in Bondi. The Empty Beach (1985) is a neo-noir shot in Sydney during the mid-1980s, and based on a novel by Peter Corris, one of a series of books devoted to his detective character, Cliff Hardy. A commercial failure at the Australian box office, this is a boilerplate mystery. But what was satisfying to […]

Glass Chin (2014)

A friend, Adriane, first made me aware of director Noah Buschel by recommending his sports melodrama, The Phenom. Catching up with Buschel’s earlier films, I’ve been really taken by his application of neo-noir conventions and tropes within a low budget indie vision. From mannered dialogue to clearly intentionally framing and lighting, to the use of […]