Nightmare Alley (1947)

All I really knew about Nightmare Alley (1947) was that it was a classic film noir, it’s currently being remade by Guillermo Del Toro and it’s another film I’d not seen that was covered in Danny Peary’s Cult Movies 2. That, and it had something to do with carny life. This is definitely a case […]

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

I used to watch the Bruce Willis-Damon Wayans action flick, The Last Boy Scout (1991) repeatedly as a 15 year old, positioning it as a ‘gritty’ R 18+ rated alternative to Die Hard even though I was often rewatching a TV edit that whittled away all the F-words and excessive blood-letting. Over the successive decades, […]

Cast A Deadly Spell (1991)

I remember Cast A Deadly Spell (1991) being advertised in a comic book as a kid and getting it confused in my memories with CD-rom PC games with film noir/movie elements like Under A Killing Moon. Cast A Deadly Spell has been written about as a horror neo-noir, a post-war detective story in a parallel […]

Sweet Virginia (2017)

I sometimes still think about Sweet Virginia (2017) which I watched one grey afternoon on Netflix several years ago. I think it’s a good neo-noir thriller, not a great one; it flirts close to the nihilistic edge of something like No Country For Old Men, but sort of flinches, which is both a good and […]

Drunken Angel (1948)

Past Movie Squad reviewer Paul Grace wrote a recommendation of Drunken Angel (1948) for an old issue of the VHS Tracking zine. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, I only realised after I had watched it that it was his first collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune. While he’s always been a handsome, attractive man to me, Mifune […]