Mid(ish) January Ramblin’ Recs

I made some noise earlier this month, back in new year’s resolution season, about updating the blog on a more regular basis. Trouble is, you need to have something to talk about. Expect semi-regular posts like these, where I jabber about what I’ve liked recently.

The Menu (2022). Once you’ve heard the premise of this pitch-black comedy, you’ll have a fairly good idea of where it’s going. But sometimes there’s nothing wrong with heading to a recognizable destination, particularly when you travel there in style. The Menu serves up savage satire courtesy of a script by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy studded with sharp lines, committed performances from the entire cast, and direction from Mark Mylod, who has been behind the camera for many of the best episodes of Succession and knows his way around the foibles of the super-rich. Some critics have carped about the obviousness of the film’s targets, but the news about the shuttering of fine-dining landmark Noma has only given The Menu added topicality. (Also, hat tip to that article for teaching me that “luxetarian” is apparently a word.)

Complicit, by Winnie M. Li (2022). Jordan Harper, whose new novel Everybody Knows wowed me, cited this book as part of the new L.A. crime canon. It’s a powerful and powerfully honest look at the pervasiveness of sexual assault and harassment in Hollywood, told from the perspective of a woman compelled by an escalating #MeToo scandal to revisit her derailed career as a producer—and, as the title implies, to confront her own possible culpability in perpetuating the system. Li, who is sadly all too familiar with many aspects of this story, writes about it with clear-eyed force. The perspective makes for a marked contrast with the adaptation of She Said (2022), about the New York Times investigation of Harvey Weinstein, a dutiful film that lacks the crackle of great newspaper dramas and only comes to life when Weinstein’s victims are given voice. (One minor caveat: much of the late action in Complicit revolves around an independent film nominated for a Golden Globe for editing, when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has never given such an award. But then the HFPA has never cared about the technical aspects of filmmaking; after all, this is the outfit that split the lead acting categories into comedy and drama so they could double the nominees and pack the house with stars, which is the only thing it gives a damn about.)

Slow Horses (Apple TV+). I’m a huge fan of Mick Herron’s scabrously funny spy novels; read this recent New Yorker profile for a taste of his skewed sensibility. The debut season of Apple’s adaptation improved as it went along, and its sophomore outing, based on Dead Lions, builds on that momentum. Christopher Chung seems to have been set loose to make Roddy Ho as obnoxious and oblivious a character as he is in the books; my favorite bit of backstory is that while Ho’s MI5 colleagues have been exiled to Slough House because of mistakes they’ve made in the field, he’s there simply because nobody likes him. Gary Oldman is understandably having the time of his life as shambling wreck Jackson Lamb, and I’m fairly sure that in season’s two first episode he lapses into his George Smiley voice from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) as an in-joke.

Detectorists (Acorn TV). The release of a special Christmas movie (OK, a 75-minute episode) reminded me of how much I love this show. Mackenzie Crook of the original The Office created the series and stars alongside Toby Jones, the duo playing amateur historians and metal-detector enthusiasts. (As the show points out more than once, a detector is a piece of equipment, a detectorist its operator.) Its meditative rhythms and its celebration of hobbies and camaraderie as necessary balms against the grind of daily life give it a healing quality, so much so I looked into buying a metal detector myself. The movie isn’t the place to jump in—better to experience the full series in all its glory—but it was great to revisit these characters and it features one honest, boozy heart-to-heart between Crook’s Andy and his wife Becky (played by the fabulous Rachael Stirling) that prompted Rosemarie to say that if the lead characters on Fleishman Is in Trouble had engaged in one such conversation, neither Fleishman would be in trouble.
 

Noir City We’ll Meet Again Edition

Issue 36 of the Film Noir Foundation’s magazine Noir City is now out in both digital and print editions, and it marks a bittersweet moment for yours truly. It’s my final issue as editor-in-chief. After fourteen years on the editorial staff, the last three-plus in the top job, I’m hanging up my spurs. 

But I’m leaving on a high note. Check out that cover image, for starters. We celebrate 100 years of film noir icon Veronica Lake with Lynsey Ford’s story looking at Lake’s career and her private life, “as tragic and convoluted as any film noir plot.” Also in the issue—

A brilliant feature by Farran Smith Nehme, aka the Self-Styled Siren, on the neo-noir world of “the French Hitchcock,” Claude Chabrol;

Brent Calderwood surveys the slippery history of masseurs and masseuses in film noir;

Noir City’s own Steve Kronenberg hears the siren song of Gale Sondergaard;

Jim Thomsen profiles “Driver’s Seat” singer and noir-inspired artist Paul Roberts;

Bob Sassone unwraps the singular charms of the classic yuletide-set noir Cover Up;

Eddie Muller offers a heartfelt memorial to his friend and colleague, novelist Jim Nisbet;

The Nitrate Diva Nora Fiore compares the book and film versions of Out of the Past.

Plus book reviews, film reviews, and more—including the farewell edition of my Cocktails & Crime column, with one last libation for the road.

It’s been an honor to work alongside publisher/FNF honcho Eddie Muller and ace designer Michael Kronenberg on every issue of this magazine, and I’m particularly proud of helping to launch the print edition of Noir City. I’ll still write for the magazine on occasion—look for a story from me later this year—and I’ll remain on the FNF’s advisory board. If you want to know which incredibly capable people will be taking the Noir City reins, why not get yourself a subscription by donating to the FNF, with your contribution going to support the Foundation’s film restoration efforts? If you prefer the hard stuff, you can order a print edition exclusively from Amazon. Either way, you won’t regret it.

Adieu, 2022

Among the lessons of this odd year was one that shouldn’t have needed reinforcing: corporations are not to be trusted. As social media continues its death spiral—I’m still working out how I feel about that impending collapse—I toyed with other outlets. Medium? Substack? ThoughtHub? OverShare? Maybe even, God help us, a newsletter?

Then I remembered how this all started for me: with this blog. In 2023, I plan on making a concerted effort to update this site on a regular basis. Each post, of course, to be touted on every platform that has not yet winked out of existence. May as well start with a rundown of what I liked in the year we just put to bed.

Books—Show Business

I read so many of these as a result of my Renee Patrick and Noir City duties that they warrant their own section.

The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, by Isaac Butler

“Method acting” has become a catchall term. In this electrifying book, Butler traces the twisted (in every sense) history of this school of performance, from Moscow to New York to Hollywood, bringing each milieu to brilliant life while not being stingy with opinions.

Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century, by Dana Stevens

Not a biography of the Great Stone Face but an atlas of his times, using Keaton as a prism through which to view a host of subjects: child labor laws, early chain restaurants, the evolving understanding of addiction, and the Hollywood disappointments of F. Scott Fitzgerald, with Keaton’s genius as the thread somehow holding it all together. Fascinating, endlessly playful.

Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers, by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green

Rodgers was stage royalty—the daughter of composer Richard Rodgers and mother of Tony winner Adam Guettel, she wrote the music for Once Upon a Mattress and the novel Freaky Friday—and seemed to know everyone involved with American musical theater. Her book, cowritten with New York Times critic Green, more than lives up to its title. 

Books—Fiction

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

Breathlessly inventive, spanning decades in a partnership between two videogame designers that’s deeper than a friendship but never quite a romance, this is my favorite novel of the last few years.

Silent Parade, by Keigo Higashino

Technically a December 2021 title, but I didn’t get to it until this year. Higashino is perhaps the best current writer of traditional mysteries, and Silent Parade is his latest triumph, riffing on both locked-room stories and Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express while offering a dense, idiosyncratic portrait of contemporary Tokyo.

Everybody Knows, by Jordan Harper

Technically a January 2023 title, but I got to it early. The big, bruising LA noir we need right now.

Books—Nonfiction

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity, by Devon Price

This look at people on the autism spectrum who “mask” as neurotypical hit hard.

The Storm is Here: An American Crucible, by Luke Mogelson

A war correspondent returns home to the US in 2020 and covers the country … like a war correspondent. Ends with Mogelson’s harrowing reportage from inside the Capitol on January 6.

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, by Beverly Gage

Drawing on new research, Gage’s biography depicts Hoover as a creature of Washington DC (he was born and raised there, which shaped him more than you’d think), of racist fraternities (the impact they made on him was considerable), and of bureaucracy, all of which molded the FBI and in turn 20th century America.

I also would like it noted for the record that 2022 was the year that I started and finished Robert A. Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. I even took a photo to commemorate the occasion, with Godzilla added for scale.

TV

The Offer (Paramount+). I went in to this 10-episode limited series about the making of The Godfather with low expectations. It ended up being my favorite program of the year, the one I recommended non-stop. Sure, it’s a love letter to the Paramount lot where Renee Patrick’s Edith Head novels are set, but it’s also a canny piece of mythologizing boasting some terrific turns, chiefly Matthew Goode’s as studio kingpin Robert Evans. If this show had aired on HBO, Goode would be a slam-dunk to win an Emmy. Instead, it’s the performance that got away.

Irma Vep (HBO). I didn’t think Olivier Assayas needed to remake his 1996 film, itself about the attempt to remake the 1915-16 silent film serial. I was wrong. With a beguiling Alicia Vikander and Vincent Macaigne in a terrifically funny/sad performance as a director who loses his confidence and his mind.

Severance (Apple+). As good as everyone says it is.

Reservation Dogs (FX). No sophomore jinx here. Season two was every bit the equal of season one.

Ghosts (CBS). A big network hit and a comedy to boot that still doesn’t get enough love for the quality of its writing.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo (Netflix). I haven’t finished the show yet, so according to my own rule I should reserve judgment. But the way I’m rationing episodes of this South Korean series about a novice autistic lawyer is the highest compliment I can pay it. Related: it would have been great to get a second season of As We See It, with actors who are on the spectrum playing similar characters seeking their places in the world, but Amazon recently announced it wouldn’t return.

Movies

Decision to Leave. I could describe Park Chan-wook’s film as a brilliant contemporary noir, or a policier with heart, or a dazzling reinterpretation of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Instead, I’ll call it the movie that utterly wrecked me.

The Banshees of Inisherin. Quotes from this movie are already cropping up in my conversation.

Nope. A horror film that is truly horrifying, and that left room for awe.

Top Gun: Maverick. Does some of my affection stem from its status as The Blockbuster That Saved Theaters? Sure, probably. (It’s worth noting that I saw the first four movies on this list on the big screen, which only added to their impact.) But seeing a movie star do movie star things on a huge canvas is no minor thing.

RRR. The one movie I wished I’d seen on the big screen.

Tár. Halfway through, I asked myself if I hated it and considered tapping out. Then it clicked into place for me, and I understood the huge swing writer/director Todd Field was taking.

All that said, the 2022 movie I will end up seeing the most times will likely be Confess, Fletch. And after I’d badmouthed the trailer to anyone who would listen. We’d better get another of these movies with Jon Hamm. We deserve it.

 

There’s Only One Hitch—Or Is There?

Just in time to plan your holiday viewing—and for the paperback release of the latest Renee Patrick novel Idle Gossip next week—comes my story at CrimeReads considering eighty years of Hitchcock movies not directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The list has fifteen entries, but I namecheck plenty more, and had to refrain from tossing in additional titles. It was plenty of fun to write, so why not check it out? (Photo from Last Embrace, the 1979 Jonathan Demme film featuring a finale at a famous landmark that Hitch himself would have admired.) 

 

Noir City Two Directors for the Price of One Edition

Is it unseemly for me to say that this is best issue of Noir City yet?
Very well then I am unseemly.
(I am the editor, I contain multitudes.)
(Also, sorry, Uncle Walt.)

The latest edition of the magazine published by the Film Noir Foundation is now available in your choice of digital or print—or what the hell, why not both? I guarantee you’re going to want in on this.

Let’s start with the cover story. Back when FNF honcho Eddie Muller and I cooked up the Modern Noir Master award, we drafted a list of dream recipients. One of the first names we both mentioned was John Dahl, who merits a place in the neo-noir pantheon for two movies alone: Red Rock West (1993) and The Last Seduction (1994).

(Fun fact: I attended one of the earliest screenings of Seduction, at the Seattle International Film Festival. When the movie ended, I joined the silent, dumbstruck line for the restroom. Finally, the guy in front of me blurted out, “Men are so stupid!” We unanimously agreed with him.)

Sam Moore interviews Dahl at length, about those movies, other gems like Rounders (1998) and Joy Ride (2001), and his work on noir-inflected TV shows including Breaking Bad, Justified, and Ray Donovan.

But wait, there’s another director! Nick Kolakowski talks to Michael Mann and his Heat 2 coauthor Meg Gardiner about moving the world of his 1995 magnum opus to print, and pushing the story into both the past and the future. Also in this issue—

Nora Fiore, the Nitrate Diva, on the many uses of lipstick in film noir. I have to say this piece is among my favorites to appear in the magazine on my watch: a brilliant concept by Nora, written evocatively, and brought to vivid life on the page by ace designer Michael Kronenberg.

A one-of-a-kind memoir by Chris D., front man for the Flesh Eaters turned film scholar, on the surprising overlap between his two passions: punk rock and film noir.

A deep dive from John Wranovics on Harry Popkin, the onetime fight promoter who produced a series of noir titles that pulled no punches.

Noir City stalwart Jake Hinkson on noir’s dark vision of academia.

Joseph Moncure March’s epic poem The Set-Up already spawned the 1949 cinematic adaptation regarded as a classic of both noir and boxing films. Now it’s been turned into a graphic novel, and Nathalie Atkinson talks to artist Erik Kriek about it.

Plus more goodies, including my usual cocktail recipe.

Donate to the Film Noir Foundation, and in addition to supporting our restoration efforts you’ll receive a subscription to Noir City. You can also purchase the print edition exclusively at Amazon. Then settle in, because you’ll want to read this bad boy cover to cover.

Noir City “The Man That Got Away” Edition

Who’s the anguished cover boy on the latest edition of Noir City magazine, published by the Film Noir Foundation and edited by yours truly? None other than William Holden. Despite his presence in some landmark noir films, he’s not an actor synonymous with the form. I sometimes think of him as noir’s man that got away; James Ellroy once said that his dream cast for L.A. Confidential would have included “the craven, self-loathing, handsome William Holden of Sunset Boulevard” as Ed Exley, the Guy Pearce role. But as Rachel Walther points out in her terrific story, Holden brought a “brooding restlessness” to every role he played, carrying noir’s shadows forever with him. With a sidebar on Holden’s rivalry, on and offscreen, with Humphrey Bogart. Also in this issue—

Imogen Sara Smith surveys the dark world of film noir from Argentina;

Ray Banks on the heist films of Stanley Baker;

Bob Sassone considers the invaluable contributions the Saturday Evening Post made to noir;

Steve Kronenberg makes the case for character actor J.T. Walsh as neo-noir's best bad guy;

Sharon Knolle looks at horror films from noir directors;

And more.

I’ve got my column along with a review of a new book about Holden’s favorite director, Billy Wilder. My favorite contribution is a conversation with Tony Award-nominated actress and singer Melissa Errico about her new album Out of the Dark: The Film Noir Project. Melissa knows her noir, the album is a pleasure, and our chat was loads of fun.

You’re spoiled for choice when it comes to getting Noir City. You can make a contribution of twenty dollars or more to the FNF, the money going directly to our mission of preserving, restoring, and exhibiting classic noir films. That nets you a digital subscription to the magazine. Or you can purchase a print edition of our latest issue exclusively through Amazon, with our cut of the proceeds going to that same mission. Either way, pick up a copy.
 

Probably Should’ve Mentioned This Earlier ...

... but Idle Gossip, the latest Lillian Frost & Edith Head mystery that I wrote with Rosemarie under our house pseudonym Renee Patrick, is now out. People seem to like it. Let Renee tell you all about it.

 

Noir City On The Midway Edition

At the Film Noir Foundation, we couldn’t think of a better way to show 2021 the door—and welcome in 2022—than sending the latest digital issue of Noir City magazine to all FNF donors on New Year’s Eve. The print edition, available exclusively at Amazon, followed a week later. I’m only getting around to posting about it now. 2022 is already that kind of year, kids.

The centerpiece of the issue is an exclusive interview with Guillermo Del Toro and Kim Morgan about their bold new reimagining of Nightmare Alley, currently in theaters. FNF honcho, TCM host, and man about town Eddie Muller weighs in on the film. And we also have a feature on the long, twisted history of carnivals in film noir.

Next up, a dazzler of a conversation between Eddie and his favorite living author, Paul Auster. Pour yourself a drink and pull up a chair to listen in as they go long on noir, art, and life.

Also in this issue—

Imogen Sara Smith considers the doppelganger in film noir, with a special focus on Joseph Losey’s harrowing masterpiece Mr. Klein (1976).

Get behind the wheel with the cabdrivers of noir, courtesy of Jake Hinkson.

Danilo Castro sizes up the “frontier trilogy” of Taylor Sheridan—Sicario, Hell or High Water, Wind River—that maps the territory where noir meets the west.

Actor Brent Spiner is best known for playing Lt. Commander Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation. His new book Fan Fiction is a wildly inventive “mem-noir” about his time on the show, blending autobiography with a crime plot. He kindly agreed to drop by and name his five favorite classic noir films.

I talk to writer/musician Willy Vlautin, whose The Night Always Comes is hands down my favorite novel of 2021. Compassionate and chilling, this noir odyssey is the book for our political moment. Read the interview, but more importantly read Willy’s book.

Plus my column, my review of what could easily end up my favorite book of 2022—Isaac Butler’s ambitious and compelling The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act—and so much more, all of it spectacularly laid out by ace designer Michael Kronenberg. I mean, just look at that cover.

You can buy the print edition at Amazon, or contribute at least twenty dollars to the FNF’s campaign to preserve and restore classic film noir to receive the bells-and-whistles digital version. You want my advice? Do both. You won’t regret it.