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(New) Noir style Movies


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Can anyone recommend me movies in the vein of Drive (2011), Maniac (2012), that sort of stuff? I love this kind of dark, rainy, inner city setting. I even started playing Max Payne 2 again because of this.

 

If I'm not mistaken, a lot of this stuff stems from the 50s, but I'm not sure if I'll enjoy, so I'm guessing 70s and up would be best.

 

Thanks a lot!

 

PS. You can recommend games too if you like, Gemini Rue is a great noir adventure / puzzle game

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I was thinking collateral before you mentioned it, yeah.

 

Maybe The Crow? Dark City? Those are more sci-fi and not exactly noir, but have a bleak, stylized city vibe...I thought Animal Kingdom was fairly noir-ish, in its way...then you have movies like The Grifters and House of Games, which are more traditionally noir...then there's "Hollywood Noir" like LA Confidential, Mulholland Drive...

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i don't see the problem in drive ripping off (80s) michael mann. it's not like he has done anything worthwhile since heat anyway (collateral was alright). and his 2006 version of miami vice was laughable. thief was goddamn amazing though, so if he's not gonna continue making films like that, i guess someone else will. atleast in the same vein stylistically.

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You might want to see earlier Refn's noir-styled film Fear X starring John Turturro. It was a visually ambitious flop and cost him a bankruptcy of his company and almost his career.

 

I would also recommend Touch Of Evil by Orson Wells, the last great noir movie of 50s. By the way, it was already considered neo-noir back then because initially genre traces back to 20s.

 

Le Samourai by Jean-Pierre Melville and The Driver by Walter Hill are both very strong points of reference for Drive. First one is a cult classic by one of the best French directors all-time.

 

Haven't seen Maniac, so can't go there on suggestions.

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You might want to see earlier Refn's noir-styled film Fear X starring John Turturro. It was a visually ambitious flop and cost him a bankruptcy of his company and almost his career.

i had no idea Refn made this when i saw it (originally because I saw Turturro's name on the box) and I found the film extremely frustrating and bland. IT seemed noirish but it was not at all what i was expecting. I think if Drive is any indication, he's vastly improved as a storyteller since Fear X..

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You might want to see earlier Refn's noir-styled film Fear X starring John Turturro. It was a visually ambitious flop and cost him a bankruptcy of his company and almost his career.

i had no idea Refn made this when i saw it (originally because I saw Turturro's name on the box) and I found the film extremely frustrating and bland. IT seemed noirish but it was not at all what i was expecting. I think if Drive is any indication, he's vastly improved as a storyteller since Fear X..

Maybe you haven't seen Valhalla Rising or Only God Forgives yet. Fear X is pretty smooth in comparison. Storytelling isn't the right word to characterize Refn's progress, Drive is his only Hollywood production and is of no indication. He's capable of doing very different things though.

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anyone ever see Brick (2005) with Joseph Gordon-Levitt? i saw it once and, i can't say it was great because it's been a long time, but it seemed interesting enough that i watched it all (it came on tv). anyway, what was neat about it was that it was like this high school kid, and it was like a throwback to old timey noir flicks but its high school stuff. so its like theres these shadey crimey type cats who are high school kids, and the main kid is investigating some things. imdb says his gf went missing/dead (i forget any deets) and thats what hes digging into. it has all the cliches like plot twists etc. and was pretty stylized. i thought it was kinda cool when i saw it.

 

as for classics, my favorite classic noir film as of now is The Big Heat, which i love. first time i saw it i couldn't believe some of the things that happen in it, for the time it was made. a lot of those older movies can be flakey, where there will be something in it that's very un-serious in the production, just some corny gag or something that takes you out of the immersion of the story, like how in D.O.A. (also considered a classic noir, but imo not nearly as good as big heat), right at the beginning there are these really loud obnoxious cat whistles whenever a woman walks by, and it does that shit a few times, and its almost like you're watching a bugs bunny cartoon or something that isn't even serious. it's like wtf this is supposed to be a serious, gritty crime film and it has these cartooney-ass sound effect gags in it. with movies from back then it seems like finding films that try to be consistently serious and pull it off well is hard. but i dig the big heat, its my sort ideal of what noir should be. fuckin badass.

 

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Drive did nothing for me but its neo-noir style feels like a blatant Michael Mann ripoff. If you haven't seen his movies, check out Thief and Manhunter at least, and maybe Heat and Collateral too.

 

Yeah, i couldn't finish that film, so pointless. Maybe there was a payoff later in the film but i didn't get that far into it. Not liking ryan renalds probably didn't help. He looks so goofy. Was watching with my brother and a mate, i just left the room so that that they didn't have to deal with my constant moaning.

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I know these aren't necessarily straightforward neo-noir films, and are pretty obvious movies, but 2 of my fav films, which I think have pretty hefty neo-noir elements:

 

*David Fincher's "The Game" (personal fav),

and

*Roman Polanski's "The Ninth Gate" (though I hate to promote his name).

 

Thank you for this thread, as I'm always on the hunt for neo-noir as well as cyberpunk films. (:

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I would also recommend Touch Of Evil by Orson Wells, the last great noir movie of 50s. By the way, it was already considered neo-noir back then because initially genre traces back to 20s.

 

Yeah, that one feels ahead of it's time.

 

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is also pretty surreal & not like other films of the 50's...you can check it out here:

 

I personally really like "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" from 1974; very raw and creative movie that you could call a mexican noir.

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oh, I finally read the OP, I guess we can get a little loose with it.

 

Chinatown

Black Rain (this one is a bit arse to be honest)

L.A. Confidential

Memento

Seven (to some extent, not noir, but rainy inner city)

A history of violence

Vengeance is mine (1979)

Blood simple

Bound (haven't seen this since it ran in the cinema, may be awfull)

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