Neo-Noir Watch: Gloria (1980)

Watched:  04/19/2026

Format:  Video on Demand/ YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Cassavetes

For some reason the algorithm has been asking me to watch this movie for years.  

I'm not really sure why the algo does this, but my YouTube TV will find a movie that it decides it wants to recommend, and then the movie will follow me around.  First among these has been Gloria (1980), and because I don't think I've ever seen Gena Rowlands be anything less than great and because Cassavetes' movies are, at minimum, interesting, I wanted to check it out eventually.  So, I guess, thanks, data?

On paper, the movie is deceptively simple.  An accountant for the mob (Buck Henry) has been skimming (and maybe doing other things) and is found out.   Knowing the enforcers are coming, he's trying to leave, but everyone in his family of five is scared and doesn't know what to do - his wife, their two kids and his mother-in-law.  All are resorting to their comfort and security measures instead of just getting the f out.

When neighbor Gloria (Gena Rowlands) comes by to return the sugar she borrowed in the middle of all this, they make her take the boy - aged 6 or 7 - back to her apartment.  Almost immediately, the mob shows up and kills the rest of the family.  Gloria tries to flee the scene with the kid, but the press is outside and snaps her picture with the son.  

Noir Watch: Down Three Dark Streets (1954)

Watched:  04/12/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Arnold Laven

We're just going to slowly make our way through the Ruth Roman filmography, I guess.  

I had no idea what this was about, but it's a bit of 1950's pro-FBI propaganda.  It makes sure we, the citizens and tax-payers, understand how the FBI is working tirelessly on crimes big and small.  

When an FBI agent, a family man, is killed, Broderick Crawford is asked to pick up all three of his open cases to figure out which case was the one that got his pal murdered.  And, much as in real life, things move a lot faster now that one of their own was the victim.

The three cases are:

Noir Watch: T-Men (1947)

Watched:  04/09/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First, surprisingly

Director:  Anthony Mann

When you think of film noir, you may get some evocative images in mind.  Deep shadow, fog, deep focus shots.  There's a few photographers who helped define this style that we're still reeling from (and stealing from) today, and among the top three or so is John Alton.  And, boy howdy, is this movie John Alton. 

So, if you want a movie that's a gritty crime procedural (with a voice-over hellbent on taking me out of the movie) and looks like a million bucks, this is it.   

It is also very much an Anthony Mann movie.  Tough, not afraid to go dark, and not talking down to the audience.  However, it's not a movie about bootleggers or guys running a numbers racket or any of that.  There's no dame manipulating men with a promise of sex.  This is a movie about undercover men of the Treasury department.  Thus, T-Men (1947). 

Wise Noir Watch: The Captive City (1952)

Watched:  04/06/2026

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Robert Wise

So, this is the second time I watched this particular film.  Here's the first.  Apparently just before COVID hit.  

A lot of what I'd say is in that first write-up.  But to recap:

The story is about an editor at a small-ish town newspaper figuring out that (a) the mob has moved in on his town and taken over the penny ante gambling operation bringing it into a combination and (b) the people of his town are maybe way more invested in a bit of low-stakes gambling than who gets the house cut.  

Our hero, John Forsythe, is pulled in when a private detective who tried to tell him about the racketeers is killed.  Then, a key witness is murdered and its made to look like a suicide.

The power of the press is quashed when local business interests pull their advertising, threatening the paper's financial stability.  

However, good 'ol real-life Senator Estes Kefauver has established an anti-mob task force, and Our Hero sees this as his salvation.  Kefauver, a ridiculous publicity hound, signed on *after* the movie had been shot, and added himself to the movie.

I think in 2026, the movie is a curious artifact, and not just because it reminds you Kefauver may be remembered beyond his expiration date thanks to his publicity stunts.  But also, in the past decade apparently we have up on making gambling illegal and sports books exist very profitably online.  There's even sports books right inside many professional sports facilities.  

Anyway, really excited about the epidemic of sports betting that's out there ruining lives.  (We really need to take a hard look at our weirdo culture of 24/7 sports talk and sports books available at the touch of a button.)

As a Robert Wise movie, first - it's from his production company, Aspen Pictures.  The budget isn't what Wise was playing with at the major studios, but his ability as a director is still absolutely there.  He's getting the most out of the talent on hand (most of whom you won't know) and there's some great cinematography that really leans into the tension. 

It really is interesting as it sort of refuses to have a single heavy at the center of the story, and instead is more of a crippling realization that when crime gets its hands into the right places and everyone wins, rooting out the problem is incredibly hard.  Who do you even go for?  If even the clergy thinks it's impossible to get their parishioners to quit the gambling or turn away from what they make on book?  Seems bad.  And I'm not sure if the Federal Government really is the magic bullet solution the movie presents. 

Totter Noir Watch: Under the Gun (1951)

Watched:  03/29/2026

Format:  Sketchy Russian Site/ Archive.org

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ted Tetzlaff

So, because the studios are dumb and don't make their older movies easily available, I watched this on a sketchy Russian site (link above).  And I wanted to watch this movie. In fact, I would have paid real American dollars to watch this movie.  

"Why watch this one?" you ask.  It has (in order of interest) Audrey Totter, Richard Conte, Sam Jaffe and John McIntire.  And was a crime flick I'd not seen discussed anywhere except for one still I saw go by on social media a couple of months back.

Conte plays a mobster who has gone to Miami from NYC, and while there found singer Audrey Totter,* who he plans to bring back to New York and make a star.  Totter is wary, but knows this could be her big break, and so jumps in a car with Conte and his two heavies.

Noir Watch: Crime of Passion (1956)

Watched:  03/20/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Gerd Oswald

I was a bit shocked to learn I'd never seen or heard of a movie co-starring Barbara Stanwyck and Sterling Hayden, with Raymond Burr.  And a noir, nonetheless.  

Look, over the years I've really come to think of Stanwyck as *the best at what she does*, something Eddie Muller discusses in his pre-amble to the movie.  She's just incredible in versatility, range, and believability in everything she does.  And this movie is no exception.  I love Hayden, but Sterling Hayden shows up and is Sterling Hayden in everything he does.  Raymond Burr has three modes I've seen - big brute with a brain, Perry Mason and yelling about Godzilla.  And that's okay.  But Stanwyck is the focus here, and she's fantastic.  

She plays a career-gal reporter - no longer a young woman - stuck doing a sob sister column and asked to get "the woman's angle" on stories.  During a murder investigation she first gets her big break and national attention, and meets a detective played by Sterling Hayden.  

Wise Noir Watch: The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

Watched: 03/20/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Third

Director:  Robert Wise

I saw this one initially with JeniferSF at Noir City at the Castro.  And then gave it another spin just two years ago.  

Based on a stage play (someone should do this one) it's an interesting film that feels like, emotionally, it pulls a bit from Rebecca and a bit from Laura, what with the huge portrait hanging over the hearth that seems to stare back at the cast, a ghost judging everyone.

A Polish refugee (Valentina Cortesa) from a concentration camp steals the identity of her friend - hoping to have a life on the other side of losing everything in the war.  The friend had a rich aunt to whom she'd sent her infant son, but as no one knows what the friend looks like - she figures she could pass.  

However, by the time she makes it to the US to find the relation, the aunt has died and left everything to the boy.  A relation (Richard Basehart) has adopted the boy, and when Cortesa meets Basehart in New York, he decides she's the one for him, and marries her.

Now in San Francisco, there's a nanny for the boy who is just creepy and possessive (think Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca).  And, as a shocker, the kind US Army Major who was helping our hero at the concentration camp shows up - he's a friend of the family and an attorney in SF.  And clearly would gladly be on our hero given the chance.

Anyway - things go very sideways.

SPOILERS

Australian Neo-Noir Watch: The Dry (2020)

Watched:  03/05/2026

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Connolly

A while back, for various reasons, Jamie and I both read the novel The Dry. It was a big seller in Australia, where it was written and takes place.  And made its way here where I think it's done well.  

I asked for some downtime before I watched the inevitable movie adaptation so I could try to see it with fresh eyes, and hadn't honestly, thought about the book much since I read it.  It's fine!  Go read it.  But I think Jamie saw it starred Eric Bana and was happy to watch - and, anyhoo... here we are.

In the way of movies adapting popular books - the movie is largely a straight adaptation with some extraneous bits knocked off and some efficiencies found in storytelling.  But the film really does capture the mood of the novel, and as Jamie and I agreed, it looks more or less exactly how I saw it in my mind's eye.  Bleak, oppressive - a murder mystery in sun-scorched rural Australia.  

Wise/ Totter Noir Watch: The Set-Up (1949)

Watched:  02/27/2026

Format:  TCM on my DVR

Viewing:  I have no idea anymore

Director:Robert Wise

It took me a minute to get to The Set-Up (1949) as the next film up in my Robert Wise retrospective watch, mostly because I had just watched it last April.  That said - while I don't have a list of favorite films at this point, if I did, I suppose this would be one of them.  It stars two of my favorites with Robert Ryan and Audrey Totter, who both get to do great character work.  I'm not sure you get Rocky without this movie, but maybe - though I think they share a lot in their DNA.

Ryan plays an aging boxer - he's over thirty-five, and he's still boxing the small circuit, nowhere near the top of the card.  He's still living hand-to-mouth and has a girl who - until recently - believed in him, Julie (Totter).  The night we find them, she's lost faith.  She can't stand seeing him go into the ring and get pummeled, see him after when he can't even recognize her, his brains are so scrambled.  He's wrecking his health and their future for a dream that isn't possible.

Told in real-time (no fooling - like, to the minute) the movie follows roughly 75 minutes that will define the lives of both.

What's fascinating is that this movie has That Barton Fink Feeling - it's a movie about people living on the edge.  And those people are not just Stoker Thompson and Julie.  The movie has over a dozen real characters, and everyone is going through something.  

Heist Neo-Noir Watch: Crime 101 (2026)

Watched:  02/26/2026

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  Bart Layton

If the title Crime 101 (2026) seems a little uninspired, what I think I'd say is - it feels like this movie is by someone who has seen and likes the same movies I've seen and liked.  And that's... fine.  If you don't watch a lot of heist movies, this may feel fresh.  It has a sprawling, winding storyline intersecting three compelling characters.  And it has an all-star cast that made the movie a real treat.  

Chris Hemsworth plays one of the modern takes on the post-Parker, post Le Samourai crooks - a loner with seemingly no life but the crimes they'll commit.  No friends, no family.  He's stolen millions in expensive jewels.  His connection/ fence/ maybe mentor is no less than Nick Nolte.  Mark Ruffalo is a cop who is such a rogue *he plays by the rules*.  He may be on the LAPD, but he's not just framing people to get his numbers up.  Also, his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh!) is leaving him.  Halle Berry is an insurance salesperson (I missed the actual job title) to the uber-wealthy.  If you need someone to help you get your Matisse insured, she's your gal.  But she's also realizing her place in her company - and it isn't a rocket ride to the top.  

Noir Watch: Illegal (1955)

Watched:  02/13/2026

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lewis Allen

First, this movie has a terrible title.  I think we can all agree on that.

Second, this movie has amazing design for the titles.  Never mind that they don't fit the mood of the movie.

I feel like Joe Dante would approve.

Edward G. Robinson, the most surprising of leading men til Danny DeVito's star rose unexpectedly in the 1990's, plays a District Attorney for The City.  He's such a cracker jack, he tries his own cases, until one day he accidentally sends DeForest Kelly to the chair. 

The City does not mess around with swift justice.  Like, Edward G. Robinson only has time for dinner after the trial and already Kelly is a dead man walking.  Though Robinson finds out really as fast as one is like to do, he calls the prison just as the lights flicker.

Anyway - disgraced, Robinson quits his job and spirals into drink.  At the bottom of his lowly state he's recruited by a mob boss who wants an attorney on his side, but Robinson knows that once this guy gets his hooks in you, you're stuck forever and declines.  But after he gets involved in an embezzling case, he finds he's accidentally involved with the crook. 

As DA, he was mentoring Nina Foch who he's tried to not get romantic eyes for, pushing her to his investigator.  And Jayne Mansfield shows up as a plucky piano player (famously, she could very much play the piano and other instruments).  

Involved with the gangster, Robinson's desire to win cases takes over and he doesn't care much who he's getting off the hook, or what insane theatrics he needs to perform to win the case.  And the theatrics are insane, indeed.  

He's beating the pants off the DA with such frequency, they begin to suspect there's a mole and look at Foch, who is actually going to Robinson to chastise him for working for the devil.

SPOILERS

Turns out Robinson's investigator pal is also teamed up with the mob.  When his now-wife finds, Foch, that out, he may murder her to keep her quiet, and, cornered, she shoots him dead.  Now that's noir, baby!  

Robinson has to defend her, and things start spilling out.

Look, this wasn't my favorite movie.  I wasn't overly enamored of Foch, who comes off as a stiff.  It's pretty clear Mansfield is there because the studio knew this about Foch (see the above poster).  

In the end Robinson dies so that the Breen Office could be satisfied.  But all he was doing was his job - look,, winning a case is how this works.  And I get that we want a story about a good man who becomes corrupt, and how that could happen - and his last act of heroism (he is dying from an assassin's bullet in the last scene as he gets Foch off the hook).  But it just never feels as epic as the movie thinks it is.

And I get that they were trying to do something cute with the name "Illegal", but it's kind of indicative of how this movie works.  You can see what they're doing, but it's just not that exciting.

Robinson is watchable enough to carry the movie, but, yeah, this was just not my thing.  

Wise Noir Watch: Born to Kill (1947)

Watched:  02/07/2026

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Robert Wise

In the world of film noir, there's movies that are a bit gritty, and then there's movies like Born to Kill (1947) that look around at the shadier movies and say "hold my beer".  

First - we don't talk enough about Claire Trevor.  Stunningly good actor who has been largely forgotten by non-classic film buffs, but who won an Academy Award the year after this movie for her remarkable role in Key Largo.  Trevor didn't just work in noir, but in noir - she's one of the most active women of the genre, and is who you give a role to when you know the character is going to get extreme and you need for them to still feel like someone you might know in real life.  She's also fantastic in Murder, My Sweet, Raw Deal, Dead End, and you might know her from Stagecoach.    

Here, she plays a woman seeking a divorce in classic 1940's fashion - by going to Reno for six weeks and then being granted her divorce.  As she's planning her return home, her neighbor is murdered by a jealous boyfriend, played by Lawrence Tierney.*  She doesn't know it was him, but she stumbles on the bodies but doesn't call the cops - wanting to stay out of whatever happened and just get home.

Noir Watch: Shield for Murder (1954)

Watched:  01/26/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Directors:  Edmond O'Brien and Howard W. Koch

This movie has some really interesting stuff, and maybe exploits some of the actual issues cops deal with for entertainment and shock value.  It's not the best movie - it drags in some places and feels like it's stretching to reach feature length once you kind of see where all of this is going.  But thematically, it's right there in the mix with the darker noir films.

Police detective Barney Nolan (Edmond O'Brien) kills a man in an alley and takes a stack of money off of him - $25,000 (roughly $300K in 2025 dollars).  He tells his pal and fellow cop Mark (John Agar - the ex Mr. Shirley Temple) that he was trying to bring in the bookmaker, but things got messy and shots were fired.

Soon after, Barney is picking up his young girlfriend, Patty (Marla English) and showing her a model home he says he'll buy.  Meanwhile, he hides the money beneath the house.

A pair of Private Eyes, thugs from the gangster who the money belonged to, start snooping around.  And a witness comes forward who saw everything, and Barney can't have that.

The movie has a scene with a platinum blonde Carolyn Jones as a bar fly.  

The basic gist of the film is a character study of a cop who has always been a good guy, but he's worn down by everything he's seen, and the knowledge he'll never get ahead while the crooks run around with $25,000.  How far will he go for his slice of the pie?  And how crazy will it make him?

As Eddie Muller hinted at during the intro, it just doesn't seem like Edmond O'Brien is anyone's favorite - and I'm probably in agreement.  He's not a bad actor, he's just not a favorite, but he's in enough noir films, he starred in two of three I watched this weekend.  Clearly this movie meant a lot to him, and he directs himself just fine here.  But never has it been more clear that a star was twice the age of the woman he's paired with and with so little chemistry.  It's just hard to buy.

There are some dynamite sequences, like a brutal sequence where we realize how far gone O'Brien is when he's cornered by the detectives in an Italian restaurant.  And a shoot-out at an indoor pool.

Anyhoo, I've seen that poster above for years and never came across the movie itself, so it's a delight to finally watch the thing.  

Texas Noir Watch: The Houston Story (1956)

Watched:  01/25/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director: William Castle

The funny thing about The Houston Story (1956) is that there's probably a good idea for a movie in here, somewhere between a less dumb and horny Landman and less intense There Will Be Blood, but the script is so phoned in, it's both a mess and a little too pat.  But it does make Della Street (aka: Barbara Hale) seem like a bombshell, so it has that going for it.

It took me a minute to realize this is the kind of movie where our lead is a true noir protagonist - he's not on the side of the angels, he's a guy who's seen an angle and he's pursuing it to the top.  I read Lee J. Cobb was originally slated to play the role, and I can see that completely.  Instead we get Gene Barry - who is good! - but who didn't give "morally ambiguous POV character" in the first ten minutes of the movie.

Essentially, Barry plays an oil-field worker.  He gets the attention of the Houston mob by identifying a corpse found beneath the "docks of Houston" as a woman he know in Oklahoma.  However - that isn't who it is.  Barry happens to know that the woman he's named is actually living in Houston under the name Zoe Crane and mixed up with a second-banana mobster.  

Totter Noir Watch: Man In The Dark (1953)

Watched:  01/24/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lew Landers

I always like a movie that's entire premise is based on 1950's-era psychological science.  

Edmond O'Brien plays a former gangster who has been pinched.  Facing a minimum 10 year stretch, he agrees to a bit of Clockwork Orange scientification.  A doctor is going to perform surgery on his brain to remove his criminal element or some such.

On the other side of the surgery, he can't remember who he was or what he used to do, and is no longer a shady crook, I guess.  From a detective for an insurance company, we learn O'Brien boosted $130K prior to his incarceration, but nobody knows where it is, and now that includes O'Brien himself.*   O'Brien coming along fine when his old gang kidnaps him/ liberates him.  

For reasons that amount to "we're real dumb", the old gang thinks for way too long that O'Brien is faking his amnesia.  They trot out his girlfriend, Audrey Totter, to convince him to play ball.  Eventually, she realizes he doesn't remember she was his girlfriend - and, if I may, that would seem like a welcome surprise.

Anyway, Totter never really liked O'Brien before - or at least knew she was disposable to him.  But she likes this new version.  

But as the crooks (led by Ted de Corsia) start to press, O'Brien has a dream with clues!  Memory clues!  And they find a slip of paper with a number that must mean something.  

Anyway - it means going to the Oceanpark Pier pier you see in one in every 20 film noir movies, and having a face-off.  

Highlights of the movie include:  

• it has a dream sequence that isn't a patch on Spellbound, but is still entertaining
• plenty of Laffing Sal
• Audrey Totter in smashing dresses
• an extended "getaway" flashback sequence with no story impact that I am pretty sure is on the roofs of the backlot at the studio
• the only fistfight I've ever seen on a roller-coaster track while it's operational.  Some real stunt work here.

I wouldn't say the movie is great or essential, but Totter feels weirdly too good for this movie, putting depth into her character that I'm not sure the movie earns. So if you're looking to catch another solid role for her, here you go.

If the movie seems a bit odd, visually, it is a 2D presentation of a 3D movie.  So that might explain the long escape sequence and a few other scenes.  I am very curious how the roller coaster sequences would have looked.  Pretty good, I expect.

There is a curious "will he go back to his wily, crooked ways" tension to the movie, but it's really just about survival.  Why O'Brien doesn't just go to the cops, I do not know.  It does mean he punches a dude off the hill of a rollercoaster track, so...  it's not like this is entirely a "on the side of the angels" ending.

*I would think handing over the money would have been key to the court agreeing to let O'Brien be a scientific subject, but the ethics of experimenting on prisoners is at best a gray area in this movie

I think I did a phenomenal job not making any jokes about Totter in 3D.  Please clap.

Noir Thriller Watch: Diabolique (1955)

Watched:  01/19/2026

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Henri-Georges Clouzot

Diabolique (1955) hangs heavy over so much of cinema that, like many other films I've both finally watched - or still haven't seen (hello, Bicycle Thieves) - the very weight of it made it seem like homework instead of watching something for the sake of watching a movie.  

It also makes these movies difficult to write about.  I don't guess I'm ever breaking new ground, but when it comes to something with the gravity of this film, what's the point of writing about it, really?

But even I thought it was ridiculous I'd never seen Diabolique.  Spousal murder movies are part-and-parcel for noir, from probably before Double Indemnity.    

Anyway - TCM's Noir Alley programmed the movie, and what better way to frame the movie than with Eddie Muller's brand of bar room rather than classroom?  

The film is both familiar - it's been ripped off endlessly in the ensuing 71 years - and yet it remains unique and surprising in other ways.  A post-WWII France, still sorting itself,makes for an interesting locale.  The economic situation is still rough, and the occupation has left its shadow and scars.  It's also made in France and therefore the Hayes Code isn't so much a factor.  But I'd really point to the characters and performances.  Grade A stuff riding a Grade A script..

At a boys' boarding school - the principal is carrying on with a teacher with the full knowledge of his wife, a timid woman with a heart condition.  However, the principal abuses the teacher, and somehow - the wife and the mistress have fallen into a conspiratorial friendship.  Even as we meet them, they're planning how to kill the principal and make it look like an accident.

Vera Clouzot - wife of the writer/ director - plays the wife of the principal.  She is, frankly, stunning in a complex, conflicted role, asked to play so many things, and she pulls it all off brilliantly.  It's simply one of those roles that will never play as outdated and because of the legacy of the film, will keep Clouzot in the public mind despite having only three film roles to her resume (she passed 5 years later).

I don't know what to say - yeah, the movie met expectations.  Windy, twisty, unrelentingly tense...  and, of course, with an ending good enough that they ask the audience not to share the end with anyone right there at the film's conclusion - something I'm respecting here in 2026, and so I'm not discussing the film too much more.  

Anyway - that one is now checked off. 

Noir Watch: Decoy (1946)

Watched:  01/15/2026

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jack Bernhard

What an odd film.

Devoid of narrative economy, the movie starts with a guy staggering his way to the highway, and then hitches a ride from the countryside to San Francisco.  He then takes the lift up to someone's apartment, and shoots them.  It's a dame!  

A cop - an instantly recognizable Sheldon Leonard - who played Nick the bartender in It's a Wonderful Life, here playing a cop named Joe Portugal* - shows up too late.  And the woman shot tells her tale.  But only after she gets to hold the unopened MacGuffin box.

The woman is our femme fatale, Margot, played by Jean Gillie in her penultimate performance before succumbing to pneumonia in 1949 in her early 30's.   Margot's been working a grift on a mobster who knocked over an armored truck, but for his trouble is on death row - and no one knows where the money is.  She's cheating on him with another gangster, Jim, with whom she concocts a plan to get the dough.  

They'll let the guy get executed by cyanide gas, but then steal the body and revive him with Methylene Blue,** a very real medication that can, in real life, combat cyanide, but, alas, in real life, does not restore life function to a corpse.  But in this movie, it sure does.

To do this, Margot seduces the doctor who does the autopsies on executed crooks.  I guess she's really good at *something*, because in a short time she convinces the doctor (Herbert Rudley) to join in on the operation.  If they can get that money, then she'll be happy!, she says.

Anyway, things take... a while... to get to the point.     

The one thing this movie has... well, it also has a knock-out nurse (Marjorie Woodworth) working for the doctor who seems like she's in a completely parallel story that isn't being filmed... So the OTHER thing this movie has is British-born lead actress Jean Gillie, who is really pretty terrific, gorgeous, and as solid a femme fatale as you're likely to find.  The character as written is why this movie exists - not that all the characters aren't a *little* bit bonkers, but Margot is a stunning psycho, using her charms to manipulate three men at a time, sometimes two in the same room.   

The weirdest thing is that the movie is called "Decoy", and at the beginning of the movie they start at the end, seeing Margot shot, the doctor clearly dying and you see an unopened money box.  And , because the movie is called "Decoy", one might spend 80+ minutes sitting there going "well, clearly that money box is a decoy".  

Like, I have zero idea why this starts at the end and tells itself in flashback.  It does nothing to help the story as we can see what will become of everyone before the story starts.  And it's not a good enough movie to make you say "gee, what was that?  Maybe there's twists and turns!"  It just plods toward that ending we saw at the beginning.

Anyway, it's certainly not awful, and from a "this is bonkers" perspective - bringing people back from the dead, Margot's scheming, etc.. - it's interesting.  But the pacing can feel deadly in the first thirty minutes or so, and it telegraphs the ending in the title.  So.

*truly, it can be said he is Portugal, The Man 

**Methylene Blue is the name of my new shoegaze band

Neo-Noir Texas Watch: Lone Star (1996)

Watched:  01/09/2025

Format:  Criterion 4K

Viewing:  Unknown - likely 4th or 5th

Director:  John Sayles

I remember going to see this opening day in Austin at the Arbor 4 at, like, a 4:00 pm show, thinking "no one will be there.  It's John Sayles.  And, I'm going by myself, I can find a seat.".  

Y'all, it was so packed when I showed up, I wound up in the front row staring straight up at the screen for the duration.

And I loved it.  

At the time I was double-majoring in film and history at the University of Texas.  As part of my load, I took as much local and regional history as my degree plan would allow.  And, yes, the courses I took illuminated the material certain officials are currently screaming to the heavens about colleges teaching.*

Noir Crime Watch: Dillinger (1945)

Watched:  01/08/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Max Nosseck

A biopic of famed gangster John Dillinger, Dillinger (1945) is really a crime drama that feels pulled from a "true crime" pulp magazine - the sort where facts will not stand in the way of a good story.  I can't tell you what's real here or not as I know two things about Dillinger - that he once broke out of jail with a fake gun, and something I can not print in a family publication like the Signal Watch.*

Anyway, this is the movie that broke Lawrence Tierney, for good or ill.  And he's solid in the movie - maybe singularly good here playing a (checks notes) absolute cold-blooded monster.  I won't get too much into Tierney as a person, but apparently he was a real asshole - like in a way you or I can't comprehend putting up with.  

Happy Birthday, Audrey Totter - Noir Watch: Lady in the Lake (1947)

Watched:  12/18/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  ha ha ha ha...  oh, mercy

Director:  Robert Montgomery

December 20th marks the birthday of Signal Watch patron saint of noir bad girls, Audrey Totter.  

For more on one of our favorite stars of the silver screen, here's a post from earlier this year on Moviejawn.

Last year, through a series of misadventures, we missed our annual watch of Lady in the Lake (1947), and so we wanted to make sure we got in this year's screening.   You have your Christmas movies, I have mine.  

Robert Montgomery stars and directs, mostly as Marlowe's voice over.  Montgomery is not a bad actor, but his Marlowe is maybe my least favorite - I mean, Bogart plays the same guy in The Big Sleep, and I'm a huge fan of Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet.*

There's truly nothing like this movie - not from this era.  95% of the film is presented from the subjective viewpoint of Philip Marlowe - our lead and a detective.**  The idea is that the audience is looking through Marlowe's eyes - eyes which are a camera the size and weight of a Mini-Cooper.  As a studio film where they let a new director run with an idea, it's some very strange viewing that in 2025, feels like the world's longest videogame cut-scene.