Neo-noir

Neo-noir. adj. n. 1. influenced by and reviving the style of film noir; a film or piece of literature that is styled on film noir.  2. the new black.  3. suggestive of danger or violence.

Blade Runner

Set in Los Angeles of the far-off year of 2019. Harrison Ford plays a cop who specializes in hunting down replicants (clones) and terminating them. In this case, he is after four replicants who have escaped from an off-world colony and are trying to increase their limited four year life-span.

Blood Simple

Double and triple crosses abound in this, the first Coen Brothers film when a jealous husband hires a detective to kill his wife and her lover. Unfortunately for him, they find out about the plan.

Bonnie and Clyde

A small town gal and a small time hood make the big time in this Depression era thriller.  Sometimes love is blind, and sometimes it ends in a hail of gunfire.

Brick

This might also be called a high school noir. Joseph Gordon-Levitt tries to solve the mystery of the death of his ex-girlfriend by infiltrating a high school drug ring.

Chinatown

Jack Nicholson plays a P.I. out to uncover a marital infidelity, but gets caught up in a mystery that is more complex and dangerous than he usually handles. Deceit, murder, incest and municipal malfeasance are all going down in Chinatown.

The Conversation

Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a very secretive surveillance expert spying on a couple’s conversation. But what he hears or thinks he hears leads him on a search for what is really going on in his paranoid mind.

Dirty Harry

"Dirty” Harry Callahan kicks off this iconic series of very dark movies by asking a bank robber if he feels lucky.  Then beats up, harasses and chases a psychopathic killer through San Francisco in spite of interference from his superiors.

The French Connection

Detectives "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) hope to break a narcotics smuggling ring and ultimately uncover the French connection. Also check out The French Connection II which continues the story.

Goodfellas

Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), a half-Irish, half-Sicilian New York kid who grows up idolizing the "wise guys" in his impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood, and eventually becomes one of them, recounts his life in the mob.

Hard Eight

Sydney, a poker-faced professional gambler plays guardian angel to unlucky John and his girlfriend. When John and his bride's honeymoon night leads to a disastrous hostage situation, the gambler takes care of it as usual. But when a slick casino pro threatens to reveal a secret from Sydney's past, Sydney decides to hedge his bets and not leave anything to chance.

Klute

Detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) comes to New York to investigate the disappearance of his friend. The trail leads to Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda), a call girl, with whom Klute falls in love. Now he has to protect her from a stalker. Fonda won Oscar and Golden Globe for her performance.

Memento

A man with short-term memory loss is trying to find the killer of his wife using a very unique system for remembering clues. There has to be a better way! To add more confusion, the film has two story lines, one going forward in time alternating with one going backwards in time. 

Mystic River

Childhood friends Jimmy, Sean and Dave are reunited after a brutal murder. Reformed convict Jimmy and his devoted wife Annabeth find out that their teenage daughter Katie has been killed. Jimmy's old friend Sean is the homicide detective assigned to the case. Jimmy and Sean soon suspect their old pal Dave, who now lives a quite life, but harbors some disturbing secrets of his own.

No Country for Old Men

Llewelyn Moss stumbles onto a drug deal gone monumentally wrong and $2 million in a satchel while hunting near the Mexican border. It isn't long before he's being tracked by Anton Chigurh, a psychopathic "debt collector." Sheriff Ed Tom Bell sets out to find Llewelyn, not so much for the propriety of recovering the money but to protect one of his citizens from Chigurh, an evil like nothing Bell has ever seen.

Point Blank

Lee Marvin wants his money back after being double crossed after a heist. Anyone standing in his way is punished and anyone he has targeted for revenge is most probably going to die.

Pulp Fiction

Clever, dark film that tells 4 separate stories that are gradually brought together. Involved are two low-rent hit men, their boss and his sexy wife, a prizefighter and a pair of desperate robbers.

Seven

If you can’t remember what the seven deadly sins are, this film will graphically remind you. Two detectives (Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt) are on the trail of a serial killer with a biblical bent.

The Silence of the Lambs

FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is assigned the task of finding a brutal serial killer. Clarice attempts to gain a better insight into the twisted mind of the killer by talking to another psychopath, Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), who teaches her what goes well with fava beans and a nice glass of Chianti.

Taxi Driver

Are you talking to me? You want me to tell you what this film is about? … Travis Bickle is a lonely Vietnam vet and taxi driver who feels that he is the only person who can see all the injustices in the world. The problem is, he’s a little bit disturbed.

To Live and Die in L.A.

A Secret Service agent will stop at nothing to catch the counterfeiter who killed his partner. Breaking every rule and every law he encounters in this blind obsession, he corrupts not only himself, but his new partner as well.

The Usual Suspects

A group of criminals fail on a job worth ninety-one million dollars, and the police try to get the sole survivor to help them find the legendary and treacherous Keyser Söze, a sort of criminal's boogie man, who some doubt even exists.