We may not have gotten a new James Bond film this year because of MGM’s money issues, but Bond’s Astin Martin got to star in a spy movie of his own, Disney Pixar’s Cars 2. The dashing Finn McMissile, voiced by the even more dashing Michael Caine, is a silver-blue custom automobile. His body is based…
Here’s the offical trailer from director Steven Soderburgh’s Haywire, about Mallory Kane, a Marine-turned-black-ops-killing machine, who is, in turn, turned upon by someone in her agency. (I’m not totally crazy with the Bourne comparison, right?) In addition to MMA champ and former American Gladiator Gina Carano as the ass-kickitrix, it stars Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum,…
This criminal means (show) business! There is some debate, heated and unresolved, as to whether this video is real or cinéma vérité as viral marketing for a line of rugged sports cameras. We live in a time where so much can be faked, people often discount that anything unusual and fantastic happens. In either case, the…
There’s some pretty stiff completion for the toughest director in film noir. In the forties and fifties, the directors of B-level crime pictures seemed to be locked in a contest to see who could inject the most head-thumping into an 80-minute potboiler. Any list of noir’s toughest directors would have to include such pugilistic auteurs…
The thriller, by definition, thrills. Twists and turns of plot, lots of action, high stakes, memorable characters, vivid and often exotic settings…all vital ingredients. So when a story comes along with almost no action, no hold-your-breath twists, and none of the characters even have names…it isn’t a thriller, is it? Is it? The 1957 film…
Ida Lupino would rank high on any list of the most important people in film noir. First, she was one of the great performers of the classic period. She starred in no less than eight noirs, including important films like On Dangerous Ground, Road House and While The City Sleeps; worked for essential directors like…
Let me run this idea past you. I’m going to start a movie franchise based on a spy hero played by a man in his early thirties. I’m then going to produce a few more films based on the same character over the next six or seven years, then change the central actor and do…
Since Jake Hinson’s been discussing the 5 best classic heist flicks, we share this trailer for a thoroughly modern entry among comic bank capers. Flypaper stars Patrick Dempsey, Ashley Judd, the dazzling Timothy Blake Nelson, Jeffrey Tambor, Pruitt Taylor Vince, and Mekhi Phifer among others. Dempsey plays a man caught between competing teams of bank…
Unlike most classic film noir, heist movies are not about passion but process. If all noir taps into its audience’s guilty desires—to murder or lie or commit adultery—the heist film taps into a particularly cool-burning flame: the desire to be a professional crook. This being classic noir we’re talking about, the heist team is always…
On the heels of the overwhelmingly negative reaction to Paramount’s idea for Lee Child’s creation, that is, casting Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, we have a new casting decision to announce for yet another icon in the world of crime fiction. According to Deadline New York, director Taylor Hackford is close to finalizing U.S. distribution…
