THIEF - James Caan is a safe breaker who wants to go straight, but he's walking a tightrope with corrupt cops and the mob on one side and his own inner desperation on the other. This glides like an 80s Michael Mann film should, big city at night dripping through a neon haze, amplified in this case by the excellent Tangerine Dream soundtrack... beyond its synthetic textures, 'Thief's humanity lies with Caan's tortured portrayal of a man who has effectively had to kill himself in order to survive his own existence.
SHADOW OF A DOUBT - White picket fences give way to vistas of endless unknowing when Uncle Charlie hits town... perhaps instructively, beyond its initial tweeness lies a real darkness. Its imagery still seems luminous after repeated viewings - the 'loss of innocence' moment when Girl Charlie seems about to disappear into her own looming shadow in the library after she realizes her uncle is a killer has never left my mind. A great film.
BLOOD SIMPLE - This is the first time I've watched it. I was surprised. I've never thought that highly of the Coens beyond thinking them really, really good but somehow not special. Maybe this has all changed tonight. 'Blood Simple', besides solidifying whatever 'neo-noir' means / meant, is a really weird film. Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems well ahead of its time for 1983. In fact, it kind of feels a bit like the sort of film a hip young filmmaker maxed out on an imagined eighties would make now. I can see reverberations throughout the thirty years that followed, through Tarantino certainly but also David Lynch. He must've seen this before he made 'Blue Velvet'. It's not just the updated noirishness, but the whole creepy animistic thing... close ups of objects glow with sinister life, signs become portents. Really quite taken with it.
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