The Best of 2017: Film Noir

2017 marks the fourth year that I’ve seriously started delving into film noir. I still consider myself a beginner as far as the number of films I’ve seen and my knowledge of noir, but I’m probably at least near the halfway point of having seen the established body of American film noir titles. I saw close to 200 film noir and neo-noir movies in 2017, but here I’m only going to concentrate on those from the established film noir era (1940-1959), although you’ll find one or two films on either end of that period. In many cases I examined some films in greater detail in previous posts. In those cases, just click on the title. Enjoy!

The Best of 2017: International Films Part II

Missed Part I? Look no further. Now here’s more:

The Best of 2017: International Films Part I

Although my family and friends cannot comprehend this, I frequently lament how few films I’ve actually seen in my lifetime. Expand that to world cinema and you’ll find enormous, cavernous spaces filled with all the international movies I haven’t seen. This year I tried to at least chip away at several of those non-English-speaking treasures. I’ll explore more of these films in Part II, but for now, here’s Part I:

The Best of 2017: British Films

Just a few days ago I realized I had probably seen enough British films in 2017 to create a separate category, but I had no idea just how many – over 20! Many of these (no surprise) are film noir or, as we like to say, “noir-stained.” I certainly want to explore more British films in 2018 so for those of you in or from the UK, I would love to hear your favorites or “must see” films I should explore next year. Until then, these are the British films I most enjoyed in 2017:

The Best of 2017: The 2000s and Beyond

Something a little different today… I’ll discuss the movies I most enjoyed this year from the 2000s and beyond not including films from 2017, which will be a separate list closer to the end of the year. There’s some fluidity here, since many of the 2016 films had various release dates that were 2016 in some places and 2017 in others, but for the most part these are films that fall between 2000 and 2016, mostly in chronological order. Enjoy!

The Best of 2017: The 1990s

Oddly enough, 1990s movies are a huge blindspot for me. I was very career-focused during that decade earning two graduate degrees and changing jobs four times. I also moved four times and got married. Since I didn’t see very many movies at that time, just about everything from the 90s is new to me. The following is a short list and some of the films will reappear on at least one other list. So here’s my brief look at the best films I saw from the 90s:

The Best of 2017: The 1980s

You could call this my Best of the 1980s list or my Salute to John Sayles, since he has three films on the list. Again, we could quibble about films on this list being film noir or neo-noir as well as international films, but the list is the list. Hope you enjoy it.

The Best of 2017: The 1970s

Although I consider the 70s my favorite movie decade (after the 40s), it’s surprising how many movies from that era I haven’t seen. Again, some of these could be placed in my neo-noir or international categories, but I decided to put them here. Hope you find a couple to add to your lists:

The Best of 2017: The 1960s

Ah, the decade I was born… So many films I missed and can now watch. Let’s see what turned up:

The Best of 2017: The 1950s

As was the case with my films from the 1940s, many great film noir movies came out in the 1950s, but you’ll find few of them here. Most of those will have to wait until my Best of Film Noir post sometime in the near future. Yet you’ll find a little bit of everything in this list from the 50s: comedy, science fiction, horror, Westerns, war, drama, and more. Again, these are movies I watched in 2017 for the very first time. I hope you’ll find something to investigate here: