This series has become my favorite thing to watch on RU-vid! I have been watching along and it's like a weekly movie club with 3 of my favorite talking heads! Thanks for the film noir journey guys, can't wait for balls to the wall stupidity next season!
One of my all-time favorites, without a doubt. I saw it in theaters back in the day (before much of anyone knew who Russell Crowe or Guy Pearce were) and have watched it more times than I can count since then. I never, ever get tired of it. I've seen few movies that so expertly weaved a host of seemingly disparate plot threads together into a cohesive whole by the end. It's also one of those very rare cases where reading the novel only makes you appreciate the movie even more. Oh, sadly, the main reason Curtis Hanson didn't do much after this was because of his constant health problems. The poor man was dealt a bad hand by life in that regard.
Does anyone else not watch the movies and still listen to this podcast? I’ve actually only watched one of the movies they’ve reviewed, but have thoroughly enjoyed each and every episode!
The YT algo has some serious questions to answer, I may have drifted out of being interested in esports but how did it take me 9 months to find out you 3 are doing movie breakdowns and LA Confidential is an absolute banger.
Watched Chinatown and L.A Confidential of this group of films, loved them both. Always planned on watching L.A confidential at some point but likely would have never seen China town which I thought was brilliant. Not as excited for 90s action movies but I'll definitely be watching along.
I read the book and the sequel white jazz in 1998 after seeing this movie and they felt almost like a completely different story with the same characters. I really like the books too, but it was amazing to me how much they changed and yet it all still fit together perfectly.
Always thoroughly enjoy Richard's stories of things that happened behind the scenes of these movies! I love that he said he treats these as homework assignments ❤
Im glad this was coincidentally longer just due to the gap between this and the Chinatown review. And while I had never watched any of these films before Four Play, I'm very glad to have gotten exposed to this film. I still think of the noir movies Touch of Evil clears, but this movie felt much more the vibe of something I would have seen myself watching had I known of its existence otherwise. I feel like the Gotham TV series takes loads of beats from this movie and even frames Jim Gordon as effectively Bud White, turns Edward Nygma into effectively a less successful Exley character while making Harvey Bullock into a Jack Vincennes. And being able to see these parallels really makes this movie scratch all the good parts of my smooth brain.
i love this movie one of my favorites i watched it like 5 or 6 times in my lifetime already and i will watch it again in the future its just a great watch every time!
combining the points made by monte and thorin, this movie is surely a buffet of all noir tropes, with some added good-cop-bad-cop cheese on top, towards the end.
I always thought the movies was great. But having watched it three or four times I’ve read the book. And I have to tell you, it’s much deeper, much richer and much more involving than the movie. IMO.
I'm excited for this one. I had LA Confidential on a list cuz I think Thorin mentioned it before. We watched it for our weekly movie night, and I said afterward's it's probably still the peak of this genre for me.
I love this series. Would love to see topics that are along the lines of like "guilty pleasure films" or "niche Arthouse films" - films that might be difficult to fit into a particular genre. Also Wild to me people complain about pretentiousness... probably what ties you three together other than esports is elitism, I think that's part of what makes you all so good at what you do!
I don't really remember LA Confidential much, but I feel like Nica Guys escapes it's shadow by adding a bit more of the modern day action genre and buddy cop movies. It's not as good, but still good and doesn't feel like it's just trying to be one of the previous noir movies. Nice Guys the one movie I would have wanted you guys to add to this list, as the modern day noir or noir after LA Confidential movie.
Ah, the 90’s was definitely not the last time police in America want all in on minorities. Rampart stretched into the 2000’s. Lots of other examples, but recommend checking out the secret Chicago precinct that was processing 95% minorities while the city denied it existed.