{"id":11188,"date":"2024-09-17T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11188"},"modified":"2026-01-04T13:10:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T18:10:00","slug":"dark-streets-and-dark-deeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11188","title":{"rendered":"Dark Streets and Dark Deeds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The last two films in our class on neo-noir were A Simple Plan<\/em> and the remake of the classic noir, Nightmare Alley<\/em> (which I\u2019d seen in a movie theater and was NOT looking forward to!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Simple Plan
<\/em><\/strong>I guess we should have learned from previously seeing the Coen Brothers\u2019 Blood Simple<\/em> that, when it comes to murderous intent, nothing is simple. And it sure isn\u2019t in Sam Raimi\u2019s A Simple Plan<\/em>, written by Scott B. Smith, author of the novel the film is based on (trailer<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Straight-arrow Hank Mitchell (played by Bill Paxton), his slower-witted brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), and Jacob\u2019s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) discover a small plane that has crashed in the snowy woods of rural Minnesota. They check on the pilot, who\u2019s dead, of course, and discover a duffel stuffed with more than $4 million. Whose is it? What to do with it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you will anticipate, this stash brings out all the characters\u2019 worst instincts. Even Hank and his wife (Bridget Fonda in her last film before retiring from the screen), who start out wanting to be on the up-and-up, are at risk of succumbing to the lure of unexpected wealth. This makes the film on one hand an exploration of ethical behavior and on another a thriller full of menace and surprise. While I couldn\u2019t warm up to any of the characters, Thornton\u2019s performance alone makes it worth a viewing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 90%; audiences: 81%.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Nightmare Alley
<\/em><\/strong>Guillermo Del Toro\u2019s 2021 remake of the 1947 noir classic, which starred Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, and Colleen Gray, was the sixth and final film in our neo-noir class (trailer<\/a>). The acting in the new version can\u2019t be faulted, with stars Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett [wearing a LOT of red lipstick], Toni Collette, and Rooney Mara, along with Willem Dafoe, David Strathairn, and Richard Jenkins. They all do a great job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\\Cooper plays charming, ambitious Stanton Carlisle, who\u2019s apparently just killed his father and is looking for a fresh start in life. He finds work doing odd jobs for a seedy traveling carnival. The movie is set in 1939, and the carnival includes all the cheesy acts and mysterious biological specimens in jars that you can imagine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carlisle observes the system that the show\u2019s mentalist uses to \u201cread the minds\u201d of the patrons and eventually goes on the road with his partner Molly to do the same work wearing a tuxedo at high-class nightclubs. Disaster is inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The remake (2h, 30 m) adds all the content about the father, whereas the 1947 version (1h, 51m) added an upbeat closing scene to assuage producer Darryl F. Zanuck\u2019s concerns about commercial potential. Both versions were based on a 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 80%; audiences 68%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Class
<\/em><\/strong>The neo-noir film class was a Princeton Adult School program, taught by Mark Schwartzberg, who holds a PhD in English literature from NYU, and much of his research has been in film studies. He\u2019s taught at the high school and college levels in New York and New Jersey, and many film classes at the Adult School. His\u2014and several of our fellow students\u2019\u2014knowledge about film, including the gossipy bits, is encyclopedic. A real pleasure!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last two films in our class on neo-noir were A Simple Plan and the remake of the classic noir, Nightmare Alley (which I\u2019d seen in a movie theater and was NOT looking forward to!). A Simple PlanI guess we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The allure of dark doings continues to capture many creatives\u2014authors, actors, and filmmakers. Audiences too. Two more neo-noir films round out the selection in our recent class. I liked LA Confidential (the most conventional of the six)!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[269,56,104,32],"tags":[2222,2224,2225],"class_list":["post-11188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-film","category-the-morgue","category-thriller","tag-a-simple-plan","tag-neo-noir","tag-nightmare-alley"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Us","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11193,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions\/11193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}