125 Highly-rated Neo-Noirs, 1980-present
Posted by Solomon on 5/12/2019, 11:52 am
Here are 125 American neo-noirs that I reviewed and rated at 8/10 or higher. A foreign film and a non-noir may have snuck in here and there.
12 Monkeys
15 Minutes
2 Days in the Valley
48 Hours
A Bronx Tale
A History of Violence
A Walk Among the Tombstones
Absence of Malice
The Accountant
Alone with Her
American Psycho
And Justice for All
Arbitrage
The Assassination of Richard Nixon
Assassination Tango
Badge of the Assassin
Barton Fink
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
The Big Short
Black Mass
Blue Velvet
Body Heat
Breakdown
Brigham City
Buffalo '66
Carlito's Way
City of Ghosts
City of Industry
Cold Comes the Night
Coldblooded
The Confession (2014)
Conspiracy Theory
Crash
Cypher
Double Jeopardy (1999)
The Drop
Eastern Promises
Equilibrium
Eye for an Eye
Eyes Wide Shut
Fargo
Freeway (1996)
Fresh
Frontera
Frozen River
Get Carter (1971)
Goodfellas
Heaven’s Burning
Hell or High Water
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
House of Games
InSight (2011)
Internal Affairs
Jesse Stone Death in Paradise
Jesse Stone Night Passage
Joe
Julia
Kafka
Kill Bill Vol. 2
L.A. Confidential
Lantana
Little Criminals
Lord of War
Lost Highway
Man on Fire
Manhunter
Marked for Death
Matchstick Men
Meskada
Monster
Montana
Mr. Brooks
Ms. 45
Natural Born Killers
Nothing but the Truth
Positive I.D.
Q & A
Raging Bull
Raising Cain Recut
Red
Red White & Blue
Robocop (1987)
Ronin
Round Midnight
Runaway Train
Scarface (1983)
Shooter (2007)
Sling Blade
Spring Breakers
State of Play (2009)
Stone
Sudden Impact
The Fugitive
The Hitcher (1986)
The Horseman (Australia)
The Hot Spot
The Job
The Juror
The Last Hit Man
The Last Lullaby
The Last Stand
The Neon Demon
The Silence of the Lambs
The Tall Man
The Three Burials of Melquiades
The Walker (2008)
Thief (1981)
This Gun for Hire (1991)
To Live and Die in L.A.
Trade
Training Day
Trainspotting
Transpecos
Transsiberian
Trespass (1992)
True Detective (series)
U Turn
Under Suspicion (1991)
White Sands
Winter’s Bone
Witness (1985)
Wonderland (2003)
Zero Effect
Zodiac (2007)
Zulu (2013)
Re: 125 Highly-rated Neo-Noirs, 1980-present
Posted by Don Malcolm on 5/18/2019, 12:18 am, in reply to "125 Highly-rated Neo-Noirs, 1980-present"
How about just the 9/10 and 10/10 titles from this group? Which are they, and how many at that higher level?
Re: 125 Highly-rated Neo-Noirs, 1980-present
Posted by Solomon on 5/18/2019, 3:32 pm, in reply to "Re: 125 Highly-rated Neo-Noirs, 1980-present"
Edited by Solomon on 5/18/2019, 3:36 pm
9 2 Days in the Valley
9 American Psycho
9 Body Heat
9 Cypher
9 Eyes Wide Shut
9 Fargo
9 Goodfellas
9 Joe
9 Lantana
9 Natural Born Killers
9 Raging Bull
9 Runaway Train
9 Sling Blade
9 The Job
9 Trade
9 Zero Effect
9 Zodiac (2007)
10 Witness
10 Lost Highway
These lists are not the product of critical analysis. A critical approach will be pinpointing the movies that were most creative at the time, that influenced subsequent films and that displayed clear neo-noir characteristics. My lists are simply whether or not the movie was below par, good, very good or excellent.
Re: 125 Highly-rated Neo-Noirs, 1980-present
Posted by Don Malcolm on 5/19/2019, 1:23 pm, in reply to "Re: 125 Highly-rated Neo-Noirs, 1980-present"
At present I'm not concerned with the genesis or pedigree of the list so much as I am interested in envisioning the statistical basis of the value gradations. No reconciliation with other lists is really possible until we can cross-correlate.
It would be best if your lists and the IMDB list from earlier could be matched up more directly. It isn't quite clear if your lists are all from 1980 to the present, as this top-rated list is. The total from adding up the gradation-separated lists comes to 853 neo-noirs, as opposed to only 654 from the IMDB from the years 1965-2019 (I added UNDER THE SILVER LAKE to the 2019 list, and there clearly are more of these out there).
The IMDB list is clearly missing many titles that you've seen and graded, and in order to capture the full ratings profile for it (which then allows us to cross-correlate the rating results) we need to add the films on your list that didn't make it onto the IMDB list via their "advanced search" function.
I'm thinking that some of the numerical difference is that you have some foreign neo-noir on the list while the IMDB list is currently 99+% American. We should at least capture the IMDB ratings for all the films you've rated.
The easiest way for someone to reconcile the lists would be for you to take the group you have, add in any/all of the 1965-79 material (as opposed to what appears to be a fraction of it), and create a new master list with date, title and grade. That could then be compared to the IMDB list and the missing titles could be looked up, giving us both sets of ratings, yours and the IMDB user consensus grades.
Once we have that, we can reconcile the grading systems (the IMDB's is massaged/mitgated by a weighted averaging method) and have a fairly reliable basis for comparison.
The IMDB list you supplied has 121 titles rated at 7.5 or higher; although the ratings are unreliable, we can look for certain patterns that allow us to substitute lower rated films for ones that have been systematically overrated by IMDB users and retain a ratio that should provide us with a list of 200-250 neo-noirs that would be strong candidates for a Top 100. (That was the objective of the aborted exercise that was looking to more systemically rework the "Noir 25" poll for classic noir, but it didn't qujite get to a consensus on the Top 250.)
See if you can create such a list from your various breakouts here--1965 to the present, with film title and the grade it received. Once that's here we can fill in the IMDB side and we should have a list with around 1000 titles on it. That will help us determine if the bell-curve distribution that is heavily implicit in your ratings is reflected at all in the IMDB ratings (which look more like a beta distribution).
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