Just as the baseball post-season is currently filled with unavoidable media puffery (competing desperately in tandem with the contemporaneous Halloween hype), next month shifts the silly season to film noir, now burdened with the too-clever-by-three-quarters "Noirvember"--in which, BTW, only one actual film noir festival actually occurs (take a wild guess, folks).

The folks at the Criterion channel (but I'm thinking more likely than not one Imogen S. Smith...) are mercifully avoiding that unfortunate coinage, but they are at least bringing us 20 noirs to watch at our leisure. The list wanders into British noir territory, as you'll see, and a kind of noir that is undeniably favored by Ms. Smith (not necessarily a bad thing, mind you). The telltale sign of a possibily hard-won negotiation, however, is the inclusion of THE RIVER'S EDGE, absolutely & positively a film near and dear to the NC e-zine editor's heart.

Here's the list...

FEATURING: The Glass Key (1942), Laura (1944), Detour (1945), Fallen Angel (1945), Hangover Square (1945), Green for Danger (1946), Brute Force (1947), Ivy (1947), Nightmare Alley (1947), The Naked City (1948), So Evil My Love (1948), The Third Man (1949), Madeleine (1950), No Way Out (1950), Panic in the Streets (1950), So Long at the Fair (1950), The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), The River’s Edge (1957), Sapphire (1959), All Night Long (1962)