Reviewer: Walt Opie
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Classe Tous Risques ("The Big Risk") is a once underappreciated 1960 French film noir by director Claude Sautet (Un Coeur en Hiver), now finally out on DVD thanks to Criterion, that serves as something of a bridge between more conventional gangster pictures and the French New Wave, although it's much more a product of the former. Considering it was Sautet's true directorial debut, he gets a lot of things right, from terrific casting in even the small roles, including a memorable supporting part for the young Jean-Paul Belmondo at the peak of his Breathless powers, to convincing location shots in Milan, Nice and elsewhere. I especially appreciated his touch with filming some of the more violent scenes, which happen suddenly and end as quickly--as they do in real life.

The story, about a smart, burly gangster and family man named Abel Davos (Lino Ventura, a former champion wrestler) with a penchant for explosive bursts of violence as well as a more gentle side, might be an antecedent for Tony Soprano. It's certainly no shocker that modern action directors like John Woo and "Beat" Takeshi Kitano have sung the film's praises, although one wishes that Sautet had done more with the "family" theme he introduces to help develop Abel's humanity a little further. Still, you can't fault Ventura here--he displays just the right blend of menacing toughness and thoughtful vulnerability as he realizes this may be the end of the line for him. "You think you're clever," he says at one point. "And one day you're nothing."

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Reviewer: You (as played by Craig Phillips)
Rating (out of 5): ***½ (film); **** (DVD).

The lost noir classic Blast of Silence starts off a bit dubiously, with enough voice over narration to give Robert McKee an aneurysm after ten minutes, and even with some tedious moments early on, but wait, that scalding and scolding, pulp-ish voice over is in the second person, and the increasingly sleazy, realistic atmosphere begins to take hold of you, until you're fairly well rapt. You dig that nightclub scene, the same kind of scene you remember from older noir, but here the beatnik singer's playing bongos, and as the editing gets quicker in pace, and the tension mounts, you can't stop watching. Add to that character actors you've probably never seen before, even if you know the type -- the fat, shady gun smuggler who tries to play all the angles, the one with the collection of pet rats, and the slimy two-timing mobster with a heart of granite. Then there's the dame from the past, she fills a longing in your lonely heart, so much so you can't keep your mitts off her and she boots you out. You've got to focus on the gig at hand, bumping off a mobster, whom you grow to loathe more and more with each day. Everyone's against you, and there's only one thing you can do - pick off anyone in your path. You (as played by Allan Baron, director and co-screenwriter) ain't such a bad guy, but you've had some hard knocks in life. That's just life in the Big Apple, circa 1962.

You know you're a part of something when it feels like both the last "real" noir, a kiss of death to that movement as we knew it, while also one of the first true neo-realist American independents.

That's Blast of Silence, and thanks to Criterion, you're back.

And, as always in a Criterion joint, this little baby comes with some special gifts, most special being an engaging 60 minute documentary, "Requiem for a Killer: The Making of Blast of Silence", which was put together from a 1990 German film on the production. It's, well, a blast.

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Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): **½ (nostalgia and noir buffs may want to add a star)

Admiring, as I do, so many of the films of Jules Dassin, I find myself surprised that Brute Force (which I had never seen until the arrival of this new Criterion release) does not rank as highly. Though I can understand its being hailed for style, believability and originality in its time, time is the very thing that has left this film in the dust. Despite good performances and superb black-and-white cinematography, the writing and direction are so doggedly of their time and often overly didactic in terms of calling attention to class/economic differences and the dangers of unbridled power that, finally, it's hard not to snicker now and again. When, toward the end, what looks like the entire prison population is given some bad news, their reaction, I swear, sounds exactly like that of Oprah's audience when it learns something sad. (The prisoners have deeper voices, of course.) Granted, this was 1947, yet the entire penitentiary appears to house but a single black inmate. And he sings. Any hint of homosexual behavior is quite veiled, in the character of the villain, 'natch, well-played by a relatively young Hume Cronyn.

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Reviewer: Marc Barrite
Rating (out of 5): ****

In his first feature, French director Louis Malle struck cinematic gold with this film noir, an adaptation of a novel by Noel Calef. There are many faces appearing here who would become fixtures in French cinema but it's the lovely Jeanne Moreau who leaves the most indellible impression; she gives a stand-out performance as the bourgeois Florence Carala helplessly wandering the streets of Paris at night in search of her lover. Moreau's travels are masterfully captured by cinematographer Henri Decae, who employs many of the groundbreaking, budget-conscious techniques that would be used more overtly in the subsequent French new wave movement, including the sole use of available light, which in this film results in a beautiful array of natural shadows cast about in each scene.

Elevator's success and timelessness was further sealed by having jazz trumpet legend Miles Davis perform the unforgettable soundtrack. The improvised score is a shining example of the cool and seductive sound Davis purveyed during the rise of his career. The spare instrumentation and smoky atmosphere of the recordings are hypnotic, complementing the film perfectly.

Though nearing its 50th birthday, Elevator holds up with the best of its contemporaries. The pacing and plot complexities will keep today's less-than-patient viewer attentive, there's enough isolation and paranoia to satiate even the most hardened Hitchcock and noir fans, and the screenplay (by Malle and Roger Nimier) is at once sharp, romantic and political. The Criterion bonus disc offers interviews with Malle and Moreau from 1975 and 2005 respectively, rare footage of Miles Davis performing the soundtrack, and Malle's rarely seen film school short, Crazeologie, to boot.

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Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ****

Rian Johnson's Brick is a super debut, a bravura film that pulls off the pretentious set-up: a Raymond Chandler-esque mystery, updated, and set in an adolescent world. While it stumbles here and there (comes close to going on too long somewhere in Act III), and it is occasionally hard to catch all the hyper-teen-noir slang (a glossary is provided on the official web site), the film is nonetheless a treat.

It's also, dare I say it, the best film set and shot in California's Orange County that I can recall. It certainly captures that overdeveloped, under-souled landscape perfect. Why did no one think of an OC-noir before?

Joseph Gordon Levitt - getting farther and farther away from 3rd Rock from the Sun with each time out - follows up on his fine work in Mysterious Skin with another sharp, if occasionally mumbled, performance, as the nosy teen gumshoe mixed up in some very bad stuff. His character takes a licking and keeps on ticking. And Lukas Haas, in a bit of spot-on casting, is terrific as the young drug kingpin (who does business in his cheerful mom's basement), hobbling on a cane like a Sydney Greenstreet character, while Noah Fleiss is memorably creepy as hell as his disturbed right-hand man. In fact, like any good pulp detective story, the whole film is full of indellible characters who are remembered long after the lights go back up - while also helping to keep your eyes on the screen even as the plot itself sometimes loses momentum.

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