Neonoir
19 Episodes
While film noir had its heyday in the disillusioned postwar era of the 1940s and ’50s, its seductively moody style and dark, cynical edge have continued to inspire more recent filmmakers to put their own stamps on the genre. Featuring unforgettable femmes fatales (Linda Fiorentino’s ice-cold bad girl in THE LAST SEDUCTION) and rogue detectives (a shockingly sleazy James Woods in COP, Harvey Keitel and Nicolas Cage as two very different Bad Lieutenants), these next-generation crime thrillers reveal the myriad ways in which the hard-boiled vocabulary of noir has endured and evolved over the decades. Bringing together acclaimed modern classics (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL) and hidden gems (THE DEEP END) from the New Hollywood of the 1970s (NIGHT MOVES, OBSESSION) to the VHS era of the 1980s and ’90s (CRIMES OF PASSION, OUT OF SIGHT) and beyond, this selection proves that noir is more than just a single era or movement—it’s a state of mind.
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01:07Episode 1
Neonoir Teaser
Episode 1
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2:02:44Episode 2
Out of Sight
Episode 2
Directed by Steven Soderbergh • 1998 • United States Starring George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Don Cheadle
The megawatt star power of George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez propels this sexy, sleekly entertaining ...
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1:56:08Episode 4
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Episode 4
Directed by Joel Coen • 2001 • United States, United Kingdom Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, James Gandolfini
The Coen brothers put their inimitable, offbeat stamp on the noir genre with this moody tale of...
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2:17:44Episode 5
L.A. Confidential
Episode 5
Directed by Curtis Hanson • 1997 • United States
Starring Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin SpaceyPerhaps the finest neonoir since CHINATOWN, Curtis Hanson’s masterful adaptation of the novel by James Ellroy brings the sleazy underbelly of 1950s Los Angeles to the screen with sizzle and punch. F...
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1:42:14Episode 6
Eyewitness
Episode 6
Directed by Peter Yates • 1981 • United States
Starring William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher PlummerWhen a young janitor (William Hurt) finds a dead body in his building, he convinces a local television reporter with whom he is infatuated (Sigourney Weaver) that he knows more about the k...
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Blow Out
Episode 7
Directed by Brian De Palma • 1981 • United States
Starring John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John LithgowIn the enthralling BLOW OUT, brilliantly crafted by Brian De Palma, John Travolta gives one of his greatest performances, as a movie sound-effects man who believes he has accidentally recorded a p...
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1:41:54Episode 8
Blue Steel
Episode 8
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow • 1990 • United States
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Ron Silver, Clancy BrownAction auteur Kathryn Bigelow renders this sleek and stylish police thriller with almost painterly abstraction. Day one on the force, and rookie cop Megan Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis) faces suspe...
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Cop
Episode 9
Directed by James B. Harris • 1988 • United States
Starring James Woods, Lesley Ann Warren, Charles DurningA magnetically psychotic James Woods takes the dirty-cop genre to new depths of shocking sleaze in this startlingly perverse thriller based on a James Ellroy novel and directed by Stanl...
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1:46:52Episode 10
Crimes of Passion
Episode 10
Directed by Ken Russell • 1984 • United States
Starring Kathleen Turner, Anthony Perkins, Bruce DavisonShe is watched. She is worshiped. And she must remain a mystery. Fashion designer Joanna Crane (Kathleen Turner, at the height of her powers) leads a double life. By night she is China Blue, a...
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1:50:13Episode 11
The Last Seduction
Episode 11
Directed by John Dahl • 1994 • United States
Starring Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, Bill PullmanLinda Fiorentino is a diabolical delight as one of the most unrepentantly wicked femmes fatales of the neonoir boom in this deliciously entertaining thriller. After roping her doctor husband (Bill Pu...
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2:02:03Episode 12
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Episode 12
Directed by Werner Herzog • 2009 • United States
Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val KilmerTwo of contemporary cinema’s most electrifying eccentrics, Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage, join forces for a thoroughly unhinged pulp fever dream. Not—despite the title—a remake of or sequel to the si...
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1:41:00Episode 13
The Deep End
Episode 13
Directed by David Siegel and Scott McGehee • 2001 • United States
Starring Tilda Swinton, Goran Visnjic, Jonathan TuckerTilda Swinton delivers a tour-de-force performance as a mother driven to extremes in this stylish and psychologically rich reworking of Max Ophuls’s 1949 noir THE RECKLESS MO...
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1:56:23Episode 14
Absence of Malice
Episode 14
Directed by Sydney Pollack • 1981 • United States
Starring Sally Field, Paul Newman, Bob BalabanIn America, can a man be guilty until proven innocent? Suppose you picked up this morning’s newspaper and your life was a front-page headl...
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1:39:42Episode 15
The Big Sleep
Episode 15
Directed by Michael Winner • 1978 • United States
Starring Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, Richard BooneRobert Mitchum steps into the gumshoes of detective Philip Marlowe in this bold 1970s reimagining of the Raymond Chandler classic set in England. When Marlowe takes on what appears to be a routi...
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1:35:39Episode 16
Blood Simple
Episode 16
Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen • 1984 • United States
Joel and Ethan Coen's career-long darkly comic road trip through misfit America began with this razor-sharp, hard-boiled neonoir set somewhere in Texas, where a sleazy bar owner releases a torrent of violence with one murderous though...
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1:39:40Episode 17
Night Moves
Episode 17
Directed by Arthur Penn • 1975 • United States
Starring Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, Edward BinnsHarry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is a run-of-the-mill, bottom-of-the-barrel private eye who spends his working hours staking out divorce disputants, chasing runaways, and tracing missing persons. That ...
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1:41:00Episode 18
Blood and Wine
Episode 18
Directed by Bob Rafelson • 1996 • United States
Starring Jack Nicholson, Stephen Dorff, Jennifer LopezDirector Bob Rafelson and star Jack Nicholson reunite for this gripping, darkly acidic crime drama, the final installment in what the filmmaker has described as an unofficial trilogy about dysf...
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1:36:17Episode 19
Bad Lieutenant
Episode 19
Directed by Abel Ferrara • 1992 • United States
Starring Harvey Keitel, Peggy Gormley, Victor ArgoAbel Ferrara’s harrowing vision of sin, Catholic guilt, and the search for salvation in a grimy New York City underworld is one of the most controversial and indelible works of the art of the 1990s...