So I saw Ghostbusters: Afterlife over the weekend. After a couple days to really think about why I kinda hated it, I’ve come up with a few:
Stay Puft Minions. This was bad. This was the moment my brain OD’d on nostalgia and said no, no more.
Ghost Harold This was bad. A little may have gone a long way. But this was uncomfortable for me. Both on an ethical level (reviving dead actors) and on a “man they are lingering way too much on ghost Egon here” level.
The OG Busters showing up suddenly in full gear. This was bad. They definitely should have been in the movie in some capacity, but this was a hamfisted way to do it. Ray’s earlier scene was great, for instance.
Repeat villain. Gozer again? Really? And all the repeat/rehashed scenes because of it, just felt light on ideas.
I really kinda enjoyed the first half of the movie, but by the end I was pretty done with it. It ended up being very much a “well what did I expect” situation.
I think how much you enjoy this movie is directly correlated to how cynical you are. As someone who never was nostalgic for Ghostie Bustas, it sounds like a mess but I'm sure it's a decent family movie... With heaping scoops of "we're doing this before all the old people still alive croak and we have to secure likeness rights to them, too!"
It just seems so weird to me to do a heartfelt, sentimental take on Ghostbusters. The original is a cynical, irreverent comedy. That's what people liked about it, or so I thought?
It just seems so weird to me to do a heartfelt, sentimental take on Ghostbusters. The original is a cynical, irreverent comedy. That's what people liked about it, or so I thought?
Because its about cashing in on what children who watched ghostbusters feel about the franchise not the franchise itself.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I see Ridley Scott has blamed Millenials for his movie bombing, sir this shit ain't on us.
It seems silly, I didn't even know it WAS a movie until like a day before it came out
Maybe I just live in a cave but that movie got like zero buzz, and the trailers didn't seem to know how to advertise it
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I see Ridley Scott has blamed Millenials for his movie bombing, sir this shit ain't on us.
"Kids and their cellphones and facebooks!" is certainly a take. Personally I'd lean on, "releases a movie in theaters during a pandemic" with perhaps a side of "large portion of the movie dedicated to showing us a rape scene from three different points of view"
That last one you can probably blame on millenials - we seem to be much more empathetic than our forebears, and thus more likely to be nauseated by such content
I see Ridley Scott has blamed Millenials for his movie bombing, sir this shit ain't on us.
Ever since his Brother died, Ridley has never been the same.
"Doesn't excuse his, ;"Damn Kids, bloody get off my lawn.!" Mode at the moment, but yeah, losing a close family member like that? Yeah, your brain is gonna be mush.
I see Ridley Scott has blamed Millenials for his movie bombing, sir this shit ain't on us.
Ever since his Brother died, Ridley has never been the same.
"Doesn't excuse his, ;"Damn Kids, bloody get off my lawn.!" Mode at the moment, but yeah, losing a close family member like that? Yeah, your brain is gonna be mush.
Yeah I get that, means maybe Ridley should have just stopped and taken care of himself.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I see Ridley Scott has blamed Millenials for his movie bombing, sir this shit ain't on us.
"Kids and their cellphones and facebooks!" is certainly a take. Personally I'd lean on, "releases a movie in theaters during a pandemic" with perhaps a side of "large portion of the movie dedicated to showing us a rape scene from three different points of view"
That last one you can probably blame on millenials - we seem to be much more empathetic than our forebears, and thus more likely to be nauseated by such content
I didn't come out of Rashomon thinking I needed the crime portrayed in more lurid detail.
I see Ridley Scott has blamed Millenials for his movie bombing, sir this shit ain't on us.
"Kids and their cellphones and facebooks!" is certainly a take. Personally I'd lean on, "releases a movie in theaters during a pandemic" with perhaps a side of "large portion of the movie dedicated to showing us a rape scene from three different points of view"
That last one you can probably blame on millenials - we seem to be much more empathetic than our forebears, and thus more likely to be nauseated by such content
I doubt the last one was really at all relevant. It released during a pandemic with a bad advertising campaign and like zero word of mouth buzz from what I saw.
Right now it seems like you are either a big shit blockbuster or you are nothing. Americans by and large aren't going to the theatres for anything but the biggest of tent poles.
After Ridley dragged his balls across the Alien franchise, maybe I just don't care what he puts his name on anymore. But, that's just me.
Having read the inital greenlight script and the shooting script, I think Prometheus was primarily a victim of studio meddling and trying to hit a shorter runtime to appease executives. Ridley and Lindelof had some fantastic stuff in there about the engineers and how the Deacon fit into things and it could've been a great movie. Almost none of the nuance was able to make the final cut, but based on the deleted scenes a good portion of it was filmed.
Covenant was definitely him teabagging his creation though, it is poop from a butt.
BlackDragon480 on
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Alec Trevelyan - his accent occasionally slips but he's doing it for England
The Last Duel had zero advertising and apparently they expected Matt Damon and Adam Driver (and Affleck i guess?) to bring butts to the seats to which my only response is LOL.
And then word of mouth was negative.
Realistically their only hope was that people would show up to the theater not knowing what to watch and would randomly pick this movie over Bond and Dune without knowing anything about it.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I see Ridley Scott has blamed Millenials for his movie bombing, sir this shit ain't on us.
"Kids and their cellphones and facebooks!" is certainly a take. Personally I'd lean on, "releases a movie in theaters during a pandemic" with perhaps a side of "large portion of the movie dedicated to showing us a rape scene from three different points of view"
That last one you can probably blame on millenials - we seem to be much more empathetic than our forebears, and thus more likely to be nauseated by such content
I doubt the last one was really at all relevant. It released during a pandemic with a bad advertising campaign and like zero word of mouth buzz from what I saw.
Right now it seems like you are either a big shit blockbuster or you are nothing. Americans by and large aren't going to the theatres for anything but the biggest of tent poles.
I mean it's why my household isn't interested in seeing it, but yeah I'd blame the pandemic first
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Alec Trevelyan - his accent occasionally slips but he's doing it for England
Oh, I saw Ghostbusters Afterlife
It is an 80s adventure movie ala Goonies. I loved it! But if you don't like those kinds of movies, or you're expecting this to be Ghostbusters 1&2 again, you're not going to have fun
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Alec Trevelyan - his accent occasionally slips but he's doing it for England
I dunno
I’ve watched several interviews with Ridley Scott of the last few years and I know he’s getting on in years but he really seems to fundamentally misunderstand what people find interesting about his work and just movies in general
I don’t know if he was always like that, but still. I think he’s suffering from the same late-stage director fizzling that virtually all the big names have, and he’s never exactly been much of a high-brow. So this caterwauling about them damn kids (and millennials are, like, 40 now) just seems like granddad needing to go to bed.
Oh I have no problem with criticism of his comments. He's always been a cranky old man, but "he's been unimportant to the success of his own movies" is a lot to hang off of him being pissed that his latest movie flopped and "something something mean about superhero films". His best work may be behind him but come on. Blade Runner, Alien, The Duellists, Gladiator, Thelma & Louise: you surely can't see those movies and come away thinking hmmm the director doesn't really get films.
Every single director is going to be asked about superhero movies in every single interview anyone conducts for the foreseeable future. Because that's the bit the editor will pull out and whack on Twitter as "Spielberg Says Superhero Movies Worse Than Butt Cancer" and then watch those hateclicks roll in.
Eh, he's saying some dumb stuff but he has put a lot of work into those movies over the years. People annoyed over the movie being focused on rape is missing the entire point of the plot. The movie is actually about a woman's perspective and how it gets lost in the political pissing match of the two men involved. The sexual assault, unlike say Rob Zombie, who uses it to cheaply heighten the tension of a scene... Is used to highlight the very real pain those things bring about. These things happen and not making a movie that just features sexual assault as a plot hook but actually has something to say about it is important. It's uncomfortable and nobody should force themselves to watch it but yeah, I think the movie actually was pretty good.
Ridley is old as fuck but he gets to make movies that other people simply aren't given the chance to. He can be the old man yelling at clouds. I don't particularly love the Alien sequels but a lot of his other stuff is actually solid, even now.
It's a spectacularly bad time to release an unhappy movie about sexual assault that cost a hundred million dollars. I'm not sure there's ever a very good time to release that movie but this wasn't it. Also, I dunno if I was just blind to the marketing but it seemed to come out of nowhere as well. Like hey here's an advert for Ridley Scott's latest it's out tomorrow.
It's a spectacularly bad time to release an unhappy movie about sexual assault that cost a hundred million dollars. I'm not sure there's ever a very good time to release that movie but this wasn't it. Also, I dunno if I was just blind to the marketing but it seemed to come out of nowhere as well. Like hey here's an advert for Ridley Scott's latest it's out tomorrow.
Well he has House of Gucci out this week and Gaga has been promoting it hard so maybe he'll have something to smile about soon?
Idk it's a good time for critical movies of men and machismo bullshit
I think you're right in that it's a good time for critical movies of men and machismo bullshit.
However I don't think "Huh, turns out maybe people won't turn up in the theater to watch a movie that portrays violent rape" is an argument against that.
Personally I don't think the movie not doing well has much to do with that though. This struck me as the kind of film that would have needed a fairly decent media blitz to get traction in the best of times. I think that a theater release for it in this environment doomed it from a box office standpoint.
I honestly think they probably would have had a better outcome trying to getting a bidding war going among the major streaming services based upon the names involved.
The Last Duel is a pretty damn slow movie that mainly shows the same story three times with minor difference. If you pay attention it is an excellent movie, but I'm not sure why in gods name someone would expect it to be a blockbuster.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Le Chiffre - just pop your clothes over there and take a seat, please
It's a spectacularly bad time to release an unhappy movie about sexual assault that cost a hundred million dollars. I'm not sure there's ever a very good time to release that movie but this wasn't it. Also, I dunno if I was just blind to the marketing but it seemed to come out of nowhere as well. Like hey here's an advert for Ridley Scott's latest it's out tomorrow.
Well he has House of Gucci out this week and Gaga has been promoting it hard so maybe he'll have something to smile about soon?
I bet it does about twice as good as The Last Duel, in that I have seen trailers for it, so that helps, but those trailers made it look like an overgenerous helping of saltine crackers. Gobbled the lot and now I can't chew.
Casting Jared Leto and then covering him in prosthetics just baffles me. Is Paul Giamatti not free? Are character actors so thin on the ground or stars in every role so important that you'd rather cast a thin pretty star and make them unrecognisable?
Leto's got perfume commercials as a side-gig already. Don't let him steal food from the plate of Steve Buscemi.
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Alec Trevelyan - his accent occasionally slips but he's doing it for England
There is absolutely nothing about House of Gucci that interests me, and several things that repel me.
- Vapid characters in a vapid story about a vapid industry
- Gaga hamming it up
- Pacino doubly hamming it up
- Driver in the ugliest glasses ever made
- Leto in a fatsuit
- Leto, at all
+13
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
To be fair to Driver, those are probably period accurate
There is absolutely nothing about House of Gucci that interests me, and several things that repel me.
- Vapid characters in a vapid story about a vapid industry
- Gaga hamming it up
- Pacino doubly hamming it up
- Driver in the ugliest glasses ever made
- Leto in a fatsuit
- Leto, at all
Are you sure it's not because you're too busy checking your phone and eating avocados?
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
+9
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
Went to see The French Dispatch this weekend. Basically, if you enjoy Wes Anderson, you will enjoy it. If you don't, chances are you won't. Anyway, I found myself just sitting there, smiling, throughout the whole thing, it's quite delightful. Don't expect a coherent story, it's just a few quirky little vignettes. I wouldn't have minded if there were a couple of more of them though, it's a nice little world he has created.
+4
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Ernst Stavro Blofeld - the Donald Pleasance one
I finally checked a longstanding entry off my to-do list and watched Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948) tonight.
It was worth the wait!
It's a noirish (just -ish - we'll get into that in a sec) murder mystery/police procedural with quasi-documentary elements, famous for being one of the very first movies since the silent era to be shot entirely on location, with the actors filmed "on the streets, in the apartment houses, in the skyscrapers of New York itself."
A glamour model has been found dead in her apartment - chloroformed, then drowned in her bathtub - and the movie follows the investigating officers, particularly Barry Fitzgerald as the wily older Detective Lt. Dan Muldoon, and Don Taylor as the freshly-minted, all-American Detective Jimmy Halloran.
Jean Dexter seems to have been a troubled woman. Nobody the detectives talk to turns out to have known her very well; she fled to the city from a smaller town, changed her original Polish surname, took uppers and downers, and had affairs with rich men. Her life becomes a window into the seamier, twilight side of the city.
The older cop/younger cop dynamic was a cliché decades before I was born, but growing up in the 80s, it had a particular vibe: the older guy was usually fed up, exhausted, cynical, but also a bit sentimental, dreaming wistfully of easier times, while the younger guy was either a more macho, violent man of action, or a naive dork who comes of age by becoming a macho action man. You can see how this led, or at least led people to tolerate, our current situation.
But this movie doesn't do that: old man Muldoon isn't cranky and pissy, but instead kind of quietly amused by everything around him; he's sly and impish, a trickster who likes to tie people up in webs of their own words.
While Halloran isn't a thug or a troubled 'Nam vet, and also isn't painted as some kind of naive kid who has to learn Hard Lessons, but is instead a hard-working and perceptive guy who comes off as thoughtful and emotionally intelligent. We get a few scenes of his marriage and it's a refreshing depiction of a couple that are still obviously horny for each other.
But while the police are the lead characters, I wouldn't say the movie is really about them, and it's only somewhat about the case. It wants to be about New York itself; the case is just our window into the world. The mystery isn't very complicated, so the movie has time to stop and smell the roses. Scenes of police legwork are intercut with little vignettes of everyday life in New York, overheard conversations between regular people: women on their lunch break, kids playing hopscotch, burly factory workers snoozing on the early a.m. train. A lot of these bits were apparently played by real New Yorkers acting as more or less themselves.
Several of these moments, and the accompanying narration, are very funny, and that ties in to why, although the movie features on several noir lists, I don't think it's entirely a noir: it doesn't have that laser focus on human frailty and moral corruption. It doesn't exist in a world where every single person is a guilty, nervous wreck with a twitchy upper lip sweating under a bare bulb. Jules Dassin was left-wing and Jewish (and a Communist, until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, for which he was blacklisted not very long after this came out) and I feel like he takes this very broad, humanistic view of the world; there are murders and abusers in the city, but there's also love, and comedy, and life energy, and he wants to show us those, too, because leaving them out wouldn't be honest.
Stylistically, it doesn't have the very German Expressionist vibe people tend to associate in their heads with noir (lots of hard shadows, Dutch angles, fog, etc) and it doesn't have the stage-bound, claustrophobic atmosphere of actual noir movies (which were often made for cheap on bland pre-existing sets that were lit dramatically to try and inject some extra zest). Wikipedia says some critics compare it to Italian neorealist movies, like The Bicycle Thief, and I think I agree. Mostly the shots are there to create a sense of place and of tangible realism instead of trying to be dramatic compositions in their own right, although there are some exceptions, like this raw, poignant moment where the dead woman's mother, who resents her daughter for ditching the family to move to the big city, breaks down by the waterfront:
But this moment is kind of an exception both stylistically and emotionally. The movie doesn't really go for big emotional beats; aside from this one moment, nobody has a cathartic life-changing emotional breakthrough, nobody learns a very important lesson. That would be out of step with the idea of showing us a "day in the life," a little slice of quasi-realism told in a matter-of-fact way. We don't get big reams of backstory about our characters, just little moments that add up to a quick (but lifelike) sketch. There aren't any big speeches, and the action climax is still pretty subdued and played for a sense of plausibility, like this is a thing that could really happen.
But there is a very memorable line, the last line in the movie, and while I knew the line going in, I'm glad to say that the movie does live up to it.
+22
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Alec Trevelyan - his accent occasionally slips but he's doing it for England
There is absolutely nothing about House of Gucci that interests me, and several things that repel me.
- Vapid characters in a vapid story about a vapid industry
- Gaga hamming it up
- Pacino doubly hamming it up
- Driver in the ugliest glasses ever made
- Leto in a fatsuit
- Leto, at all
Are you sure it's not because you're too busy checking your phone and eating avocados?
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over all the golf courses and jewelry stores I’m murdering
Posts
I think how much you enjoy this movie is directly correlated to how cynical you are. As someone who never was nostalgic for Ghostie Bustas, it sounds like a mess but I'm sure it's a decent family movie... With heaping scoops of "we're doing this before all the old people still alive croak and we have to secure likeness rights to them, too!"
Because its about cashing in on what children who watched ghostbusters feel about the franchise not the franchise itself.
pleasepaypreacher.net
pleasepaypreacher.net
It seems silly, I didn't even know it WAS a movie until like a day before it came out
Maybe I just live in a cave but that movie got like zero buzz, and the trailers didn't seem to know how to advertise it
Well its hard to sell a movie that I believe is focused on graphic rape? Like maybe that kind of hurt your movie bro
pleasepaypreacher.net
"Kids and their cellphones and facebooks!" is certainly a take. Personally I'd lean on, "releases a movie in theaters during a pandemic" with perhaps a side of "large portion of the movie dedicated to showing us a rape scene from three different points of view"
That last one you can probably blame on millenials - we seem to be much more empathetic than our forebears, and thus more likely to be nauseated by such content
Having no familiarity with the anime, I greatly enjoyed it, and recommend it to others.
Streaming on Netflix iirc
MWO: Adamski
Not a movie!
Ever since his Brother died, Ridley has never been the same.
"Doesn't excuse his, ;"Damn Kids, bloody get off my lawn.!" Mode at the moment, but yeah, losing a close family member like that? Yeah, your brain is gonna be mush.
Yeah I get that, means maybe Ridley should have just stopped and taken care of himself.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I didn't come out of Rashomon thinking I needed the crime portrayed in more lurid detail.
I doubt the last one was really at all relevant. It released during a pandemic with a bad advertising campaign and like zero word of mouth buzz from what I saw.
Right now it seems like you are either a big shit blockbuster or you are nothing. Americans by and large aren't going to the theatres for anything but the biggest of tent poles.
Having read the inital greenlight script and the shooting script, I think Prometheus was primarily a victim of studio meddling and trying to hit a shorter runtime to appease executives. Ridley and Lindelof had some fantastic stuff in there about the engineers and how the Deacon fit into things and it could've been a great movie. Almost none of the nuance was able to make the final cut, but based on the deleted scenes a good portion of it was filmed.
Covenant was definitely him teabagging his creation though, it is poop from a butt.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
And then word of mouth was negative.
Realistically their only hope was that people would show up to the theater not knowing what to watch and would randomly pick this movie over Bond and Dune without knowing anything about it.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I mean it's why my household isn't interested in seeing it, but yeah I'd blame the pandemic first
It is an 80s adventure movie ala Goonies. I loved it! But if you don't like those kinds of movies, or you're expecting this to be Ghostbusters 1&2 again, you're not going to have fun
I thought it was great!
No, come on now.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I’ve watched several interviews with Ridley Scott of the last few years and I know he’s getting on in years but he really seems to fundamentally misunderstand what people find interesting about his work and just movies in general
I don’t know if he was always like that, but still. I think he’s suffering from the same late-stage director fizzling that virtually all the big names have, and he’s never exactly been much of a high-brow. So this caterwauling about them damn kids (and millennials are, like, 40 now) just seems like granddad needing to go to bed.
Every single director is going to be asked about superhero movies in every single interview anyone conducts for the foreseeable future. Because that's the bit the editor will pull out and whack on Twitter as "Spielberg Says Superhero Movies Worse Than Butt Cancer" and then watch those hateclicks roll in.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Ridley is old as fuck but he gets to make movies that other people simply aren't given the chance to. He can be the old man yelling at clouds. I don't particularly love the Alien sequels but a lot of his other stuff is actually solid, even now.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Oh I meant commercially. I haven't seen the film and have no idea if it's any good.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Well he has House of Gucci out this week and Gaga has been promoting it hard so maybe he'll have something to smile about soon?
I think you're right in that it's a good time for critical movies of men and machismo bullshit.
However I don't think "Huh, turns out maybe people won't turn up in the theater to watch a movie that portrays violent rape" is an argument against that.
Personally I don't think the movie not doing well has much to do with that though. This struck me as the kind of film that would have needed a fairly decent media blitz to get traction in the best of times. I think that a theater release for it in this environment doomed it from a box office standpoint.
I honestly think they probably would have had a better outcome trying to getting a bidding war going among the major streaming services based upon the names involved.
I bet it does about twice as good as The Last Duel, in that I have seen trailers for it, so that helps, but those trailers made it look like an overgenerous helping of saltine crackers. Gobbled the lot and now I can't chew.
Leto's got perfume commercials as a side-gig already. Don't let him steal food from the plate of Steve Buscemi.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
- Vapid characters in a vapid story about a vapid industry
- Gaga hamming it up
- Pacino doubly hamming it up
- Driver in the ugliest glasses ever made
- Leto in a fatsuit
- Leto, at all
But you repeat yourself.
Are you sure it's not because you're too busy checking your phone and eating avocados?
It was worth the wait!
It's a noirish (just -ish - we'll get into that in a sec) murder mystery/police procedural with quasi-documentary elements, famous for being one of the very first movies since the silent era to be shot entirely on location, with the actors filmed "on the streets, in the apartment houses, in the skyscrapers of New York itself."
A glamour model has been found dead in her apartment - chloroformed, then drowned in her bathtub - and the movie follows the investigating officers, particularly Barry Fitzgerald as the wily older Detective Lt. Dan Muldoon, and Don Taylor as the freshly-minted, all-American Detective Jimmy Halloran.
Jean Dexter seems to have been a troubled woman. Nobody the detectives talk to turns out to have known her very well; she fled to the city from a smaller town, changed her original Polish surname, took uppers and downers, and had affairs with rich men. Her life becomes a window into the seamier, twilight side of the city.
The older cop/younger cop dynamic was a cliché decades before I was born, but growing up in the 80s, it had a particular vibe: the older guy was usually fed up, exhausted, cynical, but also a bit sentimental, dreaming wistfully of easier times, while the younger guy was either a more macho, violent man of action, or a naive dork who comes of age by becoming a macho action man. You can see how this led, or at least led people to tolerate, our current situation.
But this movie doesn't do that: old man Muldoon isn't cranky and pissy, but instead kind of quietly amused by everything around him; he's sly and impish, a trickster who likes to tie people up in webs of their own words.
While Halloran isn't a thug or a troubled 'Nam vet, and also isn't painted as some kind of naive kid who has to learn Hard Lessons, but is instead a hard-working and perceptive guy who comes off as thoughtful and emotionally intelligent. We get a few scenes of his marriage and it's a refreshing depiction of a couple that are still obviously horny for each other.
But while the police are the lead characters, I wouldn't say the movie is really about them, and it's only somewhat about the case. It wants to be about New York itself; the case is just our window into the world. The mystery isn't very complicated, so the movie has time to stop and smell the roses. Scenes of police legwork are intercut with little vignettes of everyday life in New York, overheard conversations between regular people: women on their lunch break, kids playing hopscotch, burly factory workers snoozing on the early a.m. train. A lot of these bits were apparently played by real New Yorkers acting as more or less themselves.
Several of these moments, and the accompanying narration, are very funny, and that ties in to why, although the movie features on several noir lists, I don't think it's entirely a noir: it doesn't have that laser focus on human frailty and moral corruption. It doesn't exist in a world where every single person is a guilty, nervous wreck with a twitchy upper lip sweating under a bare bulb. Jules Dassin was left-wing and Jewish (and a Communist, until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, for which he was blacklisted not very long after this came out) and I feel like he takes this very broad, humanistic view of the world; there are murders and abusers in the city, but there's also love, and comedy, and life energy, and he wants to show us those, too, because leaving them out wouldn't be honest.
Stylistically, it doesn't have the very German Expressionist vibe people tend to associate in their heads with noir (lots of hard shadows, Dutch angles, fog, etc) and it doesn't have the stage-bound, claustrophobic atmosphere of actual noir movies (which were often made for cheap on bland pre-existing sets that were lit dramatically to try and inject some extra zest). Wikipedia says some critics compare it to Italian neorealist movies, like The Bicycle Thief, and I think I agree. Mostly the shots are there to create a sense of place and of tangible realism instead of trying to be dramatic compositions in their own right, although there are some exceptions, like this raw, poignant moment where the dead woman's mother, who resents her daughter for ditching the family to move to the big city, breaks down by the waterfront:
But this moment is kind of an exception both stylistically and emotionally. The movie doesn't really go for big emotional beats; aside from this one moment, nobody has a cathartic life-changing emotional breakthrough, nobody learns a very important lesson. That would be out of step with the idea of showing us a "day in the life," a little slice of quasi-realism told in a matter-of-fact way. We don't get big reams of backstory about our characters, just little moments that add up to a quick (but lifelike) sketch. There aren't any big speeches, and the action climax is still pretty subdued and played for a sense of plausibility, like this is a thing that could really happen.
But there is a very memorable line, the last line in the movie, and while I knew the line going in, I'm glad to say that the movie does live up to it.
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over all the golf courses and jewelry stores I’m murdering