scifi film noir films

[MadaBidyoni]

Hi
do you know about any other scifi film noir films?
i found only these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fil...ci-fi_noir
thanks

[Boomstick]

"Blade Runner" is really the only sci-fi film that I've ever seen that could legitimately be called "noir."

Due to it's setting, "The Thirteenth Floor" would seem like an obvious candidate, but I haven't seen it in several years, and I don't recall it's content specifically. Recently, "Looper" has a noir-ish vibe, but I'd hesitate to place it squarely in that category.

I see they have "Johnny Mnemonic" on that list, but that's Cyberpunk all the way-- a genre unto itself, although one heavily influenced by film noir.

[MadaBidyoni]

well
"Blade Runner" wasn't that good
it was ok & thats it. "Dark city" - now that is a good film
too bad there are so few scifi noir films.

[moncapitan]

I'd say that 'Cube' could probably be classed as noir, and that's a pretty good film...

[august]

Cube? The film with the people inside the bare rooms with the various colors and traps? Hmmm... interesting interpretation of "noir" ...

Then again, the Wikipedia entry has a lot that you really have to stretch the definition, like Soylent Green, Groundstar Conspiracy, Terminator, Brazil, Alien NAtion, Total Recall, etc. Apparently if a movie has any scenes filmed using shadows, they think that means it's noir. :laugh:

[Boomstick]

well
"Blade Runner" wasn't that good.

:jawdrop::thud:

[august]

:lol: Well that's where we run into the twin bugbears of personal taste, and of "what is the definition of 'good?' " and to date, no one has been able to answer the latter. Certainly Blade Runner wasn't tremendously popular with the general public when it came out, and got mixed critical reaction. It was only nominated for two Oscars (for art direction and sfx, the two things which everyone generally praised it for) and won none. But the general public isn't known for appreciating quality, nor for "getting" sci-fi.

It undeniably was hugely influential though - you could use the term "Blade Runner style scenery" to anyone under 60 and they'd get it, assuming they weren't, you know, hanging with the Taliban, or raising a barn in Amish country, or blowgun-hunting along the Amazon. :laugh: In later years it has been named to any number of "all time greats" list, like by Time Magazine and the American Film Institute. Hugo and Saturn awards give it some cred too.

That said, I agree with lots of folks that it drags way too much at times. I checked Wikipedia, and was amused to see a quote from the lady who used to review films for one of the local paper when I was growing up. She definitely knew about film, and her husband was a film professor at the university, but she was never able to appreciate anything that was done simply for entertainment purposes - at the time, that meant Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, etc. If it wasn't Truffaut or Bergman or a similarly incomprehensible European director, she would invariably say that a film was terrible. And so virtually no one ever paid attention to any of her reviews. The lady who did reviews for the other paper was able to point out why some people might like something while others might not, and to define something within its own genre. Guess which one I got to come talk to my drama class in senior year? :poke: :hellohands:

And back to the topic... coincidentally, most noir films in the original era were B-films that were only modestly successful, and few were noted for anything other than their visual and thematic style.

[august]

And coincidentally, Blastr says:

These days pretty much everyone regards Blade Runner as a classic, one of the greatest science fiction films ever made, but at its 1982 release it was famously divisive. Some praised it as a visionary masterpiece, while others dubbed it "Blade Crawler" for its slow pacing. There were a lot of Blade Runner haters around in '82, and it turns out some of them were major players in one of the film's production companies....

The article goes on to describe some serious objections at the time.

[Michael]

I could almost say that "Serenity" was a noir-style movie.

There are plenty of SciFi flicks where everyone dies, all hope is abandoned, and people generally come out of the theater depressed. A lot of "astronauts land on planet and meet their deaths" kind of movies have featured whodoneit-style plots, for example. Murder and space seem to go hand-in-hand.

[MadaBidyoni]

so you think noir=depression? :-)

[Michael]

Well, I think noir = not very bright and happy.

Maybe that's just me.

I have a friend who loves film noir and science fiction and he can go on and on for hours about the nuances of movies I would never want to watch.

[august]

When I first read this, I challenged myself to come up with a definition of noir, and the first words that came to mid were "seedy, shady, sultry."

One online definition has it like this: "crime fiction featuring hard-boiled cynical characters and bleak sleazy settings." Another just says "showing characteristics of film noir," which in turn is defined like this: "a motion picture with an often grim urban setting, photographed in somber tones and permeated by a feeling of disillusionment, pessimism, and despair."

So I'm thinking Blade Runner and Dark City for sure.

[MadaBidyoni]

well, then in this case i think that "the book of eli" & the walking dead tv show are both post-apopcalyptic noirs no?:wink:

[august]

By the grim, somber, bleak despair definition then sure. I think bleak, post-apocalyptic dystopia is sort of its own sub-genre though. Now if Rick were a hard-boiled detective, trying to solve a crime and being distracted by femme fatales as well as zombies, with moody saxophones and oboes playing in the background, I'd see that as more traditional noir.

From that Wikipedia list, Sin City very definitely fits that category, since the creators made no secret about trying to capture that style... and Terminator and Brazil borrow from it visually...not so sure about a lot of the others, which just seem to be on there because the cinematographer incorporated shadows. :poke:

[Agaricus]

Has anybody mentioned Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville'? Arguable the grandaddy of sci-fi noir.

[august]

Wasn't familiar with it, but looked it up just now, and it certainly would seem to be exactly that.