THE DANMAN CAN

An expertly crafted, trainbound cat and mouse thriller, Peter Hyams ' Narrow Margin (1990) is a taut and lean Hitchcock ian picture that strips its action down to the bare essentials for maximum suspense. An update of the (also great) 1952 Richard Fleischer film, The Narrow Margin , this highly entertaining movie features strong performances by leads Gene Hackman and Anne Archer , a moody and mysterious score, and excellent cinematography (lots of beautiful Canadian wilderness) by director Hyams himself. Peter Hyams Films Ranked

Le Doulos   (1962) ticks all the  Jean-Pierre Melville  boxes—charismatic lead*, crime, slow pace, short bursts of action/violence, detached/cool characters, double-crosses, style. It's a very good, noirish drama with a certain sense of reality due to its almost absence of score. * Jean-Paul Belmondo , with his boyish good looks, has an undeniably intoxicating quality here, but his character is also a bastard. He betrays his associates and treats women like garbage, but—much like  Malcolm McDowel l in  Stanley Kubrick 's  A Clockwork Orange   (1971)—he does it with a smirk on his mug throughout. Though the film can feel slow, there's an intricacy to the relationship of the characters that belies its simplistic surface nature.  Le Doulos  also has a satisfyingly dark ending that befits its neo-noir leanings. Jean-Pierre Melville Feature Films Ranked

Bob Le Flambeur  (aka  Bob The Gambler ) (1956), director  Jean-Pierre Melville 's precursor to the  French New Wave , is a film that I always feel like I should like a lot more than I actually do. Largely this is due to its reputation as one of the greatest crime films (as well as a favorite film of many directors that I admire). I do like the film (which I’ve seen three times now) a lot, but I prefer the detached cool and slightly grittier edge of Melville’s later film  Le Samouraï  (1967) ( review ). There is a breezy noirish charm to  BLF  that is undeniably attractive but, for some reason,  BLF  is a film that just feels long. The sparse narration doesn't add anything to the film and—this is a small critique—the crew assembled for the heist seems unreasonably large.  Auguste Le Breton  co-wrote the adaptation from Melville's original story. Le Breton collaborated a year earlier on  Jules Dassin 's  Rififi  ( review ), which is a better film with better heist planni

1971's The Music Lovers   is a biopic of  Tchaikovsky as only that cinema madman  Ken Russell  could make—a melodramatic, idiosyncratic, gonzo picture with plenty of visual flair by cinematographer  Douglas Slocombe . In the hands of Russell, the film is a horny, fantastical, and over the top affair about the human struggle to be true to oneself.  It's wild that three Russell films were released in 1971 alone—this one, followed by the notorious  The Devils   ( review ), and the sweet and gentle period musical  The Boy Friend  ( review ). The contemporary reviews of TML  were not kind, but, as with the best misunderstood works and geniuses, time has been good to Russell. Ken Russell Feature Films Ranked