Something Old, Something New Mar 07 '01    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Movies 1776 From $8 Alias - The Complete Fifth Season From $20 The Bottom Line Anything by Humphrey Bogart, because he's "the man." Hollywood Confidential was good, too. There are some great noir films that border on other genres, too. I don't have ten that I'm that fond of, but the following seven (from best to worst) would be my list of the ones that stand out in my memory as must-see film noir: 1) Hollywood Confidential: The 1940s and 1950s may have been the heyday of film noir, but oddly enough, my favorite one of all times is something of a tribute. Kathleen Turner and Danny Devito, in particular, are at their best here. 2) The Big Sleep: Bogie is "the man." Plain and simple. There is no living actor of our generation fit to shine Bogart's shoes, and this is just about his best performance. 3) Angel Heart: At the end of this movie, our hard-boiled detective screams "I know who I am!" five times. Each time he means something different. Each time breaks your heart a little more, or you haven't been watching. Who knew you could make a really, really good supernatural horror film noir? 4) Blade Runner: It took me years to forgive this movie for some of the terrible things it did to Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? But once I forgave it for some of the changes, I realized that we have here the best science fiction film noir yet. And if our generation does have a worthy heir to Bogart, it's Harrison Ford. 5) The Maltese Falcon: You can count on the fingers of one hand all of the movies in Hollywood history that are faithful to the book. This Bogie classic of the film noir genre actually follows the book almost scene for scene. It varies in only two places, both forced on them by the production code. And oddly enough, one of the changes is an improvement. Unfortunately, the female lead is doing a terrible job, and Bogie is still getting his feet under him, or this would be much higher up the list. 6) Chinatown: Not always a lot of fun to watch, but it has that wonderful cynicism about rich people and politics that defines the hard-boiled detective story. 7) Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Yeah, I know, it's a comedy. But it's a film noir comedy, one that owes a lot of its plot points and characterizations to the movies above. And oddly enough, Bob Hoskins really does do a great job of playing a standard film noir detective.

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