American Neo-Noir: The Movie Never Ends (Applause Books)

I completely understand the customer reviewer who gave this one star and only liked the filmography at the end. Like other projects by these authors, this book does not readily separate the great and the good from the mediocre. Personally, while recognizing this book isn't ideal for someone seeking the absolute best of post-expressionist cinema (if such a goal is possible), I appreciate such an impartial approach. By refusing to favor high-brow over low-brow works, the book truly embraces Neo-Noir as an art form. It opens up a discussion in which RED ROCK WEST and U-TURN can be just as valid as works of art as CHINATOWN and TAXI DRIVER.Having conceded that this book may not be ideal for someone merely wanting to build a collection, I need to acknowledge that it can be easily re-purposed as such. The filmography is followed by a thorough index which (obviously) leads one back to remarks on the films. Seeing where a given movie is placed within the thoughtfully-labeled chapters does often, in itself, shed a great deal of light. As with other works written or edited by Alain Silver, the critique of each film may exceed a mere review, however it frequently falls short of higher criticism. What remains is a sort of undergraduate essay on the movies under discussion. Finding their context within the greater intent of the book (as delineated by the chapter headings) may be the most rewarding part of reading it.What remains: enjoying this book from page 1 to page 259 will acquaint you with the best of post-noir cinema,as well as its many offshoots that will cause you to question whether this is a real genre or whether the authors have gone mad. Either way, you are left with a book that has been constructed so that you can use it in whatever way you had hoped.

Comprehensive and interesting exploration of Neo-noir films, themes, characters, plots, etc, with quite a few excellent pictures.A must-read for Neo-noir afficionados.

Excellent! Loved reading about the neo-noir films and reviewing the photos!

Liked the Alphabetical ordered listing at the end. That's about it.

There are only two positive things I can say about this book... Since I was looking for a reference source to get some suggestions about neo-noir films I either hadn't seen or heard of, the book hit the mark on that point. It does cover a lot of ground and cite an abundant number of films made since the close of the classic noir era in the early 60s when neo-noir emerged from those smolding ashes all the way up to the present day (2015). The book also is crammed with photos, many in color, that probably cover more than half of the films cited.These pluses, however come with a dark side (de rigeour, as per neo-noir itself)... By briefly summarizing so many films, and including so many photos, it doesn't leave a lot of leftover space for actual critical interpretation or analysis of each film. About the most we get on this front are chapter headings on vague themes that run through many thrillers and dramas, and the book tries to shoehorn each film it considers representative of these themes into those sections. Also, graphically, the text is presented in a very large font which eats up space, and along with the prolific photos, what we get in actual text takes a back seat to allow anything beyond a slightly advanced version of a Leonard Maltin-like summary.But I'd have to say that the most annoying thing about this book is that the authors almost universally reveal all plot twists and reveals that spoil any kind of surprise these films might contain. There summaries insist on encapsulating the plot for each film so who the real villain is, or how the film concludes, is nearly always described. You'd expect this to occur if this was a scholarly, well thought out appraisal of neo-noir films, but for one that is basically nothing but an overview--with pretty pictures--it's very much unpardonable.