Vote on the next countdown (Feb. 2023)

Film noir is a term coined by some French critics, and retroactively applied to films that came out in the US from 1940 to late 1950s, as they noticed a shift in tone during this time to a more cynical worldview. Most film noirs feature jaded and flawed heroes, intricate detectivesque subplots, dangerous "femme fatales", feature flashbacks, voice-over narrations, and whatnot. Notable examples are The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity. It is a fairly ambiguous term, which you can see from the push-and-pull on this and the other thread

Anyway, the term came up in 1946 and was applied retroactively to a lot of previous films that had those similar beats. But then, studios caught up and started purposefully making films following that pattern, which became a huge source of "cheap" and fast film noirs during the 1950s, until the trend kinda "died" by the end of the decade. What happened, though, is that it shifted and changed in the late 1960s and 1970s into what we call "neo noir", which is when Chinatown (maybe the most notable neo-noir) came out. But it extends to more "recent" films like L.A. Confidential, as well as endless other ramifications (i.e. tech-noir, Blade Runner?)

If any of these win, we will get into the issues of inclusion/exclusion.

If this ends up winning, I suppose most lists would lean heavy into romcoms, considering how much the two genres are paired. I know a lot of mine would be romcoms

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It's close now! Noir and musicals are only 1 vote behind war. The suspense! The drama! The excitement! Which genre will emerge victorious when the dust settles?

It's a WAR for first place!! #MissedOpportunity

I'm leaning towards voting for War, but I still haven't decided.

Since Noir and Musicals seem to be the most divisive, I think it would be good to put upfront that if any of those win, we can all do something like the "Group Watch" that Speling did, while answering any questions that those more unfamiliar with the "genres" might have in the preliminary thread. I know that not everybody will participate, but for those that are more on the fence, maybe knowing that might ease their minds about the countdown.

If you vote for musicals, I will sing a song in your honour.

Only if your song is part of the narrative and not a stage performance

I think a musical countdown could be fun, I certainly have a lot of musical movies to watch that I've never seen before.

Last night, I seen a Humphrey Bogart war film, if you can guess it I'll give you a shiny gold rep

Was it The Caine Mutiny?

Nope. It was made during WWII.

Was it Across the Pacific?

Nope, but I did watch that one two days ago.

Passage to Marseille?

Alright, I give up.

A good war film too!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035608/

I have that one on dvd as part of a Humphrey Bogart box set, but I don't think I have watched it yet.

That's where I original scene it too, though last time was online.

The Caine Mutiny? Although I don’t recall it really being about war. Been a while since I’ve seen it.

Edit: ah! I see now, I looked at your link after my guess. Didn’t think it was The. CAine Mutiny, but was worth a guess.

It's been a long time since I seen The Caine Mutiny but I remember it being pretty good. I'd say it's war, from wiki:

Yeah me too. There is a lot of great films out there that have the war genre tag. And it's not just straight up battle-heavy films either. We have Casablanca for example. Shoah. And Wonder Woman.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."