Though he has been embraced by the arthouse contingent for decades, Michael Mann nonetheless stands out as one of the most quoted directors in the tough guy cinema pantheon– bros dig Mann’s emphasis on style over substance, his knack for tense back-and-forth monologuing between rivals and enemies, his extreme eye for cool crime details, his […]
Level Up is More Than a Mushroom, Not Yet a Tanooki Suit
It’s not uncommon for a film’s best and most memorable character to be the locale in which it takes place: the sweat drenched glitz and grime of a Michael Mann cityscape, the paradise-turned-Hell of WWII Polynesia in The Thin Red Line, the looming shadows of Jean-Pierre Melville’s noir vision of Paris. So too is the […]
Cash Only is a Bleak but Well-Drawn Portait of Detroit at Its Most Desperate
At some point in the past decade, the city of Detroit became cinematic shorthand for desperation. It Follows (and its less renown Detroit dystopian sibling Lost River) mined that for horror, showing a Detroit out of sync with time, plagued by unknown shadowy assailants, utilizing the city’s naturally empty streets and rundown spaces to induce anxiety and claustrophobia. […]
Down and Out in Terminal City: Catching Up with Ed Brisson
As one of the hardest working men in comics, Ed Brisson seems to always be juggling a number of promising projects. We chatted with the gritty Vancouverite earlier this year about his trippy super hero epic The Mantle so we were happy to talk to him again about his new urban noir work The Violent. Where The Mantle was a […]