Why Watch? Steeped in the sleek saturation of a 1960s R&B club, writer/director Quoc Bao Tran‘s short film is soulful and dangerous all at once. Amidst the soaring vocals and human silk, a young bookie risks everything to mess with the boss’s goods – a waitress that can’t catch a solid break. It’s heroism and grit with a great soundtrack, and the visual style is as sharp as the script. What does it cost? Just 20 minutes of your time. Check out Bookie for yourself:

Why Watch? Because great art can be thought-provoking and delicious. Animation gets a bad reputation as being “something for kids,” but this noir-esque short demanded to be animated. Drawn and painted art play a direct role in the plot in this story about an art thief who does something very unusual with his ill-gotten works. The execution is a jaw-dropper of clever turns which all lead to an end that’ll keep eyes wide. Plus, it’s all carried by an intricate, jazzy score. Delightful, clever and peculiar – it’s a must-see. What does it cost? Just 7 minutes of your time. Check out Dripped for yourself:

Every day, come rain or shine or internet tubes breaking, Film School Rejects showcases a trailer from the past. Orson Welles is unrecognizable onscreen here, but his directing touch is absolutely all over it. Somehow, Charlton Heston as a Mexican is all over it too. With a stellar cast, this taut noir-ish drama has got everything sizzling in a border town that’s just waiting for a lit match. So why is everyone always smoking? Check out the trailer for yourself:

Without a synopsis beyond being called a contemporary noir movie, Ashes nonetheless earns some respect for the cast it just hired. Ray Winstone and Leslie Manville are veterans, and Jim Sturgess is a rising actor who has the talent to back up his growing fame. According the The Hollywood Reporter, those actors will be joined by Jodie Whittaker (Attack the Block) and the consistently strong Luke Evans (Robin Hood, Clash of the Titans) for the project written by Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll team Mat Whitecross (who will direct) and Paul Viragh. Any noir news is good news, and this cast is something to look forward to. Oddly enough, the film is being financed partially by the band Coldplay which creates the interesting possibility of the pop band also scoring a dark drama. That’s speculation, but it would either be a fascinating success or an unmitigated disaster, and that’s the kind of scenario to get out of bed for in the morning. Production starts next week.

Just as film noir isn’t one single definable thing, noir itself contains many offshoots and categories. And every Noirvember, it’s important to not only examine good ol’ film noir, but its corresponding variants as well. One aspect of noir that complicates its designation as a genre or a style is the persistence of neo-noir, a cinematic form that arose in direct reaction to noir. In the US, canonical neo-noirs include films like Roman Polanski’s Chinatown or Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye. These were films made by filmmakers who knew cinema’s history, who have seen and studied noir’s origins and staples. These were filmmakers who worshiped film history and used classic cinema as a prototype for their own creation, embedding references to the old while departing from it in creating the new.

What begins as a standard sales visit about car insurance renewal, slowly builds piece by piece into a tale of infatuation, intrigue and murder.

Wealthy-beyond-belief Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is gifted entrance into a strange game by his prodigal brother Conrad (Sean Penn). He goes in for extensive testing, and when he’s told he doesn’t qualify, the game begins in earnest, testing his wits, physical strength and the emotional scarring caused by witnessing his father’s suicide as a child.

Would you see a movie where Miss Piggy is murdered, turned into bacon, and force fed to Kermit the Frog? Of course you would you sick bastard. But that will never happen…