THE GOOD GERMAN 
Based on the novel by Joseph Kanon, THE GOOD GERMAN takes place in the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, where U.S. Army war correspondent Jake Geismar (George Clooney) becomes embroiled with Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett), a former lover who is trying to escape her past in the aftermath of the war. Intrigue mounts as Jake tries to uncover the secrets Lena may be hiding in her desperation to get out of Berlin. Tully (Tobey Maguire), a soldier in the American army motor pool assigned to drive Jake around the city, has black market connections that may be Lena's way out - or lead them all into even darker territory.
DIR/PROD Steven Soderbergh; SCR Paul Attanasio; PROD Ben Cosgrove, Gregory Jacobs . US, 2006, b&w, 105 min. RATED R.
THE MALTESE FALCON
Mary Astor portrays one of the most memorable of mysterious noir women in THE MALTESE FALCON, a slippery personality whose name is first given as Miss Wonderly (when Sam Spade/Humphrey Bogart's partner is hired and killed) and then as Brigid O'Shaughnessy when she "confesses" to Spade. He never trusts her but he loves her and that's the complication. "An almost perfect visual equivalent of the Dashiell Hammett thriller. Huston used Hammett's plot design and economic dialogue in a hard, precise directorial style that brings out the full viciousness of characters so ruthless and greedy that they become comic ... a work of entertainment so skillfully constructed that after many years it has the same brittle explosiveness -- and even some of the same surprises -- that it had in 1941." - Pauline Kael
DIR/SCR John Huston, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. US, 1941, b&w, 101 min. NOT RATED
CASABLANCA
"Everything is right in this World War II classic of war-torn Casablanca with elusive nightclub owner Rick (Humphrey Bogart) finding old flame (Ingrid Bergman) and her husband, underground leader Paul Henreid, among skeletons in his closet. Claude Rains is marvelous as the dapper police chief, and nobody sings 'As Time Goes By' like Dooley Wilson. Three Oscars including Picture, Director and Screenplay. Our candidate for best Hollywood movie of all time." - Leonard Maltin
DIR Michael Curtiz; SCR Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch, based on play by Murray Bennett, Joan Alison. PROD Hal B. Wallis. US, 1943, b&w, 102 min. NOT RATED
OUT OF THE PAST
There is no better film noir than this classic tough-guy thriller, in which Robert Mitchum tries to go straight but can't escape the dirty dealings of ex-lover Jane Greer and smooth, cheerful gangster Kirk Douglas. "The finest film noir I know -- intelligent, expertly crafted and uncompromisingly heartless . . . Mitchum is at his tough, cunning best and Greer, a carnal, dry-ice madonna, is even better. When someone says of her 'She can't be all bad. No one is,' Mitchum knowingly replies 'She comes the closest.'" - Joel E. Siegel
DIR Jacques Tourneur; SCR Daniel Mainwaring, based on his novel; PROD Warren Duff. US, 1947, b&w, 97 minutes. NOT RATED
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
John Garfield stars as a Depression-era drifter who answers a "man wanted" sign at a backroads restaurant where Lana Turner waits like a black widow for someone to help her bump off the husband she hates. Adapted from the classic hardboiled novel by James M. Cain, Garfield and Turner ignite the screen with their wicked passion. "This is the perfect film noir, harsh and heartless in its delineation of character, disclosing a rancid evil..." - Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, Hollywood in the Forties
DIR Tay Garnett; SCR Harry Ruskin, Niven Busch, based on the novel by James M. Cain. PROD Carey Wilson. US, 1946, b&w, 113 min. NOT RATED
MILDRED PIERCE
A hybrid between film noir and the women's picture, MILDRED PIERCE allowed Joan Crawford, no longer an ingénue, to reinvent herself for the 1940s as the independent, career-oriented woman suffering in great luxury. It worked best here, winning her an Academy Award for Best Actress (which the "ill" Crawford accepted in bed). This remarkable story -- about a housewife who turns waitress and later becomes a successful restaurant owner, but earns the enmity of her spiteful daughter when the two compete for the love of a playboy -- was beautifully adapted for the screen by Ranald MacDougall and Catherine Turney, capturing the intensity of James M. Cain's novel.
DIR Michael Curtiz. SCR Ranald MacDougall, Catherine Turney, based on novel by James M. Cain. PROD Jerry Wald. US, 1945, b&w, 111 min. NOT RATED
THE BIG SLEEP
Humphrey Bogart is Philip Marlowe in Howard Hawks' exquisite visualization of what is perhaps Raymond Chandler's best book. Bogart is hired to protect wealthy, spoiled Martha Vickers, who’s been associating with the wrong element. But he falls for her icy-hot older sister Lauren Bacall, who has some secrets of her own. Then the corpses start piling up. With a famously twisted plot—even Hawks cracked he wasn't really sure who killed whom -- the film is immensely enjoyable for catching what Pauline Kael wrote is "the lurid Chandler atmosphere. The characters are a collection of sophisticated monsters -- blackmailers, pornographers, apathetic society girls (Lauren Bacall and Martha Vickers are a baffling pair of spoiled sisters: the latter sucks her thumb), drug addicts, nymphomaniacs and murderers. All of them talk in innuendoes as if that were a new stylization of the American Language, but how reassuring it is to know what the second layer of meaning refers to."
DIR/PROD Howard Hawks. SCR William Faulkner, Jules Furthman, Leigh Brackett, based on novel by Raymond Chandler. US, 1946, b&w, 116 min. NOT RATED