The Valdez Horses (1973) isn’t the sort of Charles Bronson movie many would expect.

Even a film as haphazardly plotted as 1947’s The Web offers the pleasures of some great actors giving great performances.

The third in an informal feminist trilogy that also includes the documentary Regrouping and the punk/socialist sci-fi Born in Flames, Working Girls takes place in an upper middle class Manhattan brothel nominally operated by status-seeking madam Lucy.

On a desperate manhunt for two fugitive cop-killers, Officer Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) borrows their former accomplice, Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy), on a 48-hour leave from prison to help him shake down some of their old associates.

Maverick writer-director Samuel Fuller portrayed the down-and-out with respect and without sentimentality—people are people, doing what they need to survive.

Deep Cover is a gritty piece of noir filmmaking that deals with very specific themes that remain prevalent three decades later in terms of class inequality, racist systemic structures, governmental subterfuge, and fixed social strata.

Any movie is improved by the presence of Robert Forster, and Walking the Edge is no exception.

Dennis Hopper’s 1990 neo-noir, The Hot Spot, stays true to the genre’s conventions more than it inverts them – it’s homage, but with a sleazy id and a lascivious heart that runs free without the limits faced by midcentury filmmakers.

A film that is noir to its very bones.