so i went and saw Wolf of Wall Street tonight. really good movie and great acting all around. but what surprised me was that in passing i never heard that it was essentially the same movie as goodfellas in a different setting.

"action" films didn't really become a thing until the 60's/70's so you might want to look at influential 40's crime/western films instead.

eh, the third man?

the big sleep?

the big sleep is one of my favorite films however it lacks the sinister feel i think he's looking for

"Kiss Me Deadly" maybe. "Angels with Dirty Faces" also has a very hatable Cagney though I'm not much of a Curtiz fan apart from "Casablanca". Also watch some Melville if you haven't ("Le samouraï", "Le doulos").

Some great noirs include (sorry that some are obvious):

Double Indemnity
D.O.A. (the original from 1950)
Pickup On South Street (Richard Widmark's best, but also see his debut in Kiss Of Death, not as good a film, but a classic performance)
The Big Combo
Out Of The Past (Robert Mitchum)
The Killing (Kubrick, brilliantly told story from different angles)
Touch of Evil (probably the best film on here, Welles directing)
Night In The City (a British made noir with Widmark starring)

Then you have the "procedural" type films, which are similar, but told more about how crime gets brought down, the best of which are:
Panic In The Streets (another Widmark gem)
The Naked City

You can go down the ladder to the real B-movies like
Detour
Kansas City Confidential

which are classics, but low budget.

But of all the noirs the already mentioned Kiss Me Deadly is probably my favorite. It's almost like the stereotypical noir because every classic element of the genre is present, the square jawed brutal private eye, the lying deceptive femme fatale, the sinister plot, the violence and the gonzo ending.

One more that I HAVE to mention is 1964's The Killers. This was a remake of the more renown 1946 movie based on an Ernest Hemmingway story that featured Burt Lancaster in his first role. I find that one stilted, not bad, but not great. The remake was directed by Don Siegal (who had ironically been fired from directing the original, very underrated director). Anyway, it was made for TV but after one look at it NBC said it was way too violent so they rejected it and it was shown in theaters but was basically ignored. It's brilliant. Lee Marvin, one of the best tough guys ever, and the all but forgotten Clu Gulager (who steals the film) are the sunglasses wearing super cool killers after John Cassevettes. You also get - at the height of her hotness - Angie Dickinson; AND at no extra charge to you the viewer, you get to see in his final acting role before becoming Governor of California Ronald Reagan as the bad guy giving one of his best performances.

Because the movie is so stylishly shot it doesn't seem like a TV production at all, but that, and fact that it came along late in the game and was in color, means it's kind of left out of the classic noir discussions, but it shouldn't be. Criterion Collection paired it with the original awhile back, so you can check them both out side by side, but the '64 version, with one of the coolest final shots in memory, is the one you'll be talking about long after seeing it.

The Public Enemy
Little Caesar
Angels with Dirty Faces
The Roaring Twenties
The Petrified Forest
The Killers (1946)

This is an awfully specific thread topic. How many General Films are there? Patton, a couple about Napolean, ummmm... Custer at Little Big Horn. I'm drawing a blank.

Holy crap, this whole forum is about generals.

Funny thing about the voice of Zoidberg -- it's inspired by George Jessel, who was known as the Toastmaster General of the United States.

Has anyone seen The Late Mathias Pascal?

On unrelated and quite vague topic: is it okay that I really like basically every movie I watch? It's like when I decide to watch movie, at the end I have no choice but like it even when it's pretty poor like that Soul Man movie. Of course, some movies hit me more than others but I feel I can be more selective towards what I like. Probably I need to watch more movies in general, but I have been watching a lot of movies recently compared to my usual self. Has anyone else felt something similar?