Love at Large (1990)
Vampish miss Dolan hires hardboiled P.I. Harry Dobbs to tail her shady boyfriend. Harry realizes that the man leads a double life but then his client disappears. Harry teams up with his own tail, P.I. Stella Wynkowski, to clear things up.
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Here is a movie that looks like a parody, sounds like a parody, and plays like a parody, but isn't a parody -- because the genre it's making fun of doesn't exist. Maybe "Love at Large" is a satire on satire itself. It feels like a movie from another time-space continuum, another world where audiences would understand the jokes and respond to the references. It should play in a theater where the manager is Rod Serling. - Ebert

While Love at Large certainly didn't work for Ebert (1 star), it worked for me! It's in a bizarro world like Trouble in Mind, but set in a past that looks exactly like 90s Portland (because it is and it's not trying…

Head-scratchingly undefined gruel - something of a tongue-in-cheek noir throwback, but it almost never tries to be funny, or even commit to noir exaggeration on a serious level? A mystery we're supposed to be invested in? A love story? A witty mixture of all those things? Tom Berenger affects a wtf Nick Nolte-esque growl as a P.I. schmuck hired by breathy femme fatale caricature Anne Archer to spy on her three-timing lover Ted Levine (who acts like he's in a grim domestic drama), only to realize that he himself is being tailed by P.I. Elizabeth Perkins (who acts like she's in a regular modern rom-com) for some reason. Kate Capshaw has a prominent role but barely seems to exist in…

This is prob the third time I've seen this one and I still find it really hard to describe why I think it works as well as it does because it doesn't have the kinda tense plot that you'd think a noir like this would have, but what it does have a lot of is style and a whole lotta quirk. In fact you might even say that it overdoses on quirk since your whole opinion on this could very easily come down to how much you like or dislike the gravelly voice that star Tom Berenger chooses to use for this.

The plot (which again is very, very, very loose) has Berenger as a surly private eye who gets…

Rudolph’s Blue Velvet. Meaning: taking all his fetishes and preoccupations and plastering it onto a straight up 40s noir, and not compromising one iota, thus creating an individualistic experience. This kinda thrums along at a neutral pace, and I dug it all. No BIG revelation, like most of Rudolph’s films, smacking some backwards emotion through it all. Will say, feel like when revisiting all the ones I’ve given less than 5 stars (all but Choose Me and Trouble in Mind (also the only two I’ve rewatched so far)), I wouldn’t be surprised if they all went up a grade. I think knowing the scope can enhance the experience, in these cases. All the same, Rudolph continues to intoxicate me on…

It takes all of thirty seconds for this film to announce itself as being unmistakably the work of Alan Rudolph, a marginal, idiosyncratic American director who some may recognize as Robert Altman's longtime AD. Despite their association, Rudolph is a very different talent from Altman. Whereas Altman is known for his improvisation on set and for the freedom he gives his actors, Rudolph's style as a director is defined by a very specific and highly-stylized manner of dialogue, as distinctive and unmistakable as that of David Mamet or Hal Hartley (an acknowledged Rudolph fan). This heightened, mannered, rather arch delivery is married to an unabashedly dreamy, romantic sensibility that constantly skirts the line between corny and ironic.

All of this…