Popular reviews

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  Review by Roberto_ ★★★★ 4

  why didn't anyone ever tell janet leigh to stay away from motels?

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★★

  "A policeman's job is only easy in a police state."

  An incredible back-and-forth between seedy, pulpy B-noir good cop-bad cop philosophical clash/conspiracy thriller material and one of the all-time genius stylists who through sheer technical mastery and baroque expressionism (lots of distorted and voyeuristic perspective imagery, cavernous deep-focus wide and low angles, elaborately and anxiously choreographed cranes/dolly's, incredibly grimy and decayed location work of Venice California, creepily tightening cross-cutting momentum, some all-timer shadows and reflections) was able to turn it into a genuinely unnerving and tragic film about the disturbing corruption of power, the uncomfortable crossing of boundaries, and the not just moral compromise and corrosion of a dirty, unjust lawman but the absolute stinking rot inherent to actually briefly…

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  Review by Aaron ★★★★★ 32

  Part of Noir-November

  “He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?”

  The end justifies the means. That was his mantra. Shortcuts, grandstanding, rule-bending, hubristic excess and excessive hubris—all was fair game, so long as the final result was the desired one. No one else followed the rules. They were too busy whoring and bellowing and thieving and lying. Or else they did follow the rules and ended up with nothing. You could be a maverick and make something of yourself, or you could be a sucker and languish in mediocrity. The choice was a no-brainer—do whatever is necessary to make your mark.

  An apt description for Capt. Hank Quinlan, Orson Welles’ villainous…

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  Review by Wood ★★★★★ 6

  Touch of Evil might be the Citizen Kane of Orson Welles filmography.

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  Review by Will Sloan ★★★★★ 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Folks... this is what a movie looks like when it's firing on all cylinders.

  It's a masterstroke that in the last minute of the movie, we find out that the Mexican kid who the corrupt cop Quinlan (Welles) framed... confessed to the crime! That's right: at the end of a movie about the importance of due process, it turns out Quinlan's "famous intuition" was probably correct. And the movie asks us: are Quinlan's methods still wrong? And the answer is: yes.

  Quinlan (Welles) is a horribly corrupt cop whose intuition is nevertheless often correct. Vargas (Heston) is a virtuous cop who is so clueless that he doesn't realize his wife (who he repeatedly neglects) is a target. In the last scene, two characters say of Quinlan: "He was a great detective..." "...and a lousy cop." With Vargas, it is vice-versa.

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  Review by Todd Gaines ★★★★½ 11

  Ben-Hur, Citizen Kane, and Norman Bates's shower-buddy in the middle of a murder-mystery in this Orson Welles timeless classic. Border-patrol-agents. A big fuckin' kaboom. A pretty baby. A baddie who's seen way too many gangsta movies. An attempted acid-attack. A piano that plays with its self. A game of flashlight peek-a-boo. The way Orson smokes. Getting all hot-and-heavy in a car. Citizen Kane forgets his walking-cane. Jamie Lee's mom as the only guest in a run-down motel. A Mexican fall-guy. Chuck Heston's spray-tan. A shoebox full of TNT. The Grandi Boys. Reefer fuckin' Madness. The best way to kill a fucker is to strangle their fuckin' ass. A wire straight outta The Wire. Echoing confessions. Taking a bullet for your…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 7

  Viewed the Reconstructed version on Blu-ray.

  Picture this:

  Infinite darkness. At once so close and at the same time, so far away. Endlessly drifting closer, sending your nerves into a dizzying panic of heightened hysteria and emotional turmoil, is your greatest fear. It's coming closer, closer, closer, closer, closer. At that point, you cannot move. Your physical body is frozen, yet your mental state is as frenzied as an abused animal; lost and alone. You feel it. The touch of evil.

  And then you wake up from your disturbed sleep, in a state of bewilderment and covered in cold sweat. Yet, before you can recover from the lush blackness of that endless nightmare, you realize that you are in a…

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  Review by brendan o'hare ★★★★½ 1

  Welles constantly sucks on a cigar like it's a lollipop in this, and every time he takes it out of his mouth it's visibly glistening. Unbelievably gross. 4.5 stars

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★★ 16

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  That slow pull into Charlton Heston's face as he watches Joseph Calleia discover the evidence Orson Welles planted, the evidence they both know must have been planted, instead of focusing the camera on the evidence itself. This shot, and the way it silently depicts the crucial shift in Heston's character—a shift which is never again noted or commented on, but which forms the entirely of his motivation—merely by pointing the camera away from the action, this is pure cinema.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★½ 2

  83/100

  Third viewing, second of the '98 re-edit. I wrote a Scenic Routes column on the opening shot a while back, but I'm clearly a montage guy at heart because what knocked me on my ass this time is the magnificently constructed closing sequence, in which Welles finds a dozen different stunning ways to begin a shot on Quinlan and Menzies, then pick up Vargas tailing them, or occasionally vice versa, while keeping all three figures dwarfed by the surrounding derricks. Think I appreciated Welles' performance more than ever before, too—more accurately, I realized that what had seemed slightly off to me in the past is almost exclusively a matter of shoddy ADR (which plagues the film in general—a personal…

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★½ 10

  Noir-November Challenge! Movie #34

  The story was as grimey and gritty as Orsen Well's character Hank Quinlan! A character that was the highlight of the film! Another pleasant surprise was Marlene Dietrich's brief but memorable role as Tanya!

  The opening scene was a magnificent piece of cinema! But it felt clunky in its storytelling! And I just couldn't wrap my head around Charleton Heston playing the mexican Ramon Miguel Vargas! He played it about as well as my honky white ass could pull off playing Beyoncé!

  Disappointing that some roles were so over the top they were no longer characters but caricatures! In my opinion this took away alot of credibility from the film!

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 1

  I know I've seen this before, but I could not remember anything but the beginning for some reason. So I gave it another look.

  Welles is the standout in a cast that is all around incredible. There's a moment where he looks down at the empty shot glass in front of him, and he experiences this painful realization. It's a brief moment, and it comes between two lines (one of them truncated by the realization). It's the span of a breath or more, but it's the most affecting moment in the film. It's also when you know without a doubt it will all go bad for the sheriff.

  It's such a dark film, even in scenes ostensibly taking place in…