Noir Archives - Unwinnable

A crop of the cover of Who Killed Sarah Shaw with a dark orange sky and black trees behind a woman with a worried shadowed look on her face

The Rural Noir of Who Killed Sarah Shaw

By Elijah Beahm • February 12th, 2025

Who Killed Sarah Shaw is an uncompromising, deeply uncomfortable look at the darkness that can lurk behind rural life.

A crop of the box for the double feature The Unseen and the Uninvited, with an art deco painting mostly in shades of green with a man in a suit holding an unconscious woman while in the background a face with wide eyes stares and a shadow lurks

Uninvited and Unseen: Two Chilly Classics of the 1940s on Blu-ray Together

By Orrin Grey • July 26th, 2024

The success of The Uninvited hangs in the air around Lewis Allen’s 1945 follow-up, The Unseen.

A screenshot from one of the Whistler movies, a black and white shot of one man on the left trying to calm down an exasperated man on the right with a very stern look on his face

Rough Shadows: The Whistler Films on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • June 12th, 2024

There’s nothing here that’s a forgotten classic or destined to become a new favorite, but it’s nice to have them around, and it’s great, as always, that Indicator is doing the work to preserve some of these B-roll pictures.

Letter from the Editor

Unwinnable Monthly – October 2023

By David Shimomura • October 20th, 2023

Vamps, the ones you’d expect and some others.

Screenshot from the trailer for Night has A Thousand Eyes, featuring the main character in a suit walking back from an attic window looking over a city at night

The Stars Can’t Hurt You: Fighting the Future in Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)

By Orrin Grey • August 24th, 2023

Even if you’re pretty sure you know going in – it is difficult, after all, to not have been spoiled at least a little bit on a movie that is three-quarters of a century old – the unspooling of the film does a good job of keeping you on your toes,

My Three Year Quest to Suffer Through L.A. Noire

By Matthew Byrd • March 23rd, 2017

What makes L.A. Noire so frustrating is that it seems to resent the things that make it great and love the things that it simply can not do.

It’s Time to Forgive Constantine

By Amanda Hudgins • November 23rd, 2015

Keenu’s Constantine is turning 10 years old, maybe it’s time to finally time to forgive the film for its one major gripe. Even God forgave him, can’t you?

Drive: A Hell of a Ride

By Michael Edwards • September 23rd, 2011

Mike Edwards jumps behind the wheel with his review of the new Ryan Gosling film, Drive.