Blast of Silence & Mr. Arkadin + 2021 Round-Up

We close out the year with one pic from each of the lads - two festive noirs coming at memory in very different ways. We also devote our middle section to a discussion of 2021 in cinema: What was good? What was bad? Don't form your own opinion, just listen to ours.

This week's films:

Blast of Silence (1961) Allen Barron directs and stars in this bleak urban character study of a Cleveland hitman on a job in New York over the festive period. Both a fun mix of pulpy existentialism and a unique document of sixties NY, Blast of Silence has enjoyed a critical revival in recent years, owing to high-profile admirers like Martin Scorsese and Joe Dante.

Mr. Arkadin (1955) One of Orson Welles' many unfinished works, Mr. Arkadin follows a low-level criminal hired by a mysterious financier to investigate his own past. The exact reasons why a man would need his own background researched is perhaps not as clear as it seems...