CHRISTOPHER WOOD: TFF DAY 2 NOIR @ THE GRAND >>>

Appropriately, rain began falling in time for The Grand’s Friday screening of two contemporary noir films as part of the Tacoma Film Festival. Both pieces faithfully follow many of the stylistic conventions that defined the unmistakably American genre throughout its heyday. Neither work dissolves into a send-up of those iconic images, which so easily pass these days as quaint, fading photographs of a bygone era.   

The first film’s double homage to classical Hollywood and gritty crime pulp is apparent in its title: L.A. Noir. True to form, the black-and-white short features a hard-drinking protagonist brooding in harsh key lighting. A raven-haired bombshell saunters into his life and instantly becomes the object of his desire. He pursues her through an apartment complex, yet the city’s shadowy recesses keep her identity a mystery. Buildings in Conor Colwell’s photography tower ominously over the individual isolated in the urban maze. The end of the film has man and woman sharing a moment of hot passion. But bliss erupts into murder. No motive. No explanation. No matter â€" somehow it makes sense in the gray logic of L.A. Noir.

Yesterday Was a Lie exploits noir’s iconography even more fully. Writer-director James Kerwin’s feature has everything: rain-slicked alleyways shrouded in fog; gruff detectives in fedoras; a slinky jazz score. Anachronisms abound â€" the main character, a tough-talking female cop named Hoyle (Kipleigh Brown), arrives at the crime scene dressed like Orson Welles in Touch of Evil yet investigates clues to a murder on her Mac. The narrative undergoes a similar temporal anxiety. The story has something to do with Hoyle’s old flame searching for a wartime journal which contains some time-bending secrets. Fortunately all players involved (even a doll-faced lounge singer) can discuss theoretical physics at length without cracking a smile. But who cares? Every shot is gorgeous. Confusion never looked so good.

Tacoma Film Festival schedule

Saturday, Oct. 4
More details here

11 a.m.
The Grand Cinema
Children’s Film Series: Multi From Musnaka, Montrose Avenue, Aston’s Stones, Piano Lesson, Cookies For Sale, Shhhh..., Rindin The Puffer, When I Grow Up, Raven Tales

11:15 a.m.
Tacoma Art Museum
La Paloma. Sehnsucht. Weltweit, A Night in the Sunlight

1 p.m.
The Grand Cinema
CTU: Provo

1:20 p.m.
Tacoma Art Museum
Endless Tunnel, Pat Martino Unstrung

2 p.m.
School of the Arts Blackbox Theater
The Obituary Writer, Pappy Boyington Field

3 p.m.
The Grand Cinema
Gimme Music, Gimme Shelter, Weiner Takes All: a Dogumentary

3:15 p.m.
Tacoma Art Museum
Donut Heaven, Courthouse Girls of Farmland, One Bucket of Water

4 p.m.
School of the Arts Blackbox Theater
The Gift Wrapper, JUMP!

5 p.m.
The Grand Cinema
Crawford, For You, My People

6 p.m.
First United Methodist Church
eDump, The Life Penalty

6:15 p.m.
School of the Arts Blackbox Theater
Cabbie, PK Granny, Taken, The Man from Mars, Double Talk, One Year Later, Blind Luck, Rock in a Hard Place

6:45 p.m.
The Grand Cinema
Light Years, On Paper Wings, Pierre

8:15 p.m.
First United Methodist Church
American Harvest

8:30 p.m.
School of the Arts Blackbox Theater
My Dad Ralph, Now You See Me Now You Don’t, Maine, Gravida, The Loneliness of the Short-Order Cook

8:45 p.m.
The Grand Cinema
Aim Away From Face, Trust Issues