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Post by inlovewithcrow on Aug 11, 2011 17:50:44 GMT -5
It actually doesn't have to be quick, but I tried to do this quickly yesterday in the library. A woman looked lost in front of the DVDs and I said "what are you looking for?" and she said "a good mystery." I was stumped. I looked through the whole collection (I was doing so for myself) and found only one: Mystic River, but it's really depressing for a mystery, more character study than mystery. This made me wonder, do they make straight mystery movies any more? Not a shoot-'em-up thriller, an actual mystery, not a mystery involving a zombie virus or mind-control aliens, but a story like the second-most popular genre of novel, like old Sherlock Holmes movies or BBC movies like the Foyle's War handful or Wallender. (I haven't yet seen The Lincoln Lawyer, but as a book, it was a mystery.)
If they don't make them often why not? Does the genre not translate well to film or...?
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Post by Mighty Jack on Aug 12, 2011 5:09:19 GMT -5
Lets see there was Murder by Numbers and the Bone Collector... I dunno, anything more recent than those? PBS did a couple of real good films based on the Hillerman novels (wish they would have done more). The Usual Suspects was another goodie.
Some of it doesn't translate well. Michael Connelly is so much better in print form. For some reason the movies kind of put a spot light on the flaws - or lessen the tension. Lincoln Lawyer was okay, but didn't seem as intriguing on screen.
Bottom line though, is the bucks. Lincoln Lawyer collected 58 mil domestic on a 40 mil budget. It didn't fare too well in foreign markets, only pulling 17 mil. While I doubt the studio thought they'd set the box office a blaze with it, those modest numbers aren't exactly going to inspire a sudden flood of detective/mystery adaptations either.
But, you still have the old classics - the Raymond Chandler, Dashielle Hammet adaptations etc. And you can't go wrong with Chinatown.
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Post by TheNewMads on Aug 12, 2011 7:03:47 GMT -5
i think they died along with mainstream novel reading. folks don't really like to be challenged by complicated plots anymore. or maybe the problem is that hollywood isn't interested in taking the risks.
ok, i'm being kinda generalizing. but for instance, yeah, could you imagine a movie as befuddling as "chinatown" being made today? people don't want to be befuddled, and have the implication be made that they're dense if they don't guess the killer. hollywood assumes people want to be catered to. notice there are a lot of movies these days where the audience knows who the killer is, but the protagonist doesn't? that's the gig these days, to put the audience in a privileged position, not in the disadvantaged position the mystery puts the audience in.
i should quit posting before i have my first cup of coffee, i'm always in a bad mood and i start in with the blanket condemnations of contemporary western civilization.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Aug 12, 2011 7:34:19 GMT -5
...or coffee is a plot by a decayed civilization to drug you out of knowing the truth  |
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Aug 12, 2011 8:15:05 GMT -5
i think they died along with mainstream novel reading. folks don't really like to be challenged by complicated plots anymore. or maybe the problem is that hollywood isn't interested in taking the risks. ok, i'm being kinda generalizing. but for instance, yeah, could you imagine a movie as befuddling as "chinatown" being made today? people don't want to be befuddled, and have the implication be made that they're dense if they don't guess the killer. hollywood assumes people want to be catered to. notice there are a lot of movies these days where the audience knows who the killer is, but the protagonist doesn't? that's the gig these days, to put the audience in a privileged position, not in the disadvantaged position the mystery puts the audience in. i should quit posting before i have my first cup of coffee, i'm always in a bad mood and i start in with the blanket condemnations of contemporary western civilization. I blame Hollywood more than audiences. Stuff that gets made that is more complicated often does well. Look at TV shows like LOST or Battlestar Gallactica or pick your favorite. And maybe it's just more fit for TV than full movies. I mean, how many CSI or Law and Order things have there been? Those are at least partially mysteries, right? But they're contained and shorter, rather than the full feature experience of a movie. More consumable, much like mystery novels are made to be consumable rather than experiences? Meh, I'm just guessing here. |
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Post by TheNewMads on Aug 12, 2011 9:21:46 GMT -5
could you consider "the pelican brief" a mystery? (i haven't seen it, but from what i hear it's a bit like "the parallax view," which is a mystery-slash-political thriller.) what about "what lies beneath"? that had some nice twisty-twists, and as i remember WLB gave you enough info that you could use the evidence to guess the killer before he/she/it/they was revealed. i dunno if those count as recent, they're 10, 20ish years old. the new crop of teen slashers have a lot of mysteries among them in the sense of being who-dunits. you know, "i know what you did last summer", i think would count, in the strict sense of, you don't know who the killer is until the end, and there's a crop of prospective suspects. but choosing among them is pretty much arbitary. and of course, those movies tend not to be very good.
the really strict who-dunit, with the usually amateur sleuth or detective investigating a case and the movie actually providing enough info where there's a chance you could deduce -- not guess -- the killer before the final reel, i think those are pretty much dead. i'm guessing without evidence that those were geared toward mystery novel readers of the agathie christie variety.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Aug 12, 2011 14:52:37 GMT -5
Your answers have made me try and analyze this more, and I guess first we have to identify subgenres of mystery and ask if some work as film and some don't. The caper (doing well as movies, still, but hard to translate from novel form, as all of the failed Donald Westlake adaptations prove), the cozy (probably TV fare only), the cop procedural/forensic (very healthy on TV but yes, in movies, rare and you generally know the whodunit from the get-go, as the killer's story tends to run simultaneously with the cop story, for no reason I can quickly ID except "it's the convention"), the PI novel (I guess this was what I was thinking about mostly standing there in the DVD aisle) and the legal thriller/mystery (several of those have been done as movies)
In related thinking, I tried to find lists of bestselling mystery novels and IDing what sold best by subgenre but the data isn't organized as I'd wished. Scanning bestselling lists from PW, the Grisham novels sell best.
Thought of another new mystery movie, but I haven't seen either version, the Stieg Larson novel adaptation.
Like Wallender (adaptation) and Foyle (original to TV) BBC has adapted Elizabeth George's police mysteries. Surely they could cheap to make. No, they'd never be blockbusters, but you could make one for 10 or 20 million, don't you think? Maybe it'd be hard to recoup even that.
Thrillers, yes they adapt and are successful as movies. Bourne and Clancy novels adapted, spy stories from Bond to La Carre have worked, Ken Follett's Eye of the Needle, a terrific book which worked well as a film. But there's little mystery in these.
From Hell, which I just saw, was mostly cop mystery, with a true whodunit at the center.
I guess the thing is, Hollywood likes explosions, gun battles, and car chases in its dramas, but police/PI stories are really about intellectual work, trying to figure out who is lying, who is not, and you really can't have a film about people Googling stuff and checking security tapes and having meetings with other cops for an hour...or even interviewing a series of people as Kinsey Millhone does in Grafton's novels.
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Torgo
Moderator Emeritus 
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Posts: 15,420
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Post by Torgo on Aug 12, 2011 17:55:33 GMT -5
There is one thing that may have contributed to the downfall of the mystery that has not been mentioned here, and that is home media. Today, home media is big business and studios are depending on their movies being rewatchable to sell DVDs and BluRays. Mystery as a genre becomes weakened when you know a story's ending which hampers rewatchability, and in a world where it is pop culture commonplace that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, Bruce Willis was dead the entire movie, and even "SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!" having a secret ending is tricky business in the first place.
To stay alive, the mystery had to hybrid itself with other genres. You ask if I can name a recent mystery? I can name three (all came out this year no less): Unknown, Scream 4, and the Hangover Part II. None of these are "true" mysteries but all have plots that revolve around a mystery. However, these mysteries are clinging to another genre to present itself. Why? Because action, horror, and comedy all have fanbases that are huge in home media, and these genres assure rewatchability in these groups.
Mystery is still alive. Noirish detective stories might be dead, but mystery still thrives in a different form. Though with Sherlock Holmes becoming a box office smash in recent years, old fashioned mysteries might make a comeback...in a more contemporary form, that is (Sherlock Holmes was far from old fashioned).
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Post by zomburg on Aug 21, 2011 18:06:39 GMT -5
"Mystery Team" Probably not what your looking for, but funny none the less.
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Post by Satchmo on Aug 22, 2011 18:13:03 GMT -5
Christopher Nolan's first three films (Following, Insomnia, and the mind-blowingly unforgettable Memento) all have elements of mystery movie in them, with Insomnia being the most straightforward mystery movie of the three. More recently, the British neo-noir series The Red Riding Trilogy are all fantastic, gripping mystery films and highly recommended, even if the heavy Yorkshire accents get a bit hard to understand at times.
You do raise a very good point, though. I am having trouble thinking of many new mystery movies. I guess they've all sort of fused with the thriller genre.
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