Throughout history, critics and academics have never quite been able to agree on what, exactly, film noir is. Is it a genre like any other? Was it a cinematic movement much in the same vein as New Hollywood? Was it simply a style without the stable conventions to be considered a genre? Whatever the case, one thing is certain: These stories about morally ambiguous characters operating in a gloomy, corrupt urban environment have provided audiences with some of the greatest movies ever made.

Of course, noir's peak came during the post-WWII period of Hollywood's Golden Age, but the '50s weren't the end of these films. Throughout the '90s, for instance, plenty of movies that can be considered noir or neo-noir came out, and several of them are among the genre's best. From campy classics like

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