As I write in this week's Festive column: Starting tomorrow at SIFF Cinema Uptown, Eddie "Czar of Noir" Muller gives this soggy gray city another dose of just what it needs: 16 classic films drenched in human desperation, spiritual desolation, and glorious, glorious shadows. Among the delights at Muller's Noir City 2014: the opening-night Orson Welles double-whammy of Journey into Fear and The Third Man; a featured screening of Ida Lupino's The Hitch-Hiker, the first female-directed film noir; and, spoiling the notion that noir is an American thing, choice films from Argentina, Germany, Norway, Spain, Japan, and France. For a full list of films, head to siff.net, where just reading the plot synopses bestows a light buzz: "Four men, trapped in a pestilent South American village, agree to transport a dangerous shipment of nitroglycerine through treacherous terrain." (Wages of Fear!) "A doctor, haunted by his service as a Nazi, falls in love with a camp survivor." (The Murderers Are Among Us!) "A suburban housewife's decision to keep a satchel of money accidentally tossed into her convertible results in mayhem and murder." (Too Late for Tears!)

Noir City trailer above, and full Festive column here (also featuring an overview of this weekend's 1st Annual Seattle Black Panther Party Film Festival, which I'll be giving its own post tomorrow...)