Photo Gallery
Hollywood Homicide

The near-simultaneous releases of The Black Dahlia (with Hilary Swank and Josh Hartnett, shown) and Hollywoodland suggest a mini-boom in Hollywood noir. Each film is about a real-life notorious unsolved murder mystery in the world of Southern California showbiz, and each is rife with such period shorthand as fedoras and cigarettes. Each also has that classic film-noir sense of fatalism and existential despair, but while classic noir expresses itself in shadows and grime, Hollywood noir is set in a bright arena of sunshine and stardom. It's no less grim or bitterly ironic for that, as you'll see in the following gallery of our favorite Tinseltown-set crime dramas.