Actor · Voice actor · 1951–2026

Tom Noonan

4: briefs
13:00: average
52 min: in total

On film.briefs4

Mystery Train

Jim Jarmusch · 1989

Mystery Train is Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 triptych set over one night in Memphis, following a Japanese couple, an Italian widow, and a disoriented Englishman as they navigate the city’s margins. Shot in controlled colour by Robby Müller and scored sparsely by John Lurie, it treats narrative as variation rather than progression. Though critically acclaimed and formally assured, its third segment falters under schematic weight. It rewards patient attention with cumulative texture, not plot resolution.

13:00

Anomalisa

Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson · 2015

A middle-aged man perceives everyone as identical—same face, same voice—except one woman he meets in a Cincinnati hotel. Adapted from Charlie Kaufman’s 2005 audio play, this stop-motion feature renders alienation as tactile, acoustic and temporal experience, using painstaking puppetry and vocal repetition to explore perception, loneliness and the fragile mechanics of connection.

13:00

Manhunter

Michael Mann · 1986

Michael Mann’s 1986 adaptation of Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon stars William Petersen as FBI profiler Will Graham, drawn from retirement to hunt serial killer Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), with Brian Cox as the imprisoned Hannibal Lecktor. Shot by Dante Spinotti and scored by Michel Rubini, it uses stylised colour, ambient sound, and deliberate pacing to explore the psychological cost of seeing through a killer’s eyes. Though a box-office disappointment on release, it has since been reassessed as a landmark neo-noir thriller and foundational text in the forensic crime genre.

13:00

Synecdoche, New York

Charlie Kaufman · 2008

Charlie Kaufman’s 2008 directorial debut follows theatre director Caden Cotard as he constructs an ever-expanding, hyper-real stage production inside a Manhattan warehouse — a project that blurs life and art until neither remains distinct. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and featuring Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, and Emily Watson, the film uses recursive structure, deliberate ambiguity, and physical decay to explore mortality, identity, and the exhausting persistence of self-making. Shot by Frederick Elmes and scored by Jon Brion, it premiered at Cannes and polarised critics — some calling it a masterpiece, others pretentious — but has since gained stature as a defining arthouse work of the 21st century.