Dopey fall guys, angling femme fatales, double-crosses and love triangles, excessive smoke and the darkest of shadows… Some things never go out of fashion. Though the narrative and stylistic conceits that make up film noir never really left cinema, they had their best decade since the 1940s in the years of grunge, gangsta rap, the Gulf War, and William Jefferson Clinton. With ’90s Noir, explore the depressive, desperate cinematic underbelly of the decade’s official optimism and prosperity, with highlights from the heyday of the erotic thriller as well as auteur works by Wong Kar-wai, the Wachowskis, Spike Lee, and an obscure video store clerk with the initials Q.T.

’90s Noir screens at 7 Ludlow.