Film

Butterfly

A 1982 desert noir about a solitary man confronted by a young woman claiming to be his daughter, as an illicit attraction blooms between them. Stacy Keach anchors this morally queasy, sexually charged melodrama with Orson Welles presiding as a corrupt judge. It's uncomfortable by design—a film that stares unflinching at desire and guilt without offering easy redemption.

TMDb rating2.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a sun-bleached, slow-burning tale where moral rot seeps in gradually and the characters are sour, stubborn and painfully human, and you don't mind an unsettling mood.

Skip it if you need tidy plotting or characters you can root for, since nearly everyone here is compromised and the pacing drifts through long stretches of brooding silence.

What it asks of you: Settle in for an hour and three quarters of dusty, sour-tempered scenes where mood matters more than momentum and the darkness arrives gradually rather than in bursts.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

In the Heat of the Night1967

Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger crackle with tension in this Southern noir about a Black detective solving a murder in a racist town. Taut, intelligent, morally rigorous—the template for crime drama done right.

But The pacing is deliberate rather than propulsive, and some of the racial dynamics feel dated in their didacticism.

In the Heat of the Night poster

Chinatown1974

Jack Nicholson hunts corruption through 1940s LA in a film that treats desire and power as inseparable. Every frame is controlled; every revelation cuts deeper. The gold standard for neo-noir cynicism.

But It's bleak to the point of nihilism, and the ending punishes optimism with brutal finality.

Chinatown poster

Body Heat1981

William Hurt and Kathleen Turner generate genuine sexual electricity in this steamy neo-noir about a lawyer seduced into murder. Erotic without being gratuitous, morally compromised without losing sight of consequence.

But The plot mechanics are occasionally transparent, and the film rides on chemistry that doesn't quite sustain a second viewing.

Body Heat poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Butterfly

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Klute1971

Both films centre an uncomfortable sexual dynamic as the engine of moral collapse, with a detective figure (literal or social) moving through a landscape of compulsion and guilt.

Jane Fonda gives a career-best performance as a New York call girl drawn into a murder investigation by a taciturn detective. Paranoid, erotic, introspective—it's noir where the real detective work is psychological.

But The pacing meanders, the thriller plot takes a back seat to character study, and it can feel distressingly dated in its attitude toward female sexuality.

Klute poster
More like this (8)

The Grifters1990

Anjelica Huston, John Cusack and Annette Bening orbit each other in a con-artist drama where family loyalty and sexual manipulation become indistinguishable. Sleek, vicious and occasionally darkly funny.

But The characters are largely unsympathetic, and the narrative rewards cruelty over honesty.

The Grifters poster

Blood Simple1985

The Coen Brothers' debut is a masterclass in paranoia and misunderstanding. A Texas bartender gets tangled in murder and betrayal in a film where everyone makes the wrong assumption—and pays for it.

But The Texas noir aesthetic might feel derivative if you've seen every Coen film since, and the violence is sudden and startling.

Blood Simple poster

Sweet Smell of Success1957

Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis navigate the toxic symbiosis of a gossip columnist and a press agent. Coruscating dialogue, moral rot at every level, photography that makes New York look like hell.

But The pacing is staccato and the slang occasionally impenetrable; it rewards attention but doesn't coddle inattention.

Sweet Smell of Success poster

The Long Good Friday1980

Bob Hoskins commands this British crime saga as a mobster watching his empire collapse over an Easter weekend. Tense, violent, funny and genuinely tragic—he's magnificent.

But The ending is abrupt in a way that still divides audiences, and the IRA subplot adds political weight that some find schematic.

The Long Good Friday poster

Miller's Crossing1990

Gabriel Byrne navigates between rival bootleggers in Prohibition-era Ireland, caught between loyalty and survival. The Coens' most purely entertaining crime film, with wit and violence in perfect balance.

But The ironic tone can feel distancing, and the plot's Byzantine twists occasionally collapse under scrutiny.

Miller's Crossing poster

Bound1996

The Wachowskis' debut is a stylish neo-noir heist with two women at its center, sex and violence braided together, and genuine narrative ingenuity. It announces arrival with swagger.

But The early visual excess occasionally overwhelms the story, and the ending relies on coincidence that strains credibility.

Bound poster

Possession1981

Both are films about desire as contamination, where attraction between two people becomes a force that destroys everything it touches—here transmitted into the supernatural.

Andrzej Żuławski's fever dream of a film uses divorce and infidelity as the launching point for full-scale psychological horror. Isabelle Adjani convulses with genuine anguish; the film feels like a descent into madness.

But It's deliberately unhinged, aggressively European in its refusal of narrative clarity, and body horror that some will find exploitative rather than expressive.

Possession poster

Johnny Handsome1989

Both feature a morally ambiguous hero undone by attraction to a woman who represents his deepest vulnerability, but where Butterfly is grave and self-lacerating, this is trashy and exhilarated by its own sleaze.

Walter Hill's pulpy crime thriller stars Mickey Rourke as a disfigured criminal given a new face and a second chance—then drawn back into the underworld by Ellen Barkin's femme fatale. It's disreputable and gripping in equal measure.

But The misogyny is baked in, the dialogue is cartoonish, and it takes itself far less seriously than Butterfly, which some will find a relief and others a betrayal.

Johnny Handsome poster

People

Cast

Directing

Writing

Production

Recommended by

Naná, Betty Fisher and Other Stories