Billy Wilder’s 1950 film Sunset Boulevard and Dan Gilroy’s 2014 film Nightcrawler distinctively utilise the film noir subgenre’s stylistic and narrative conventions. Both are incredibly cynical and gritty in tone, with Nightcrawler exploring the violent underbelly of urban America, whereas Sunset Boulevard delves into the destructive nature of fame and Hollywood. These films have been chosen for comparison due to the contrasting contexts in which they were made, Sunset Boulevard being a classic 1950s Hollywood noir film and Nightcrawler being a modern-day neo-noir, both emphasising differing social issues of the time. Wilder’s film follows an aging silent film queen that refuses to accept that her stardom has ended. She hires a young screenwriter to help set up her movie comeback, however his ambivalence about their relationship and her unwillingness to let go leads to a situation of violence, madness, and death. Nightcrawler follows low life thief, Louis Bloom, as he discovers a new way to earn money, by capturing photographs of crime scenes. Resorting to extreme measures to get them that results in violence and destruction.