I’m very glad you pointed that out. I think part of why I didn’t respond as much to the visuals is because they were so muted. But it’s still a good-looking movie. I tried to bait @Soren_Hoglund to post some images in another thread where he defended Nightmare Alley’s visuals, but he wasn’t having any of it. :)
I like the idea of “what should I have watched instead?” input from detractors like me! That’s also a great response when someone is poo-poo’ing something and you’d like to shift the conversation to a positive tone. :)
But I guess it would depend on why you watched Nightmare Alley. Based on my disappointment that Nightmare Alley’s story of scammers squandered the option to be relevant to modern politics, I would say you should have watched Red Rocket instead. I probably hinted as much in the review, but I also doubt that’s the kind of counter-recommendation you were looking for. :)
However, if you’re looking for recommendations of classic noir, there are probably better threads in terms of the quality of responses you’ll get. This ol’ dinosaur has been sporadically active lately, but I doubt anyone would mind if you dropped in to ask for a recommendation:
-Tom