Sorry, we don’t make the rules.

We took a swig of spiked eggnog and ran the gauntlet of the genre like Marv and Harry at the McCallisters, finally arriving at our Top 10 Christmas Movies.

I take comfort in knowing that film noir—a genre that has existed for almost 100 years—has seen it all before. So here are few timeless, hard-won lessons and the noir films that illustrate them.

By all cinematic standards of today, this film is not only masterfully conceived—it is among Shyamalan’s very best.