Tag Archives: Thriller
Review in Brief: The Accountant (2016)
THE ACCOUNTANT, about an autistic money launderer/assassin is beautifully obsessive in its visuals, less careful elsewhere. Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is only autistic when it suits the plot and he is able to turn on the charm and have social … Continue reading
Review: The Raid (2011)
THE RAID, or: the Fine Art of Ultraviolence, as it really should be subtitled (subtitled REDEMPTION in the USA, which is sort-of a spoiler) was the finest martial arts film for a decade when it was rolled out over 2011-12 … Continue reading
Review: Free Fire (2016/17)
Does Ben Wheatley ever sleep? Over the past eight years the British polymath has produced kitchen sink drama, folk horror, black comedy, Avant-garde, period-sci-fi-satire and DOCTOR WHO. He never does the same project twice and tends to mix it up … Continue reading
Review in Brief: The Purge: Election Year (2016)
This would be a whole lot funnier if he hadn’t won. THE PURGE as a franchise didn’t exactly hit the ground running – the first movie was dull and clunky and not the least bit scary – but the franchise … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Our Kind of Traitor (2016)
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR has a series of stunningly pretty images to open with: sparkling snowscapes, dappled sunlight, a slow-motion ballet performance. Even the death that follows this montage is beautifully composed, as horrible as the act remains. The visual … Continue reading
Series Retrospective: Bourne
In the latest look back at a long-running series, I’ve decided to look at everyone’s favourite amnesiac assassin, Jason Bourne. Robert Ludlum’s antidote to Bond has been knocking around for a while, and has not let his author’s passing and … Continue reading
Review: Deepwater Horizon (2016)
I can’t say I was expecting to like DEEPWATER HORIZON. Turning real-world disasters, especially ones where we’re still feeling the impact today, into spectacle can go either way. It couldn’t be too maudlin or grandstanding, it couldn’t be propaganda. What … Continue reading
Review: 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Who’d have thought one of the best films released in 2016 was a (sort of) sequel to CLOVERFIELD? Much like this year’s BLAIR WITCH this one has come to us by stealth, not revealing what it is until the very … Continue reading
Review: The Shallows (2016)
JAWS gave sharks a bad name. The SHARKNADO series gave shark movies a bad name. THE SHALLOWS doesn’t exactly redeem sharkkind, but it’s an effective, no-nonsense thriller that makes me hope to see more films in this vein in the … Continue reading
Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
There are projects that very obviously started with a catchy title and worked backwards from there. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES is just such an idea and continues Seth Grahame-Smith’s penchant for adding an oddity to a familiar story following … Continue reading