Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category
Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
M.F.A. has a series of murders in it, but it doesn’t have the atmosphere of a horror movie like I would usually review this time of year. I’d say it’s closer to a thriller. It came out in 2017, I’ve been meaning to see it for a while, and unfortunately I was reminded of it by current events. It’s a rape-revenge movie with more parallels to the recent Cornell University case than I expected, but of course it’s not coincidence – it’s a terrible reminder that this is based on things that happen all the time. I have to warn you that although I think this is a respectable movie and not sleazy like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE it does have two very disturbing assault scenes, bluntly staged to seem authentic. It’s not sugar-coating it, or giving you a quick out. It’s very upsetting.
Noelle (Francesca Eastwood) is a painter working on her masters of fine arts. She’s cool, but not very social, trying to change that when she’s invited to a party by classmate Luke (Peter Vack, SWELTER). She has a very supportive duplex neighbor named Skye (Leah McKendrick, who also wrote the movie) who notices her trying on outfits and encourages her, gives her tips for hitting on the guy. It’s torturous because if we didn’t know the topic of the movie it would be cute. She likes a boy, she kinda wants to get laid, her friend has her back, none of that is a crime. She’s not worrying about bad things that could happen, and she shouldn’t have to. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Clifton Collins Jr., David Huynh, Francesca Eastwood, Leah McKendrick, Natalia Leite, Peter Vack, rape-revenge
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Horror, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 29th, 2026
THE SURFER is one of the movies from recent years that I’ve meant to get around to because it seemed like a promising Nicolas Cage role. It’s from the Irish director Lorcan Finnegan (VIVARIUM) and writer Thomas Martin, set and filmed in Australia, and Cage plays a guy who grew up there and has returned to try to buy a house his late father used to own.
I did not notice until looking at Wikipedia for this review that Cage’s character doesn’t have a name, he’s just “The Surfer.” He seems more like a guy with a name, because he has a complicated life: investment firm job he needs to hurry up and return to, teenage son (Finn Little, THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD) he’s struggling to bond with, wife (voice of Brenda Meaney, FEAR THE NIGHT) he’s separated from and wants to get back together with but she’s with somebody else, constantly on the phone hassling his mortgage broker (Greg McNeill) and real estate agent (Rahel Romahn, FURIOSA) about how to raise the money to outbid the other potential buyer. And yeah, when he was young he travelled around the world living in a van, finding places to surf, writing for surf zines, but he gave that up a million years ago for a family and a job and everything. There is no evidence he deserves to be called “The Surfer.” But his son surfs so he wants to bring him out to this beach from his childhood and surprise him by showing him this house.
Trouble is, before they even get to the water a guy named Pitbull (surfer and Muay Thai fighter turned actor Alexander Bertrand) tells him, “Don’t live here, don’t surf here!” Locals only. While the Surfer presses the issue the leader of the Bay Boys, Scally (the late Julian McMahon, FANTASTIC FOUR 2005), comes over saying, “No need for all this fuss,” like he’s the reasonable guy who’s gonna straight this out. But with that tone he basically threatens The Surfer and says, “You gotta know when to back down.” So he does. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexander Bertrand, Australia, Finn Little, Julian McMahon, Justin Rosniak, Lorcan Finnegan, Nic Cassim, Nicolas Cage, Rahel Romahn, surfing
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Thriller | 7 Comments »
Monday, September 28th, 2026
A classic scenario: dangerous man and innocent kid on the road, her presence eventually reveals his soft side, as much as he tries to hide it. He learns from her and finds a purpose in protecting her. Some shit goes down and he tries to find redemption and we have a hard time not feeling something for him. In the case of SHE RIDES SHOTGUN (based on the book by Jordan Harper), the kid is Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) and the man is her father, Nate McClusky (Taron Egerton, CARRY-ON). When her mom doesn’t show up to pick her up after school, and her dad shows up all frazzled, she’s definitely scared. Asks if he’s supposed to be there. Yeah, he got out, he says.
Man, this starts out dark. We figure out before she does that her mom and stepdad just got murdered. We assume Nate did it and now he’s kidnapping her. He’s in a hotwired car (all he can afford right now, he says) and trying to lay low at a cheap hotel by the airport. When she sees the double homicide on the news he tells her it wasn’t him, it was this prison gang that’s after him, that’s who he’s running from and trying to protect her from. Too late though, she already called the task force phone number. So she tells him they have to go. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ana Sophia Heger, Ben Collins, David Lyons, John Carroll Lynch, Jordan Harper, Luke Piotrowski, Nick Rowland, Odessa A'zion, Rob Yang, Taron Egerton
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Thriller | 5 Comments »
Thursday, September 24th, 2026
THE WEIGHT is a movie playing theaters right now that I’m not sure everybody has heard about. It stars Ethan Hawke (EXPLORERS), and Russell Crowe (THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS) is also in it, two great actors who are probly gonna be good no matter what they’re in, but you’re not always guaranteed they picked a keeper. This time they did. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen this year.
Hawke plays Samuel Murphy, a widower struggling to provide for his daughter Penny (Avy Berry, A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE) during the Great Depression. He stays positive and tries to shield her from their predicament, but it’s not looking good. When they get evicted from their apartment she (over his objections) sells her beloved teddy bear to a neighbor to try to raise cash. She’s a good kid. When they go to check on renting some godforsaken rathole some plain clothes police officers harass him, decide he’s trying to squat there, beat him up and arrest him. He tells Penny through the bars of the jail cell don’t worry, he’ll come find her, and she’s like… what do you mean? Where am I going? My eyes were misty before the title even hit.
He gets sent to a labor camp run by Clancy (Crowe), a tough warden but with a nice side to him. When he gives them a seemingly impossible task of moving a large boulder, Murphy engineers a method to cut holes into each side and turn it using the handles of pick axes. Clancy is impressed. Lets him hang out on his porch. Gives him a Dr. Pepper. Talks to him about his life. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alec Newman, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Cameron Brady, Ethan Hawke, George Burgess, Great Depression, Julia Jones, Latham Gaines, Leo Scherman, Lucas Lynggaard Tonnesen, Matthew Booi, Matthew Chapman, Padraic McKinley, Russell Crowe, Sam Hazeldine, Shelby Gaines
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Thriller | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, September 16th, 2026
August 30, 1996
David Koepp’s THE TRIGGER EFFECT is the last movie in this review series that I hadn’t seen before. It’s not one anybody seems to talk about, so I could’ve gotten away with skipping it. I’m glad I didn’t, though. I don’t think it’s good, but it’s deranged in a really odd way that I appreciate.
It opens with two coyotes playing tug-of-war with a dead animal, then howling, then walking past a power station. This is meant to encapsulate the movie because it’s about people not getting along during a power outage.
But for now the lights are on, and there’s a DePalma style tracking shot witnessing a chain of small conflicts between strangers at a mall: a drink spilled on a shirt, the person spelled on bumping into a lady and offending her boyfriend, etc. – and it’s a very unsettling intro because for one five minute shot we get this onslaught of characters and incidents where not one person ever reacts to anything in a way that seems natural to me. The culmination is in a movie theater lobby where a woman (Kerri Vickers) strolls past two long lines of customers, right up to the concession counter and just starts ordering. The person who was next in line, Raymond (Richard T. Jones, RENAISSANCE MAN), calls her on it, but she says, “Well, I didn’t see you” and goes back to ordering… so he leaves without buying anything. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Smitrovich, David Koepp, Dermot Mulroney, Elisabeth Shue, Jack Noseworthy, Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Rooker, Richard Schiff, Richard T. Jones, William Lucking
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Thriller | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2026
August 16, 1996
THE FAN is one of those movies I saw at the time, thought was pretty decent, didn’t think much about for 30 years, watched again, still thought was the same pretty decent. In fact, I might have to bump that up to pretty good.
One good thing about it is the same thing that happens when you watch many of the Tony Scott movies, even lesser ones: you remember that god damn, movies used to look good. The cinematographer is Dariusz Wolski, who’d just shot CRIMSON TIDE for Scott, but also he’s the guy who did THE CROW, and later DARK CITY, and then he did some Gore Verbinskis and Tim Burtons, and then a whole bunch of Ridley Scotts. A high ranking cinematographer of my lifetime, in my opinion. So here he’s doing those hazy orange Tony Scott skies, he’s making shots of the most routine shit look god damn beautiful, he’s staging business meetings in conference rooms with magic hour light shining through slit blinds, just ridiculously beautiful shots in a regular ol’ stalker thriller.
In his followup to CASINO and HEAT, Robert De Niro stars as Gil Renard, a very serious fan of the San Francisco Giants. Not just a guy who watches the games and has the hats and bobbleheads and shit (though of course he does), he’s also a regular sports radio caller, apt to defend his team, for example when radio personalities Jewel Stern (Ellen Barkin, MAN TROUBLE) and Bernie (Kurt Fuller, MIRACLE MILE, NO HOLDS BARRED) are a little too hard on the highly paid new player Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes between WAITING TO EXHALE and MURDER AT 1600). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Benicio Del Toro, Chris Mulkey, Dariusz Wolski, Ellen Barkin, Jack Black, John Leguizamo, Kurt Fuller, Patti D'Arbanville, Robert De Niro, Tony Scott, Wesley Snipes
Posted in Reviews, Sport, Thriller | 9 Comments »
Thursday, June 18th, 2026
June 14, 1996
THE CABLE GUY was, somehow, a divisive movie. It’s such a good idea: what if you slipped the guy hooking up your cable some extra money to give you the pay channels for free, and then he felt entitled to be your friend, and you couldn’t get rid of him? And what if he was an over-the-top goofball Jim Carrey but it played out like a SINGLE WHITE FEMALE or CAPE FEAR type suspense thriller? It’s very funny, but directed like a real thriller by Ben Stiller (following his debut REALITY BITES), so it turns out it wasn’t what most of society expected or desired from Carrey after his run of ACE VENTURA, THE MASK, DUMB AND DUMBER, BATMAN FOREVER and ACE VENTURA 2. We’ll get into that a little more later, but for now, fuck ‘em. They were wrong, obviously.
Steven Kovacs (Matthew Broderick, WARGAMES, THE LION KING) is newly separated from his girlfriend Robin (Leslie Mann, LAST MAN STANDING), having freaked her out by proposing. So he has a new apartment and needs the cable hooked up and it’s his buddy Rick (Jack Black, WATERWORLD) who suggests bribing the guy, which is not really Steven’s way, but he does it anyway. Great idea, Rick.
The cable guy says his name is Ernie “Chip” Douglas, acts like he’s caressing a nipple when he finds the “sweet spot” to drill into the wall, intuits that Steven is dealing with a breakup, likes to say “I’m just messin with ya” and “I’m just jerkin yer chain,” and pressures him into hanging out the next day. Then he brings him to sit on top of the city’s satellite dish, the place where he goes to think, to talk about the future of cable and internet. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Stiller, Eric Roberts, Jack Black, Jim Carrey, John Ottman, Judd Apatow, Leslie Mann, Matthew Broderick
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Thriller | 23 Comments »
Tuesday, May 26th, 2026
May 22, 1996
By my count, there are ten summer of ’96 movies that turned out to be the first of a series. Usually only a series of two, though. THE CRAFT, TWISTER, THE ARRIVAL, ERASER, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, INDEPENDENCE DAY, and TRAINSPOTTING each got one sequel. Five of those were decades later, three were direct-to-video. DRAGONHEART had surprising longevity, with its fourth DTV sequel released in 2020. But only MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, which reached its 30th anniversary last week, got seven theatrical sequels, all with Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames returning, all good in my opinion. Most of them very good. So it’s arguably the best summer of ’96 movie and the most consequential.
I have reviewed it before, eleven years ago, so consider this a companion review, because I stand by what I wrote then. I still think MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE is a prime example of a blockbuster done right, because yes, “it’s a big movie star vehicle, based on an existing ‘property,’ climaxes in a noisy special effects-laden action spectacle, did end up becoming a franchise,” but “it is a Brian De Palma movie, it doesn’t feel like he had to compromise anything. He got to take his style and his interests and experiment with them on a little larger canvas than usual.” It’s still something I get excited for when it happens – a visionary director getting a budget to put their stamp on some familiar piece of pop culture – but the franchise machinery has gotten so much stronger. They’re better at keeping somebody like that under control, plugging them into an existing thing, letting them kind of make it theirs, but not entirely. That would be reckless. They’d have to disavow them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian De Palma, David Koepp, Robert Towne, Tom Cruise
Posted in Reviews, Action, Thriller | 25 Comments »
Monday, May 18th, 2026
HEAVEN’S PRISONERS is a new-to-me ’96 joint. I was vaguely aware that it’s based on a book, and I think somebody recommended it to me at some point in my life, though it seems to have gotten terrible reviews and was also a flop. Alec Baldwin (THE SHADOW) plays Dave Robicheaux, a recovering alcoholic former New Orleans homicide detective, now living “back on the bayou selling worms and all that jazz.” One day he and his wife Annie (Kelly Lynch, ROAD HOUSE) are on their boat, about to get out the air mattress to fuck on, when a small plane swoops down and crashes in the water right next to them.
They heroically leap into action to try to rescue the passengers, but the only survivor is a little girl from El Salvador (Samantha Lagpacan), who they assume is “an illegal” and “immigration is gonna send her right back” so they decide to off-the-books adopt her and name her Alafair after his mother. She doesn’t speak English, they only speak a tiny bit of Spanish, and don’t make much of an effort to change this, so the subject of didn’t she already have a name she could be using never does come up. I feel like she probly had a name she’d been using up to that point though. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alec Baldwin, Badja Djola, Don Stark, Eric Roberts, Harley Peyton, Harris Savides, Kelly Lynch, Mary Stuart Masterson, Phil Joanou, Scott Frank, Teri Hatcher, Vondie Curtis-Hall
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 9 Comments »
Thursday, April 30th, 2026
APEX is a solid made-for-Netflix picture – nice looking, to-the-point, occasionally surprising, and a good showcase for its star, who happens to be one of my favorites. When I revisited ÆON FLUX recently I mentioned how ever since that movie I’ve thought of Charlize Theron as one of those rare actors who’s exactly as serious about the physical performance as the emotional, and excels at both. So, you know, she wins an Oscar for throwing herself into MONSTER and then when she does ATOMIC BLONDE she goes just as hard at fight training and stunt work as she did at portraying the inner life of a serial killer. Here she says you know what? I’m gonna learn how to climb rocks. I’m gonna climb so many rocks in this movie.
Not that that’s the entire topic. Her character Sasha enjoys extreme sports. In the opening she and her husband Tommy (the motherfuckin HULK Eric Bana!) are tandem climbing the Troll Wall in Norway. You know, climbing until they get tired, hanging a tent from the side at night, it’s fucking terrifying, who does that? Sasha and Tommy, that’s who. Though Tommy is getting wary that maybe he’s past his prime. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australia, Baltasar Kormakur, Charlize Theron, Eric Bana, Jeremy Robbins, Taron Egerton
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror, Thriller | 13 Comments »
