Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category
Friday, April 30th, 2010
BREAKDOWN is a highway suspense thriller starring Kurt Russell. He’s got his wife asleep in their fancy new truck, going on a trip, he takes his eyes off the road onto his coffee thermos for a second, almost nails some gentlemen of the rednecked community who back out into the road in front of him. When he stops at a gas station those guys show up and start puffing their chests out, commenting on his truck. So it’s got that class tension, that tourist guilt that I always dig in a horror or suspense type picture.
That’s good, but on the other hand I definitely prefer Russell as the sardonic working class type. I’m not so sure about him driving a fancy truck like in this one or wearing a tuxedo like in EXECUTIVE DECISION. I still like him on the right side of the tracks (he was still Elvis, after all), but not as much. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: J.T. Walsh, Jonathan Mostow, Kurt Russell
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 83 Comments »
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
PUSH – BASED ON THE SHORT STORY BUTTON, BUTTON BY RICHARD MATHESON
Late in THE BOX somebody asks, “Can I be forgiven?” The character is talking about a lapse in moral judgment that caused harm to others. But you kind of hope it’s also writer/director Richard Kelly talking about his last two movies, SOUTHLAND TALES and DOMINO. Both are more like drugged out brainstorming sessions than actual finished movies – a couple funny ideas wrapped in a thousand, uh… other ideas, then chewed up and spit onto the screen with no second thought given to concepts like planning, timing, restraint, coherence or entertainment value. To me those are two of the most tedious, headscratchingly ill-conceived disasters of modern film, and the motherfucker did them in a row. With only one pretty good movie under his belt to hang his hat on*.
No. Not if this is an era of accountability. You can’t be forgiven.
So it’s in the spirit of forgiveness and Christian redemption that I say I thought THE BOX was pretty good. His best, for what that’s worth. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cameron Diaz, Frank Langella, James Marsden, Richard Kelly, Richard Matheson
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 59 Comments »
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Speaking of small time horror remakes, the STEPFATHER one came out on DVD a week or two ago. This is another one where it’s not really a big name for the teens to have heard of like NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET or something, so it’s kind of weird that they bothered. But the source material is an underrated movie with a good, simple premise, so that’s attractive. I think the original’s script by Donald Westlake is real good, but it’s definitely elevated by a great performance by Terry O’Quinn. And that guy’s apparently on the popular television program LOST, so you’d think they’d just push the original on the kids and not bother with a new one. You’d think that – but the old one doesn’t have text messaging in it. The new one does. Also, internet research instead of going to the library. It’s a whole new ball game. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: remakes
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 26 Comments »
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
SHUTTER ISLAND is alot like JURASSIC PARK. Outside experts are called in to a remote island where some unusual shit goes down. They’re shown the operation, the security setup, the layout. Then there’s a big ass storm so they can’t get off the island, the electric fences go down and the captives get loose and it’s bedlam. But it’s the criminally insane instead of dinosaurs, and it’s the guy who plays GANDHI instead of the director of GANDHI who’s their guide on the island. There are other minor differences, like for example this one is less about people staring in awe at dinosaurs and more about piecing together the traumatic events that haunt the hero, and figuring out how they tie into this mystery which unfolds in a surreal horror movie atmosphere and within the context of the 1950s, with the lingering horrors of WWII still in people’s minds as well as the fear of the hydrogen bomb and of communism, and most importantly during the psychiatric community’s bumpy transition from barbaric surgical methods to more modern psychotropic drugs and verbal forms of therapy. Otherwise though it’s pretty much the exact same movie, a blatant ripoff. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Kingsley, Dennis Lehane, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Martin Scorsese
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 100 Comments »
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
’90s studio action thriller – I’d like you to meet my friend SAW.
LAW ABIDING CITIZEN is the story of a guy named Clyde (Gerard Butler, 300) whose family is killed in a home invasion in the opening scene. To add insult to injury his attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx, STEALTH) makes a deal for one killer to testify against the other and just get one of them executed rather than risk going to trial just based on Clyde’s eye witness testimony. At the time of the attack Clyde was working on a circuit board, so we know he’s some kind of technological wizard or sorcerer, which explains why ten years later he can exact an ingenious master plan of super revenge with strong overtones of cultural critique. You see, he doesn’t just blame the killers, he blames Rice for putting his conviction rate above actual justice, and the judges for whatever they did, this whole system is out of order, you can’t handle the truth, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: F. Gary Gray, Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Kurt Wimmer
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 37 Comments »
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
I rented a PAL import of WHITE OF THE EYE after some of you guys were talking about it in the comments back around Halloween. I really didn’t know anything about it, so I was off balance from the beginning. The opening credits said in huge letters DONALD CAMMELL’S WHITE OF THE EYE so at first I assumed that was some writer like Dean R. Koontz or John Grisham. Turns out it’s the director, he co-directed PERFORMANCE, did a couple weird ones like this, then killed himself.
Also it was co-written by “China.” Who the fuck is that? It’s not the bodybuilder lady from WWF, that was Chyna. Could it be the entire country of China wrote it communistically? Turns out it’s Cammell’s wife. As the movie began I didn’t even know what time period it was made in. I honestly thought it was a ’90s movie with some retro ’80s touches, turns out it’s 1987 and just happens to be very stylized.
The opening murder is a tour-de-force, it actually kind of creeped me out how fetishistically it captured every detail of the murder scene. It starts by showing this woman in her fancy home, extreme closeups of the objects surrounding her – flower vase, goldfish bowl, kitchen utensils – then every one of them is knocked over in the struggle when an unseen man attacks her. We only see him by the extreme closeup of the eye, which is disconcerting. And it seems to treat the wreckage as a carefully planned art installation. Or some kind of druid ritual. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Keith, Donald Cammell
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich are on a honeymoon hike in Hawaii. Another couple has been killed, possibly by a newlywed couple like them, and all the other tourists are getting paranoid about it, but they decide to continue with the hike anyway. This is one o’ them suspense thrillers, and it did a good job of keeping me in suspensed thrills.
From the beginning on it keeps dropping hints about what might be up. A sinister past for Zahn? Maybe it’s straight up and this scary couple here are killers? Or this nice couple? Or the other couple? You’ll have alot of theories throughout and as long as you consider the correct one at some point you can claim you figured it out and defeated the movie. The writer/director is David Twohy, famed chronicler of Riddick. It’s another solid B-movie notch on his belt – nothing transcendent, but effective and fun, with some clever touches. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Twohy, Milla Jovovich, Steve Zahn, Timothy Olyphant
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 61 Comments »
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
“DON’T LOOK NOW but Nicolas Roeg has made an eerie meditation on fate, death, mourning and love!” That would’ve been my quote for the newspaper ad if I was doing this back then. I do quotes, you know. Too bad I’m late on this one, I think I would’ve had alot to offer their marketing team.
Well, it’s like I heard. This isn’t really the type of movie I necessarily want to watch every Halloween, but it’s a good one and a nice change of pace from the other horror movies I was watching last month. It has psychic premonitions, ghosts, a murder and some creepy shit. But it’s more art movie than horror. And that’s fine – maybe better, because there aren’t many movies like this. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Nicolas Roeg
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 68 Comments »
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
There was once a promising new director on the scene named Anthony Waller. This was the ’90s, the Miramax Dynasty, when Hollywood executives searched for promising young directors like prospectors looking for gold, and here’s this Lebanese born British guy who independently made a well reviewed thriller called MUTE WITNESS. Not too arty either, real energetic, funny, violent. Pretty commercial. They scooped him up, signed him on to direct AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS, and for some reason nobody ever talked about him again. Weird.
Okay, he shouldn’t have made that sequel, but actually it had some moments. I always meant to see MUTE WITNESS, but never did until now. So let me be the very last to say “this kid shows promise!” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Waller
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 14 Comments »
Friday, October 9th, 2009
I found EYES OF A STRANGER (1981) with the mystery and suspense movies at the video store. That got me thinking – how exactly do you draw the line between a thriller and a slasher movie? Is it because this guy’s a rapist, not just a killer? Is it because he’s not supernatural, deformed, masked or a redneck? You could say that about MANIAC too, but I think we all agree that’s a horror movie. Both have effects by Tom Savini, too. But MANIAC is way gorier, and the killer gets way more screen time. He’s the central character. Here the killer is often sneaking around just off camera, unseen, keeping us on a thread until he suddenly attacks, like Michael Myers. So if you’re watching a movie where there’s a killer like Michael Myers, but without a mask and not supernatural, that’s suspense. Except SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE. It’s horror if it has ‘massacre’ in the title I believe is the rule.
Ah, shit. I don’t know how it works. But EYES OF A STRANGER is a good thriller about a slasher. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ken Wiederhorn, slashers
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 25 Comments »
