Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category
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 »
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
You guys know how it is when two men in separate cars drive around the country, one trying to stalk and then run over women, the other trying to hunt the other guy. The one is a perverted serial killer, the other has gone mad from the first guy running over his wife, so he rammed into the guy disabling him and making him even more hellbent on murder. They are antagonists, arch-enemies, villain and dark avenger. You know, a couple of highwaymen.
This is the 2004 movie from Robert Harmon, director of THE HITCHER. I remember the trailer but it didn’t catch my interest – just looked like another studio serial killer movie, at best on the level of JOY RIDE, probaly worse. But seeing THE HITCHER made me more curious and I’m glad about that because HIGHWAYMEN turns out to be way weirder and more interesting than advertised. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jim Caviezel, Rhona Mitra, Robert Harmon
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 120 Comments »
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
Over on the Ain’t It Cool News I have what I believe to be the first review anywhere of DARK COUNTRY, directed by and starring Thomas Jane. Most of it takes place at night but I thought I would use the thumbnail on the left because I thought he looked kind of like Steve McQueen there. Also this is the beginning of the movie when he’s leaving for his honeymoon with his new wife, so I use this picture to symbolize Tom Jane beginning his new life as a director. One of the cups is for him and one is for directing. I’m sure you understood that without me explaining it though.
I am Vern…
DARK COUNTRY, by rookie director Thomas Jane, is a stylized noir made on a low budget with a minimal cast. It was written by a guy who wrote Disney’s TARZAN and HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. It was shot in 3-D but is going straight to flat DVD. But somehow this weird combination of elements makes up a pretty good little movie, and possibly the best ever directed by one of the Punishers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Lauren German, Ron Perlman, Thomas Jane
Posted in AICN, Reviews, Thriller | 22 Comments »
Sunday, August 16th, 2009
After FLESH + BLOOD, audiences were thirsty for more of that Rutger Hauer/Jennifer Jason Leigh team. They wanted to see more romantic chemistry from the Hepburn and Tracy of the ’80s. So they got to see him tie her to a truck and… well, it’s even worse than what he did to her in FLESH + BLOOD. And she didn’t fall for him afterwards.
THE HITCHER starts off as a really good horror movie. Atmospheric shots of C. Thomas Howell driving out on the highway, drinking coffee out of a Thermos, trying to stay awake. Looks like he’s been up all night driving. It starts to rain. Maybe out of desperation to stay awake, maybe out of spontaneity, he picks up a hitchhiker, Rutger Hauer. He jokes about how his mom told him never to pick up hitchhikers. But when he tries to ask Hauer where he’s going the weirdo keeps not answering, changing the subject. Every time he does it it gets more uncomfortable. Then he starts talking about murder and dismemberment, making threats, pulls out a switchblade. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Eric Red, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rutger Hauer
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 76 Comments »
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
If you had told me a week ago that I would bother to see ORPHAN, even on DVD, I would’ve thought you had the wrong guy. But then somebody told me the plot twist and it was SEVEN POUNDS all over again, it suddenly seemed more interesting and I went and paid money to see it.
And I’m happy to report that ORPHAN is a surprisingly smart and enjoyable evil-child suspense thriller. It’s about a couple played by Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard who adopt a 9-year old Russian girl named Esther, and they should’ve kept the receipt because they got a lemon. At first she seems like a smart and incredibly talented kid, but actually she’s a fuckin lunatic who ends up terrorizing them all, mommy seems crazy because she says her daughter is a maniac, etc. You pretty much know the drill. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: evil kids, Vera Farmiga
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 81 Comments »
Monday, June 8th, 2009
See, this is the type of gold I’m always digging for. This is why I keep browsing and renting weird old movies I don’t know much about. I’m trying to find a movie like HIT!. Last time I rented a Billy Dee Williams movie it was AGENT 00-SOUL, which I’d wanted to see for years only to discover it’s not a serious movie, it’s a “comedy” where he just keeps tripping on things and falling out of things. It makes the worst Leslie Nielsen movie look like the Coen Brothers.
But HIT! is not only a serious movie, it’s revenge-meets-arthouse, almost like POINT BLANK. It’s an ambiguous, slow-burn revenge movie with great performances and character moments and a creepy Lalo Schifrin score. There’s more care put into the buildup and the little moments than into the action movie parts, but they’re good enough for that to be a fair trade.
In the beginning a teenage girl dies from a heroin overdose. Billy Dee plays her father, some kind of CIA agent. He doesn’t talk until 15 minutes into the movie. Before that he just smolders. His boss tries to help him out, tries to send him on a vacation. But he wants to go after the source – not the street pushers, but the top of the pyramid, some guys in Marseille who run a heroin cartel. Of course the agency tells him not to, and of course he does it anyway. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Dee Williams, revenge, Richard Pryor, Sidney J. Furie
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 30 Comments »
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
THE GLADIATOR is another movie I found on VHS by accident while browsing the video store. It’s a car vigilante TV movie, so I was surprised to find it with the Abel Ferrara movies. Yes, the director of KING OF NEW YORK and BAD LIEUTENANT also did a TV movie starring Ken Wahl and guest starring cheeseball ’80s top 40 DJ Rick Dees as his obnoxious boss. From about ’85 until ’88 Ferrara mostly worked in TV, doing some episodes of MIAMI VICE and CRIME STORY, plus this one in ’86. Seemed like something I should investigate.
Wahl plays Rick Benton, a stoic car mechanic working for Dees’s specialty car business. The only people in his life are his kid brother who he raised (Brian Robbins, director of NORBIT), his Vietnam buddy who works at the junkyard, and a customer he’s starting to date, talk radio host Nancy Allen. He works for rich people but chugs along in the kind of lower middle class existence not usually depicted casually in a TV movie. A couple nice touches I noticed: they eat on paper plates, and they wrap gifts with the Sunday funnies. You ever notice how presents on TV and movies are usually perfectly wrapped with shiny bows and sometimes even lids that just lift off? I could never pull that off. The Sunday funnies is more relatable. Good one Ferrara. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Abel Ferrara, car chases, TV movies, vigilantes
Posted in Action, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 24 Comments »
Saturday, April 18th, 2009
Yesterday was Roddy Piper’s birthday. I’m celebrating late with the Piper/Billy Blanks picture from 1993, BACK IN ACTION.
Script-wise, I gotta say, this is a half-assed affair. They got the maverick cop (Roddy Piper), the ex-soldier who is back in action on a one man mission of justice (Billy Blanks), standard issue evil druglords, damsel-in-distress sister and also the female reporter love interest always looking for a good story but who ends up trying to help (see also DARKMAN 2, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER). Also some obvious one-liners that I guess I got a laugh from, like when the bad guy thinks (let’s face it, naively) that Piper won’t kill him because of his Miranda rights. Piper stabs him and says “You have the right to remain silent. Forever.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Blanks, Roddy Piper
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Thriller | 14 Comments »
