Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category
Monday, August 14th, 2023
I know I’d seen the cover for the 2021 film DARK WEB: CICADA 3301 before. I assumed it was some generic shitty hacker thriller, so I paid it no mind. But when I was working on my review of FAST X I noticed it on the filmography of Alan Ritchson – he’s not only in it as an actor, but he directed and co-wrote it. That’s right, Reacher himself, from the TV show Reacher. I had to know what kind of a movie Reacher would direct, so I watched it.
It’s not a great movie, but it’s an interesting one. The cover really doesn’t capture the feel of the thing, which is very smart alecky, though more of a thriller with a sense of humor than an all-out comedy. The marketing team might’ve been counting on people knowing what the title referred to, which I did not. It sounds like the corniest name ever if you don’t know “Cicada 3301” is a mysterious internet puzzle thing that’s famous as far as mysterious internet puzzles things go. I guess these very difficult puzzles were posted between 2012 and 2014, claiming to be designed to find “highly intelligent individuals” for some unknown purpose, and only 2 of the 3 have ever been solved. Wikipedia says that “the puzzles focused heavily on data security, cryptography, steganography, and internet anonymity,” whatever that means. Rumors grew that they were a recruiting tool for an intelligence agency, a hacker group, or a secret society. This movie imagines one explanation and follows some characters trying to solve the puzzles. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Ritchson, Alyssa Cheatham, Anselmo DeSousa, Benjamin Sutherland, Conor Leslie, Jack Kesy, Joshua Montcalm, Kris Holden-Ried, Quancetia Hamilton, Ron Funches
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 3 Comments »
Monday, July 31st, 2023
August 5, 1983
THE STAR CHAMBER is the most grown up thriller I’ve come across in this 1983 retrospective so far. You can tell because it stars Michael Douglas. As a judge. It’s a crime/vigilante movie with a message about the flaws of the justice system and the temptation to take short cuts toward justice. Kinda like MAGNUM FORCE without the badass shit, but still good. Peter Hyams (between OUTLAND and 2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT) directs the shit out of it, and is credited as co-writer with Roderick Taylor (a recording artist turned rookie screenwriter who explored related themes many years later in THE BRAVE ONE).
It takes place in L.A., with a great L.A. atmosphere. It opens around 6 am one sunny morning when two undercover cops decide to follow a suspicious pedestrian, who notices them and takes off running. They see him ditch something in his garbage can as he runs into his house, and are aware they can’t search it without a warrant, but decide to wait until a garbage man dumps it in his truck, and then search the truck. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bo Welch, David Faustino, DeWayne Jessie, Don Calfa, Hal Holbrook, James B. Sikking, Joe Regalbuto, Michael Douglas, Peter Hyams, Roderick Taylor, Yaphet Kotto
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 7 Comments »
Monday, June 26th, 2023
MASTER GARDENER is the latest from Paul Schrader, who I consider to be on a late career roll between FIRST REFORMED and THE CARD COUNTER. This one is thematically related to those, and Schrader has called the three of them his unintentional “Lonely Man Trilogy,” but the template goes all the way back to TAXI DRIVER and has been loosely repeated over and over again throughout his filmography. Which is one of the things I love about him.
This time the journal-writing weirdo narrator is Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton, JANE GOT A GUN), the fastidious horticulturalist in charge of Gracewood Gardens, an estate in Louisiana (filmed at a former plantation). He’s very loyal to his aging heiress boss, Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver, ABDUCTION) – including having sex with her on demand – so he does as she says when she instructs him to take on her troubled grand-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell, BLACK ADAM) as an apprentice. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Devonte Hynes, Esai Morales, Jared Bankens, Joel Edgerton, Matt Mercurio, Paul Schrader, Quintessa Swindell, Sigourney Weaver
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Drama, Thriller | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, June 6th, 2023
INFLUENCER (2022) is an excellent horror/thriller that recently came to Shudder. A friend recommended it and I watched it blind, which was a good way to go. I’ll try to set the stage and then I’ll warn you when I’m going to get into specifics of the structure and plot that you might prefer to experience first hand.
It’s set in Thailand, but all the characters are westerners, most of them on vacation. The opening introduces us to Madison (Emily Tennant, SNIPER: ASSASSIN’S END), who narrates in the form of an Instagram video or social media post about her love of travel and adventure, of meeting new people and learning about new places. But we see she’s doing none of that – she’s almost entirely alone at a luxury resort, floating in the pool, getting a massage, lounging on scenic overlooks, occasionally smiling for selfies. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cassandra Naud, Emily Tennant, influencers, Kurtis David Harder, Paul Spurrier, Rory J. Saper, Sara Canning, Shudder, Tesh Guttikonda
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Thriller | 11 Comments »
Wednesday, May 31st, 2023
“We’re targeting today’s savvy media consumer who demands quality video entertainment regardless of where that entertainment experience takes place. By leveraging film and television franchises, which have already proven to be popular with specific targeted demographic groups, we’re able to both continually replenish our library while also maximizing revenues from our existing film and television programming!” —Jason Weiss, Vice President of MGM DTV division, 2007
Do you remember this – that they made a 25-years-later DTV sequel to WARGAMES? Please join me in wishing it the happiest of 15th anniversaries. As one of today’s savvy media consumers who demand quality video entertainment regardless of where that entertainment takes place (a.k.a. an aficionado of the DTV-sequel-nobody-asked-for format), I was always curious about it, but never bothered to find out what the deal was until now. It’s called WARGAMES: THE DEAD CODE, and it seems at first like it’s following the WILD THINGS model of DTV sequel: just do kind of a loose ripoff/update of the original plot with different characters. Will Farmer (Matt Lanter, the voice of Anakin Skywalker on Star Wars: The Clone Wars!) is a young computer genius who does some computing/hacking that brings him to the attention of an A.I. called R.I.P.L.E.Y. (voice of Claudia Black, PITCH BLACK), a project of the Department of Homeland Security or somebody.
Later it turns out to be kind of using the THE HIDDEN II method: bring in a character from the first one, recast. Part 1’s eccentric inventor Dr. Stephen Falken shows up to help (introducing himself as “a gentleman who almost started World War III”), but now he’s played by Gary Reineke (RITUALS, IRON EAGLE II) and no longer has an accent. Oh, his computer WOPR is also back. Still uses the same password, too. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Walsh, Colm Feore, DTV sequels, Gary Reineke, hackers, Matt Lanter, Nicolas Wright, Randall M. Badat, Rob Kerchner, Stuart Gillard
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 9 Comments »
Monday, May 22nd, 2023
HOLD THE DARK – not to be confused with Julie Taymor’s musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark – is a made-for-Netflix movie from 2018. I guess time flies, because I didn’t realize it had been that many years I’d been meaning to see it. It was on my list because it’s the fourth film from director Jeremy Saulnier (MURDER PARTY, BLUE RUIN, GREEN ROOM), and it’s written by Macon Blair, who appeared in all of those as an actor (and directed the upcoming remake of THE TOXIC AVENGER).
The best label I can come up with to describe this one is an Alaskan Gothic. It’s quiet and gloomy, with lots of snow, tiny fire-lit cabins, death and superstition. A movie that gives you the feeling of cold, wet socks inside your boots, and wearing a heavy winter coat indoors. It starts with a little boy playing outside in the small Alaskan village of Keelut, and a wolf approaches. And then the kid is gone – apparently not the first child to disappear around here. His mother Medora (Riley Keough, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD) sends a letter to a wolf expert named Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright, SHAFT) who once had to kill a wolf and wrote about it in a book she read. She wants him to kill this wolf before her husband Vernon (The Northman himself, Alexander Skarsgard) gets back from the war. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alaska, Alexander Skarsgard, James Badge Dale, Jeffrey Wright, Jeremy Saulnier, Julian Black Antelope, Macon Blair, Riley Keough, Tantoo Cardinal, William Giraldi
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Thriller | 15 Comments »
Wednesday, May 10th, 2023
The 2019 film THE INTRUDER – not to be confused with the 1989 horror movie I like called INTRUDER (let alone the 1914, 1933, 1939, 1944, 1953, 1956, 1962, 1975, 1986, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2016, 2017 or 2020 films called THE INTRUDER) is a pretty good example of the classic American tradition of the domestic stalker thriller, specifically the subset kicked off by OBSESSED in 2009, that pit an upper class African American couple against an enjoyably over-the-top white villain.
In this case the couple are Scott (Michael Ealy, MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA) and Annie (Meagan Good, HOUSE PARTY 4: DOWN TO THE LAST MINUTE) Howard, who after a big deal goes through decide it’s finally time to buy a house in Napa Valley like they’ve always talked about. The one they find is so old and fancy it has a name (Foxglove). They buy it from Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid, JAWS 3-D), who inherited and lived there his whole life and is very protective of it. In fact, it turns into kind of a CABLE GUY situation where he uncomfortably works his way into their life – they keep finding him, like, mowing their lawn and shit well after he was supposed to have moved to Florida. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Loughery, Dennis Quaid, Deon Taylor, Joseph Sikora, Meagan Good, Michael Ealy
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, March 29th, 2023
MUMMY DEAREST (Si yan zai) is from 1985, and it’s another one of the Ronny Yu movies that’s never been available in the U.S. I had initially skipped it while writing this series until I found an affordable English-subtitled VCD. The bad news is it’s not about a mummy, the good news is it’s pretty entertaining. It kind of takes the serious horror + broad comedy formula of THE TRAIL and THE OCCUPANT but switches out supernatural chills for a serial killer story, with a maniac similar to the one in THE SAVIOUR.
The killer is played by Alan Tam (ARMOUR OF GOD), which I think may have been a bit of stunt casting. Maybe I’m wrong, I can’t find out enough about his early filmography to be sure he’d never played a psycho before, but he had started as a Cantopop star, known for singing romantic ballads. There’s even a joke about it in the movie when another character uses the titles of Alan Tam songs to hit on his character’s mother. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Tam, Bennett Pang, Bill Tung, Chan Lap-Ban, Foo Want-Tat, Ronny Yu, Tai Bo, Tang Pik-Wan, Zero External Reviews on IMDb
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 20th, 2023
Ronny Yu is a director whose work I’ve enjoyed since the ‘90s, when I first saw his beautiful wuxia film THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR. Part of what’s interesting about him is that he was so adept at making those lush martial arts fantasies, but he was on a trajectory to come to Hollywood and make something quite different, including two of the more notable and unusual franchise horror films of the late ‘90s and early 2000s.
But he started out in another place entirely – making raw, low budget Hong Kong cop thrillers like his very-hard-to-find first two films, THE SERVANT (1979) and THE SAVIOUR (1980).
Yu was born in Hong Kong in 1950. He suffered from polio as a child, preventing the type of physical play most kids take for granted, and leading him to retreat into his imagination, especially by watching movies. “In the dark I could forget about my problems. I could forget that I couldn’t walk so good,” he later said. He attended a boys school in England, and in the ’70s he wanted to go to UCLA and study filmmaking. His dad wouldn’t pay for that, and told him that to really understand the United States he should live in the heartland. So – figuring commercials were similar to movies – Yu studied marketing and communication at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, the alma mater of Paul Newman and Richard Dean Anderson. Other filmmaker alumni include Joe Eszterhas and Betty Thomas.
Becoming a director was kind of an accident, and it came, strangely, from being friends with a cop. Philip Chan had been a police officer for around 15 years before working as a consultant (and ultimately co-writer) on JUMPING ASH (1976) gave him the bug to be a movie star. He got a few bit parts, but his dream was to be a leading man in a movie about his experiences as a Superintendent in the Anti-Triad Squad of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. No one was giving him that role, so he had to create it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alfred Cheung, Gigi Wong, Hong Kong New Wave, Ken Cheng, Kent Cheng, Pai Ying, Ronny Yu, Tien Feng, Zero External Reviews on IMDb
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime, Thriller | 14 Comments »
Thursday, March 2nd, 2023
It’s weird that there’s a studio action-thriller starring Jeff Bridges (THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT) and Tommy Lee Jones (ROLLING THUNDER) from the prime year of 1994, and I never bothered to see it before. I think I heard it was bad at the time, but when did that ever stop me? I think more recently I’ve seen people writing fondly about it, and I realized it was directed by Stephen Hopkins (following DANGEROUS GAME, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD, PREDATOR 2 and JUDGMENT NIGHT), so I got myself excited to see it.
I’m afraid the early rumors weren’t wrong, though – this is a laughable movie, and not entirely in the way that I enjoy. On the positive side, it will be fun to write about, and seeing this type of studio thriller craftsmanship did give me some of that particular warm nostalgia I was looking for. You know, you’ve got all this production value, on location shooting, glorious crane shots (cinematographer: Peter Levy, CUTTHROAT ISLAND, BROKEN ARROW, TORQUE), and composer Alan Silvestri (THE DELTA FORCE, PREDATOR, THE ABYSS) admirably does his thing without giving in to the temptation to just do a bunch of Celtic cliches. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Silvestri, bomb squad, Boston, Forest Whitaker, Jay Roach, Jeff Bridges, Joe Batteer, John Rice, Lloyd Bridges, Stephen Hopkins, Stephi Lineburg, Suzy Amis, Tommy Lee Jones
Posted in Reviews, Action, Thriller | 26 Comments »
