This is a sort of one-last-job heist film that focuses almost as much on relationships as it does on the heists. Though I appreciate the (mostly successful) attempt to situate the film in a place that feels real, I also feel like the film is tugged in two different directions and that doesn’t completely work. …
Tag: Heist
Du Rififi Chez Le Hommes (1955, Jules Dassin)
This is a pretty classic French heist film with a pretty great set piece at the centre and more plot than you might expect.
Killer Fish [L’invasion des piranhas] (1979, Antonio Margheriti)
This is an extremely lame film that attempts to combine the heist film with horror, I think, but which fails to do either even moderately well. SPOILERS
Logan Lucky (2017, Steven Soderbergh)
This is a very enjoyable heist comedy full of quirky performances and fun cameos. It’s a pretty silly film – some have called it a “hill billy” or “red neck” Ocean’s Eleven and the film itself calls it “Ocean’s 7-11” – but it’s pretty funny and manages to also be enjoyable as a heist movie, …
The 2019 Toronto International Film Festival
Once again I only saw 5 movies this year. As with previous years, the reason for that will become apparent in a month or so. But, as usual, we managed to do a pretty good job picking movies and only saw movie I wouldn’t recommend seeing, which is a pretty good ratio.
Heroic Losers (2019, Sebastián Borensztein)
This is an enjoyable, albeit flawed, heist comedy about a group of townspeople whose dreams of resurrecting their town’s granary are devastated by the “Corralito”, a reaction to a run on the banks during the Argentine Great Depression. It’s hits the standard heist movie beats, but it is refreshing both because of how funny it …
Now You See Me (2013, Louis Leterrier)
Every so often you see a movie you’ve heard about a lot and it’s just entirely not what you would think. And it’s hard to know what to do with this schizophrenic, ADD film which doesn’t have a main character but has way too many characters, played by a ridiculous cast. SPOILERS
Le Cercle Rouge (1970, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Apparently when this film was first released in North America, 41 minutes were cut from it and it was kind of incomprehensible. Fortunately at some point the full version became available. Mild SPOILERS
Museo (2018, Alonso Ruizpalacios)
This is a super hyper stylized, completely fantastical depiction of what is apparently the most notorious “art” heist in Mexican history. The movie makes no bones about how inaccurate it is – stating multiple times that it is not the true story – so do not go into this movie expecting a docudrama.
TIFF 2017 Racer and the Jailbird (2017, Michaël R. Roskam)
This is an entertaining, albeit slight, amalgam of the bank heist genre with one of those romances where the two alpha leads, who do risky things in their professional lives, fall in love with each other, but which is pretty much entirely ruined by an absolutely bonkers left turn (well, a series of left turns) …
Triple 9 (2016, John Hillcoat)
I am always flabbergasted by movies with huge, all-star casts that somehow suck. I am particularly flabbergasted when it seems obvious to me that these actors could have easily figured out the movie was going to suck and so should never have signed up for them movie in the first place. Such a movie is …
Masterminds (2016, Jared Hess)
Masterminds is one of those films you marvel about how it got made. Despite the rather incredible comic cast, this is a film that feels like it was dumped on an unsuspecting public once the people making it realized how much of a disaster it nearly is. It is a film full of very funny …
Stolen (2012, Simon West)
This is a very stupid movie that tries to mash two genres together – the bank heist movie and the kidnapped child movie. The writer spent very little time worrying about whether or not the plot made much sense and the director doesn’t make the script any more convincing. (I would expect nothing less from …