This is a spy mystery film with a fairly big dose of romance which feels like it would have been a lot less of a mystery if it had been told in chronological order.
Tag: Spy Thriller
Rubicon (2010)
This is an entertaining, refreshingly slowed paced spy mystery series that I guess just didn’t capture enough attention to get a second season.
Slow Horses (2022)
I’m always a little unsure of whether to review a series at the end of the first season if I know for sure there is more coming. But with shows where the second season hasn’t even premiered yet, I feel much more inclined if only because I’m not sure if I’ll get there. And given …
No Time to Die (2021, Cary Joji Fukunaga)
I don’t quite no what to do here because I must admit that I have only seen Skyfall and Spectre once each. And I have very little memory of either, except the vague impression that I didn’t like them, and that they were going the way Bond movies always go near the Bond’s run, getting …
The Courier (2020, Dominic Cooke)
This is a well-made spy thriller based on real events. It’s apparently a well-known story in the UK (where it was a TV miniseries back in the ’90s) but is not a story I was aware of. In North America, all we here about is the Kennedys and their decision making during the Cuban Missile …
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
If you thought the 2011 remake was deliberate well, this is a deliberate six episode miniseries adaptation of the John le Carre novel. It takes its time. And if that’s a problem for you, I highly recommend avoiding this version. But, if you are interested in TV adaptations of novels and you like slow-burning plots, …
The Secret Agent (1907) by Joseph Conrad
This is a rather remarkable book where Conrad manages to combine suspense with satire/social comment and some fairly modernist construction. SPOILERS so let me just say if you like Conrad read it.
Snowden (2016, Oliver Stone)
I’m not really sure why this movie exists, except that some people believe that people won’t watch documentaries, but will watch Hollywood films starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. If you’ve seen CitizenfourĀ – and you should see it – you don’t need to watch this.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018, Christopher McQuarie)
This is now the sixth Mission: Impossible film and the third in the 2010s reboot. Things are tired: there are too many damn characters and the plot echoes the plots of previous movies (i.e. some element in the US government doesn’t trust/disavows Hunt and the IMF, again). I’m bored and I’m not laughing as much …
The Coldest Game (2019, Lukasz Kosmicki)
This is a confused and tonally inconsistent cold war spy thriller – hence the name – which markedly improves in its final act but which is pretty damn messy before it gets there.
Sicario (2015, Denis Villeneuve)
This is an extraordinarily tense and well-directed thriller about the escalation and increased militarization of the Ward on Drugs. For the most part, I really, really liked Sicario, but I struggled with something and I’m not sure whether or not it could have ended better. SPOILERS
The Americans (2013)
The AmericansĀ is a show that I stuck with sometimes in spite of myself, a show that has a lot going for it but struggled at times with believability. I don’t think I quite liked it as much as most critics and fans, but I did end up finishing it, despite having the ending spoiled for …
The November Man (2014, Roger Donaldson)
This is an over-plotted spy thriller with a hell of lot that doesn’t ring true. (Yes, I recognize that it’s a spy thriller, but they don’t even try to make it realistic.) I spent most of the movie wondering why they couldn’t have just made a better movie. SPOILERS
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016, Edward Zwick)
After watching this sequel, I feel like I should go back and up my rating on the original because, for all its flaws – some seemingly inherent in the source material – the original movie was entertaining as these things go. This one is not. SPOILERS (for this film and the original)
Jason Bourne (2016, Paul Greengrass)
Why there’s another Bourne movie I don’t know. This one hits all the marks you’d expect: Bourne is mad at the CIA and is taking some kind of action, there’s someone on inside helping him out. (Actually 2 people, but whatever.) The cast is too good for the material, as is usual with these films, …
London Spy (2015)
The problem with the vast majority of conspiracy movies and TV shows is the reveal. It seems to be a pretty easy and common thing to create mystery, especially mystery involving secret plots. It’s another thing altogether, apparently, to create a satisfactory resolution to a mystery, especially a mystery where “the powers the be” are …
L’affaire Farewell (2009, Christian Carion)
This is an interesting attempt at making a “real” spy movie, one where the spies behave like real spies, without car chases, without shoot-outs, without super-intense interrogation scenes.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011, Tomas Alfredson)
For a while I have wanted to watch first the original version of this and then this remake. However, I lost my American netflix awhile ago and haven’t yet got it back. And I stupidly gave in and watched the remake first. I say ‘stupidly’ because this is an idiosyncratic thriller and I may have …
Zero Dark Thirty (2012, Kathryn Bigelow)
Much like Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, this is a film that, at least in part, seems to aim to tell the “human” story – or the “ground truth” – of a particular conflict the US is involved in. In this case though, it’s obviously something of a little more import.
Toronto International Film Festival 2012 Wrap Up
Here is my roundup for TIFF 2012. I managed to see 13 films this year, which is better than last year. Many of them managed to be documentaries, which Monique attributes to our constant attendance at the Bloor over the summer. (I guess, subconsciously, we have become documentary people.) I didn’t see a film that …