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: Thriller
Le Douxieme Souffle (1966, Jean-Pierre Melville)
This is a mostly excellent French crime film directed by one of the greats of the genre. I think it’s the story, more than the direction, that keeps the film from being among Melville’s absolute best.
Trapped (2015)
This is an unusual police procedural TV show, set in a small town in Iceland, and bearing lots of thematic similarities to Fortitude, a show which is more unique and original, if not superior. SPOILERS!
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.
The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival
This was my first time attending TIFF in person in 3 years. It was a little exhausting, given how far out of downtown we now live but, once I got the hang of it, I fell back into the rhythm of it and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It also helped that, after a few movies that …
Holy Spider (2022, Ali Abbasi)
For most of this film’s run-time, it’s a conventional, perhaps a little contrived, serial killer film, with a great opening sequence, that is otherwise mostly distinguished by the fact it is set in Mashad, Iran. And then it goes to a place that these films don’t. But that’s a spoiler so SPOILERS
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
A Simple Favor (2018, Paul Feig)
This is a noirish murdery mystery/thriller with a heavy dose of comedy that feels relatively unique for these types of films. I was mostly with it until the very end and I do wonder how much of the fault for the ridiculous climax is on the novel versus on the screenplay. SPOILERS
Parasite [Gisaengchung] (2019, Bong Joon Ho)
So obviously there was a lot of talk about this movie when it came out. But somehow – and I really don’t know how – I kind of missed much of it, at least when it comes to the plot. (That I forgot it all in the last 2 years.) I regard this as a …
Lords of the Deep (1989, Mary Ann Fisher)
One of the innumerable 1989 underwater science fiction horror/thriller/mystery films that just exploded, this is probably the worst (that I’ve seen).
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019, Vince Gilligan)
Two disclaimers: First, I watched the final season of Breaking Bad quite some time ago. Not the season it premiered but whenever it found its way to Netflix, so within a year or so of its premiere. Call it 2014 ish. It’s been a while. Second, I hated the ending of Breaking Bad. But my …
Saloum (2021, Jean Luc Herbulot)
My first Senegalese film (as far as I know), this is a tonally inconsistent horror movie which tries to trick you into thinking it’s something else more than once. It’s super stylized and some of my confusion with it likely stems from having never been to Africa and knowing literally nothing about this part of …
Huda’s Salon (2021, Hany Abu-Assad)
This is an excellent, taut thriller about blackmail and hard choices in Palestine. It is mostly extremely well done and really worth checking out both for how it works as a movie and for its message of how hard it is to be moral in a place where you feel like you have no allies. …
Woman in the Dunes [砂の女 or Suna no onna] (1964)
This is a really distinct and kind of crazy film that pairs a plot that could be in a horror film with a bit of a retelling of the story of Sisyphus. It is also, perhaps, the most incredible use of sand in a movie in film history. Very mild spoilers
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 Citizenfour – and you should see it – you don’t need to watch this.
Transsiberian (2008, Brad Anderson)
This film combines the train thriller with the “American tourists abroad” horror movie to create a reasonably effective thriller that, ahem, goes a little off the rails in the third act.
Classe tous risques (1960, Claude Sautet)
This is a fascinating French crime drama/thriller with a pretty unique plot and structure – I can’t really think of another film quite like it.
2020 Toronto International Film Festival
For what may be the third year in a row, I only saw 5 movies at TIFF. Every year I resolve to see more the next year but it never seems to happen. Now, this year is different, obviously. This year I watched TIFF films on my couch. And this year I only watched 5 …
Nuevo orden aka New Order (2020, Michel Franco)
This is a very promising film about class conflict in Mexico that gets really confused and, for me, goes off the rails to the point where I am kind of astounded it won a Grand Jury Prize at a film festival. SPOILERS later in the review.
Hell or High Water (2016, David Mackenzie)
This is a gorgeously shot modern western with an incredible sense of place, good performances and just enough social comment. It is an excellent film which I have one minor reservation about.
Escape Room (2017, Will Wernick)
This is a stupid horror movie that is reasonably enjoyable for most of its run but which is utterly ruined by the ridiculous characterizations and its nonsensical ending. SPOILERS! By the way, this is not to be confused with the 2019 Escape Room.
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.
1917 (2019, Sam Mendes)
This is an extremely well made film – a bit of a feat really – that uses a perhaps a too silly conceit to create a thriller cum war film that goes to pretty great lengths to remind us all of the horrors of World War I. (This is an under-filmed war compared to WWII.) …
I Still See You (2018, Scott Speer)
This is a PG-13 thriller with horror/science fiction elements which steals ideas from other movies and books, and which cannot even come up with its own vocabulary for its internal world. Had I been less tired when I watched it, I no doubt would have figured out who the main bad guy was immediately, simply …
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.
Incitement (2019, Yaron Zilberman)
This is a nearly flawless dramatization of the radicalization of the man who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. It is apparently the film time a film has been made about the assassination, likely because of how raw the wound still is 25 years later. But I would say that this is absolutely the film to …
Deepwater Horizon (2016, Peter Berg)
Peter Berg excels at a kind of hyper competence, where his films are technically extremely well made and impressive but which lack subtext or critical thinking. I often hate his films even though I have to grant that they always have exceptional production values. But this one is (a little) different. I think this is …
Mano de obra [aka Workforce] (2019, David Zonana)
This a very well-made, fascinating drama about manual labourers in Mexico City which threatens to become a thriller but consistently subverts your expectations and ends up having more in common with classical tragedy. It’s a debut, so I was very wary of choosing to see it, but this is a remarkably self-assured film. I strongly …
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