Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category

Malignant Review

Posted: May 28, 2014 in Horror, Reviews, Thriller
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MALIGNANTEXCPOSTERRELFEATWhy, Brad Dourif, why? You are one of the most original, idiosyncratic, and talented character actors of the last 40 years. Your credits extend from the unforgettable portrayal of Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for which you received an Academy Award nomination to your Emmy nominated turn as Doc Cochran in Deadwood. You’re been the voice of pure evil for decades as the serial killer kid’s toy in the Chucky movies.

That’s a lot of good will to flush down the drain, but your latest movie is almost a big enough toilet to dispose of such a sterling reputation. Why would you do it? If it’s money, next time start a campaign on Hatchfund with a goal of raising enough to cover your bills until a decent role comes along. (more…)

The Sacrament Review

Posted: May 3, 2014 in Horror, Reviews, Thriller
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the-sacrament-joe-swanberg-in-un-immagine-dal-set-283325Ti West’s new work, The Sacrament, is a surprisingly good movie that uses the events of the infamous Jonestown Massacre of 1978 as the basis for a faux documentary that investigates a commune which the elderly, poor, and disadvantaged have established in the jungle of an unidentified country under the direction of a charismatic preacher they call Father. Generally, the material is not handled in an exploitative manner nor does the final result belong in any way to the horror genre, although the movie has been incorrectly characterized by some as such.

And for those reasons, the film is unlikely to attract the audience it deserves.

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Favor Review

Posted: May 1, 2014 in Reviews, Thriller
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favor_111The last twenty minutes of a thriller are like the last two minutes of an NBA game: no matter how good the action has been up until then, it all comes down to the closing moments. Paul Osborne, director and writer of the new feature film Favor, gets this. He nails the last twenty minutes of the movie with a couple of well-timed twists, which make up for a few shortcomings and elevate the effort into a solid little flick that is worth a watch.

The premise is simple and established immediately. The paths of two childhood friends have diverged. The successful one shows up at the house of the other in the middle of the night to ask a favor. His lead-in to the request: “You once said, ‘You can tell how good a friend is by whether or not they’ll help you move a dead body.”

Okay, guess what the favor is.

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13 Sins Review

Posted: April 22, 2014 in Reviews, Thriller
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1397895448_33There are two things working against 13 Sins, the new thriller in which a man becomes an unwitting contestant on a game show that compels him to engage in increasingly antisocial behavior. The first is the film’s own weaknesses, beginning with uneven performances, implausible assumptions, and threadbare plot points. The second disadvantage – and the one over which the filmmakers had no control – is the recent wide release of Cheap Thrills, a far superior entry in the “What would you be willing to do for a buck?” genre.

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Wu Ren Qu (No Man’s Land) Review

Posted: March 15, 2014 in 2014 Berlinale, Action, Foreign, Reviews, Thriller
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ImageWhen the lights went up after the premiere of Wu Ren Qu (No Man’s Land) at the 64th Berlinale Film Festival in February, the twists and shocks that came with the feature were not quite over. Director Ning Hao and three of the stars, Xu Zheng, Yu Nan und Huang Bo, took the stage to acknowledge the well deserved applause of an appreciative audience.

There they delivered the final surprise: Xu Zheng, who plays the bespectacled and shaggy-haired lawyer in the feature, had assumed the physical appearance of his adversary, Huang Bo, who portrays the film’s bald, stocky villain. Bo, meanwhile, now sported an almost Elvis-like pompadour. It was more than mere make-up, hairstyles, and costumes, the quartet explained. They looked different (the exception being Nan, familiar to Western audiences from her role as Maggie in The Expendables 2, who remains as lovely as ever) because of the amount of time that had passed since filming. The movie was completed four years earlier, but had been kept from release by Chinese censors who deemed it too nihilistic.

And the censors were half-right. Wu Ren Qu is nihilistic. But wonderfully so.

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Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice) Review

Posted: March 3, 2014 in 2014 Berlinale, Drama, Foreign, Reviews, Thriller
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ImageBlack Coal, Thin Ice (Bai Ri Yan Huo) winning the Golden Bear as Best Film at the 64th Berlinale Festival in February came as no surprise – not because the film merited the honor, but rather because Berlinale juries are notorious for their idiosyncratic and unpopular choices, and the film was not considered a candidate for the top prize leading into the award ceremony. Festival organizers should consider crowdsourcing the selection of the winner of the Competition category. The effectiveness of that approach is on display in the Panorama section of the Berlinale, where audiences picked The Act of Killing and The Broken Circle Breakdown as winners in 2013. Both films went on to earn Academy Award nominations.

It is doubtful that the future holds such promise for Black Coal, Thin Ice though one could argue that there is a crackerjack 90-minute noir locked inside the current 106-minute version.  (more…)

Kraftidioten (In Order of Disappearance) Review

Posted: March 2, 2014 in 2014 Berlinale, Action, Foreign, Reviews, Thriller
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ImageAt the beginning of Kraftidioten, Swedish transplant Nils operates the snow plow that keeps his adopted Norwegian town running through the other worldly winters. For this effort, he is being acknowledged as the Citizen of the Year and, as one of the good townsfolk tells him, a role model for the integration of immigrants in Norway. If and when Kraftidioten is remade as an American movie with Bruce Willis playing the Canadian-born plow driver now operating in upstate Minnesota, you can see that gag working every bit as well. Sly Scandanavian humor is on full display in this subversive and sublime revenge story featuring a stoic Stellan Skarsgård as Nils going full Death Wish on those responsible for the death of his son.

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