It might be coincidental, but in the same week as the release of the Agatha Christie 4K box set of her classic 1970s murder-mystery movies, with massive stars as suspects, we get the third in Rian Johnson’s Christie-style thriller, which started with Knives Out back in 2019 and continued with Glass Onion in 2022. Wake…
Tag: thriller
One Battle After Another
Entering into Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, One Battle After Another, I didn’t know what to expect. The trailer appears somewhat disjointed, not only in tone but also in terms of plot and character development. Thankfully, this was one of those times when the trailer does the right amount to make an audience member intrigued, because…
The Long Walk
Stephen King seems to be the flavour of the month at the moment. With the excellent Life of Chuck recently released, a TV series based on the novel It, Welcome To Derry, coming soon, and a new version of The Running Man in November, King’s wealth of novels and short stories seems to be attracting…
The Thursday Murder Club
Richard Osman, TV presenter and producer, turned his hand to writing and achieved international success with his murder mystery, The Thursday Murder Club. Becoming a phenomenon, Steven Spielberg instantly bought the rights, brought on board Home Alone director Chris Columbus, and assembled a cast to die for, entering into a deal with Netflix to present…
28 Years Later
Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later was a ground-breaking post-apocalyptic horror that helped change the face of zombie movies. With its mind-boggling opening sequence (the deserted London) and creatures that seem to be world-class sprinters, this was one of the finest horrors of modern cinema. After the stand-alone sequel, Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland are back…
Echo Valley
Thrillers are often hard to handle, whether they are too contrived to be believable or too ridiculous to be plausible. Echo Valley, from the writer of the Kate Winslet drama Mare of Easttown and the director of Beast, starts off way too contrived, but thanks to a strong script, direction and a brilliant lead performance,…
Ballerina
The John Wick films have been a surprising success of the 21st century. Ultra-violent action movies that have improved with each episode, culminating in the fourth entry, which features a spectacular fight sequence in Montmartre, Paris, that has taken the action flick to a whole new level. It’s a world that could be expanded, and…
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
I wonder if Tom Cruise wakes up in the morning with a thought of doing something dangerous, then goes and tells his production team to put it in a movie, because, once again, the 8th and, possibly, final episode in the hugely successful Mission: Impossible series, The Final Reckoning, has the Cruise doing things that…
Final Destination: Bloodlines
The Final Destination franchise has been chilling audiences since its first film back in 2000, where the killer is Death, who doesn’t like being cheated when those who should have died, don’t. The last movie came out in 2011, and when it takes so long for another film to come out, it’s usually the kiss…
The Surfer
If you are going to make a movie that will appeal to the cult fans and is as mad as a box of frogs, then there is only one man you can turn to: Nicolas Cage. The Surfer falls into both those elements, a tale of the destruction of a man filmed in a way…
The Acountant 2
In 2016, a middle-tier action thriller called The Accountant hit the screen, about a man on the autistic spectrum who doubled as an accountant and a hired killer. It was hardly remarkable, and while it wasn’t a box office bomb, it didn’t ignite it either. It does seem strange, however, that it has been given…
The Amateur
If you were to describe a typical action hero from the movies, you’d probably say something like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis or a James Bond type. You might even say Jason Bourne, although that is not quite the norm Hollywood would produce. Now we have an action hero who doesn’t fit any previous categories…
