Category: Thriller

  • Disturbia (2007)

    Disturbia isn’t a great thriller, or even a very memorable one, but this compact little flick delivers some thrills, injects humor and visual flair, and boasts an appealing performance from Shia LaBeouf. Such positives help compensate for what winds up a disappointing abundance of genre clichés.  LaBeouf is Kale Brecht, a smart and likeable 17-year-old going…

  • Frenzy (1972)

    After several disappointments in the 1960s, Frenzy marked a near-return to form for Alfred Hitchcock. It also marked a belated homecoming of sorts for the master of suspense, who returned to his native London for this 1972 thriller that echoed his past glories while simultaneously exploiting the decade’s’ new permissiveness. Jon Finch stars as Richard…

  • Mission: Impossible (1996)

    Loosely based on the espionage TV series of the late 1960s, Mission: Impossible finds Tom Cruise as secret agent Ethan Hunt, the point man for a team of IMF spies headed by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight reprising the only character originally from the TV show). Trouble ensues when Phelps’ team is assigned to keep a list of…

  • Ghost (1990)

    I wasn’t impressed when I first saw Ghost in the theater back in 1990. At the time, I was a twenty-something cinephile (or movie geek, to be blunt about it) fond of overusing terms like auteur and mise-en-scène, and so I turned my nose up and dismissed the box-office blockbuster as a sappy crowd-pleaser. Now much older and marginally wiser, I…

  • Serpico (1973)

    Serpico is gritty. It’s rough around the edges. It’s mired in an on-the-mean-streets-of-New York-in the-1970s vibe. In short, it’s a Sidney Lumet movie. Al Pacino delivers an indelible, iconic performances as Frank Serpico, the real-life undercover cop who blew the whistle on widespread New York City police corruption in the early ‘70s. The movie begins with…

  • Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

    Extolling the greatness of Bonnie and Clyde is a little like remarking on how wet rain is. Oceans of ink have been spilled on the significance of this masterpiece nominally about the real-life, Depression-era bank robbers, among the more recent treatises being Mark Harris‘ excellent Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of…

  • Don’t Worry Darling (2022)

    After all the offscreen drama that surrounded the Venice Film Festival premiere of Don’t Worry Darling, you would have expected a dumpster fire of a movie. But it isn’t that. While Olivia Wilde’s sophomore directorial outing (after 2019’s Booksmart) isn’t an entirely satisfying thriller, it’s also not exactly a dud. Think of it as a…

  • Coraline (2009)

    Picasso mused that every child is born an artist, but that the hard part is how to remain one after they grow up. Nothing is more surreal or vivid than the imagination of a child, where even the most seemingly mundane experience can evoke stark fear or unbridled joy. It’s a frontier ripe for storytellers,…