Tag: Thriller

  • Michael Clayton (2007)

    Critics swooned when Michael Clayton hit theaters in the fall of 2007, and rightly so. Here was the sort of legal thriller, went the conventional wisdom, that John Grisham movies always promise to be but rarely are: Smart, complex, suspenseful. The collective fawning was more than justified. Michael Clayton is just about pitch perfect, an…

  • Killer Joe (2011)

    Brutal, pulpy and lurid. That sums up the irresistible allure of Killer Joe – provided, that is, you find deep-fried perversity to be irresistible. The second collaboration between director William Friedkin and writer Tracy Letts (their first being 2006’s Bug) serves up trailer-trash noir as savage as it is savagely funny. You will be forgiven…

  • Rope (1948)

    Rope is intriguing, if not altogether successful. The picture marked a kind of paradox for Alfred Hitchcock, a master of cinematic storytelling who presented himself with a challenge that appeared almost antithetical to the possibilities of film. In adapting a 1929 play by Patrick Hamilton, the director wanted the story to be experienced in the same…

  • The Lookout (2007)

    In trying to recreate a sensibility from a bygone era, modern-day film noirs can seem as stiff and artificial as Botox treatment, but not The Lookout. Veteran screenwriter Scott Frank, making an impressive directorial debut here, adheres to the tenets of the genre without it feeling like a hermetically sealed tribute. The psychologically hobbled hero,…

  • 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…