Thriller

The Number 23

12 Feb 2007

This conspiracy theory chiller, penned by first time British screenwriter Fernley Phillips, turns on the notion that the number 23 is a diabolic digit pairing that’s ubiquitous and exhibits a pernicious effect on the world (the DNA of a child is…

Black Book

(15) 145min

15 Jan 2007

With his creativity curtailed by Hollywood’s dream factory since 2000’s underwhelming Hollow Man, Paul Verhoeven has gone home to Holland, where he’s also made a return to form with this pacy, provocative wartime thriller. It’s a companion piece to his…

Southern Comfort - DVD

Southern Comfort

15 Jan 2007

THRILLER These days the great American filmmaker Walter Hill mostly concerns himself with exemplary television shows like Deadwood and the soon to be screened mini series Broken Trail. We should not forget, however, that this is the man who brought…

Smokin' Aces

20 Dec 2006

With Narc, director Joe Carnahan made a sterling contribution to the cop genre. Noteworthy for its grim bad cop/bad cop partnership the film was completely different to the usual dross. So it’s even more cringing that Smokin’ Aces is such a poor effort…

Deja Vu

(12A) 126min

11 Dec 2006

SCI FI/ADVENTURE/THRILLER A massive explosion, a slow-mo on our hero arriving on the scene of a terrorist attack, and within the first ten minutes it’s clear that we’ve entered the destructive cinematic world of Tony Scott. But, unlike with the…

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

7 Dec 2006

The most daunting task facing director Tom Twyker (Run, Lola, Run, Heaven) when adapting Patrick Suskind’s novel Perfume was how to stimulate the olfactory senses onscreen in the scintillating way the author managed on the page. Twyker attempts to give…

I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed

(15) 102min

7 Dec 2006

CRIME/THRILLER Ex-Cahiers du Cinema critic-turned-director Serge Le Péron revisits the intriguingly murky circumstances surrounding one of Gaullist France’s greatest political scandals. On 29 October 1965, an exiled Moroccan dissident Mehdi Ben Barka…

London to Brighton

27 Nov 2006

‘One year they wanted my ho to be a poster girl... for birth control.’ Jackson Brown, US comedian, pimp. It’s just after 3am in a rundown London toilet and seasoned prostitute Joanne (Georgia Groome) is trying to console a tearful young girl…

Big Nothing

(15) 85min

27 Nov 2006

Sometimes things just don’t work out. Particles and elements shift and design gets de-railroaded. That’s how you end up with a koala bear instead of a kangaroo or in this case a Big Nothing instead of Blood Simple or Fargo Big Nothing is a smalltown…

Kate Mosse

Labyrinth: Illustrated Edition (Orion)

21 Nov 2006

HISTORICAL THRILLER Just in case Kate Mosse’s phenomenally successful thriller, set in medieval and contemporary France, has passed you by, her helpful publishers have rushed out a hefty, hardback illustrated version to put a dent in your Christmas…

The Asphalt Jungle

13 Nov 2006

What can one say about John Huston’s marvellous 1950 film noir/heist classic that has not already been said? A very direct influence on much that was to follow it, most obviously Kubrick’s The Killing and Dassin’s Riffifi but also a vibrant model of…

Antibodies

(18) 122min

13 Nov 2006

THRILLER Devoutly religious family man and village policeman Michael Martens (Wotan Wilke Möhring) is having a bad year. A young girl, his son’s best friend, has been murdered on his patch, plus most of the village hates him because he insists that…

The Departed

2 Oct 2006

Ghosts are always a problem for Martin Scorsese. Each film he makes is inevitably compared to his own past masterpieces, so let’s start by saying that The Departed (those ghosts are even in the title now) is not as good as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or…

Medusa Touch, The

The Medusa Touch

2 Oct 2006

THRILLER This 1978 British-French made telekinesis chiller was released the same year as the Australian mind-over-matter thriller, Patrick and Brian De Palma’s psychic shocker The Fury. Jack Gold, who directed The Naked Civil Servant for television…

John Le Carré

The Mission Song (Hodder & Stoughton)

28 Sep 2006

POLITICAL THRILLER Twenty books into his celebrated career, you don’t pick up a John Le Carré novel without knowing what to expect. Doubtless boosted by the recent cinematic success of The Constant Gardener, his new one has it all: ruminations on the…

Right at Your Door

(15) 95min

1 Sep 2006

THRILLER This seems to be the year that Hollywood has decided it was safe to address 9/11, with both Paul Greengrass’ United 93 and Oliver Stone’s forthcoming World Trade Centre underlining the need of the American people to heed the NeoCon way. It…