Thriller

Donkey Punch

17 Jul 2008

THRILLER (18) 99min The first fruit of the UK Film Council’s collaboration with Shane Meadows’ regular producers Warp X, Donkey Punch is a misguided attempt by Brits to muscle in on the already hackneyed torture-porn genre. Tammi (Nichola Burley…

The Cellar Door

17 Jul 2008

THRILLER (18) 86min (Revolver DVD retail/rental) This is an interestingly shot, tense and to the point thriller, which belies its opening sequence in which a girl is sadistically tortured in the familiar tradition of Hostel or Saw to become a…

Thomas Hettche - What We Are Made Of

17 Jul 2008

CINEMATIC THRILLER (Picador) The blurb on the flyleaf of Thomas Hettche’s German Booker prize-shortlisted novel likens his page-turning thriller to the films of David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. Certainly, Hettche’s prose style is cinematic, not…

Mark Millar & JG Jones - Wanted

3 Jul 2008

THRILLER/SUPER VILLIAN (Top Cow/Titan) As yet another comics-based blockbuster hits the big screen, Titan brings us this timely repackaged re-release. Wanted was written by one of the comics world’s leading lights, Scotland’s own Mark Millar, a…

The Escapist - Brian Cox interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

As Brian Cox welcomes me into the interview room at London’s Gibson Guitar Studio, he points out a picture of Syd Barrett, ‘a son of Cambridge’, on the wall. It’s been just a few months since the Dundee-born actor was treading the boards on Broadway to…

Female Agents (Les Femmes Des Ombres)

19 Jun 2008

WAR/THRILLER (15) 116min Spring 1944, the lead up to the Normandy landings, and the technical planning and manufacture of a floating dock has been going on since January. When a British geologist ends up in a French hospital, the plan is thrown into…

The Escapist

19 Jun 2008

THRILLER (15) 101min The origins of this smart and tough British prison escape thriller lie in a short film, 2004’s Get The Picture, which writer-director Rupert Wyatt made with actor Brian Cox as a showcase for his evidently considerable talents. Cox…

Wanted

19 Jun 2008

THRILLER/ACTION (18) 111min Scottish comic book writer Mark Millar's ultra-violent graphic novel gets the Hollywood blockbuster treatment in this sfx-heavy actioner that benefits from the skewered perspective of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, who…

Gone Baby Gone

5 Jun 2008

THRILLER/DRAMA (15) 113min Ben Affleck’s long delayed (because of the Madeline McCann case) child abduction crime drama finally stumbles in to British cinemas. Based, like Clint Eastwood’s 2003 film Mystic River, on a novel by Irish Bostonian Dennis…

Will Lavender - Obedience

5 Jun 2008

MYSTERY THRILLER (Macmillan) Will Lavender’s debut is a taunting puzzle mystery which explores the dark side of academia. The strangely enigmatic Professor Williams of Winchester University sets his logic and reasoning class a challenge: an…

The Stranger

8 May 2008

THRILLER (PG) 95min (Eureka) Having failed to turn a profit on either Citizen Kane or its follow-up The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles directed this relatively conventional film noir for RKO in 1946. In the process, he proved to the studio that…

Death Story

8 May 2008

NEW WORK Oran Mor, Glasgow, until Sat 10 May The thriller format that we’ve come to associate with Alma Cullen’s film and television work in such programmes as A Touch of Frost and Inspector Morse is abandoned in her latest play for a more reflective…

The Air I Breathe

8 May 2008

THRILLER/ROMANCE (15) 95min Taking its cue from an old Chinese proverb that says life is composed of four emotions – happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love – this ensemble drama featuring an A-list cast and four intertwined plotlines is reminiscent of…

The Oxford Murders

24 Apr 2008

CRIME/THRILLER (15) 104min Having graduated from the kitsch sci-fi satire of Acción mutante and the heavy metal horror of The Day of the Beast to the Hitchcockian black comedies Common Wealth and Ferpect Crime, Bilbao-born filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia…

Brent Ghelfi - Volk’s Game

24 Apr 2008

CRIME THRILLER (Faber) This debut novel from former US Court of Appeals clerk Brent Ghelfi introduces us to Alexei Volkovoy. ‘Volk’ (‘wolf’), a one-time sniper for the Russian Army in Chechnya, is now an unscrupulous gangster commissioned to steal a…

The Nines

24 Apr 2008

PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER (15) 99mins (Optimum DVD retail/rental) For his varied pedigree alone, screenwriter John August’s debut feature is a worthy curiosity. Having written Doug Liman’s Go, both Charlie’s Angels instalments and three films by Tim…

The 39 Steps

10 Apr 2008

THRILLER/NEW PRINT (U) 85min Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1935 thriller finds its way back on to the big screen courtesy of a new digital cinema and 35mm print. Scottish author and unionist politician John Buchan’s novel has been filmed three times, but…

Street Kings

10 Apr 2008

THRILLER (15) 107min Writer-director David Ayer is no stranger to LA’s mean streets and actors often flourish in his company. Denzel Washington won an Oscar for Training Day, while Christian Bale (Harsh Times) and Kurt Russell (Dark Blue) ate up his…

Jane Doe

10 Apr 2008

ACTION/THRILLER (15) 90min (Metrodome DVD retail) Resuscitated almost-ran Teri Hatcher gets the gun and an action vehicle in this re-released 2001 TV movie. After the desperate housewife is fired from her job at Cy-Kor, a major arms dealer, her…

Awake

27 Mar 2008

THRILLER (15) 84min Written and directed by first-timer Joby Harold, Awake examines ‘anaesthetic awareness’, which unaccountably leaves patients fully conscious and physically paralysed during surgery. The grisly real-life phenomenon is explored…

Coup De Torchon

27 Mar 2008

THRILLER (15) 123min (Optimum DVD retail) Adapted from a Jim Thompson novel by Bertrand Tavernier, this loose adaptation shows local police officer Lucien Cordier (Philippe Noiret) in an African colony in 1938 inefficiently doing his job while being…

Funny Games US

27 Mar 2008

HORROR/THRILLER (18) 111min The conventional thinking about shot-for-shot remakes is why bother? We only need cast our minds back to the furore surrounding what many thought to be the sacrilegious and pointless remake of Psycho by Gus Van Sant.

The Serpent

27 Mar 2008

THRILLER (15) 117min (Metrodome DVD retail) Photographer Vincent’s (Yvan Attal) marriage is in its death throes; his wife wants to relocate with his two young children from France to Munich without him. In the midst of all this, a ghost from his…

Untraceable

28 Feb 2008

CRIME/THRILLER (18) 100min What new wine can be poured into the cracked old bottles of the serial killer movie? Although the sub-genre is less than 20 years old (kicking off with Silence of the Lambs and peaking with David Fincher’s Se7en), it has…

Rambo

14 Feb 2008

ACTION/THRILLER (18) 90min Last year Sylvester Stallone successfully revitalised the Rocky franchise with Rocky Balboa. After a number of dud sequels, Stallone breathed life back into the pugilist by revisiting him in his decrepitude to winning…

Black Water

14 Feb 2008

THRILLER/HORROR (15) 90min This low budget Australian creature feature is probably inspired by the true story of a saltwater crocodile attack in the Northern Territory. Written and directed by newcomers David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki, Black Water…

Defence of The Realm

14 Feb 2008

POLITICAL THRILLER (PG) 96min (Network DVD rental/retail) Not much has changed in the 24 years since this grim-faced, pessimistic and remorseless British thriller was released, save the end of the Cold War. In it, a reporter on a sleazy right wing…

Played

14 Feb 2008

GANGSTER/THRILLER (15) 84min (High Fliers DVD rental) We love, love, love filmmakers who sod the restrictions imposed by low budgets by using every opportunity they can lay their hands on, including mates’ mates who happen to be famous actors. That’s…

Waz

14 Feb 2008

THRILLER/HORROR (18) 104min Marketed as a member of the Se7en school of psychological thriller, the gory realities of WAZ’s serial killer chase premise put it closer to the iniquitous barbarism presented by James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s Saw…

The Lady Vanishes

(U) 95min

31 Jan 2008

Originally released in September 1938, a few days before Neville Chamberlain stepped off a plane at Heston airport waving the stationary which was to end his political career, Alfred Hitchcock’s splendidly entertaining pan-European railway caper looks…

I Know Who Killed Me - DVD review

Thrilller/horror

31 Jan 2008

Direct to DVD and topping this year’s Razzie’s with nine nominations, the latest Lindsay Lohan vehicle doesn’t have a great pedigree. While it’s far from a cinematic masterpiece it doesn’t quite deserve all the flack it’s been attracting. Lohan plays…

No Country For Old Men

17 Jan 2008

THRILLER (15) 122min After the public ambivalence and critical lambasting of their last two films – Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers – the Coen Brothers return to form with this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, which features many…

Chase A Crooked Shadow

4 Jan 2008

THRILLER (U) 84min (Optimum DVD retail) Directed by Michael Anderson, a man whose eclectic CV incorporates The Dam Busters and Logan’s Run, this low-key, high-concept thriller works through its original central premise with some solid character…

Fear Is The Key

4 Jan 2008

THRILLER 15 100min (Optimum DVD retail) A rarely-seen cult classic from 1972, this Alistair MacLean adaptation comes loaded with points of interest. Directed by Michael Tuchner (Villain, the big-screen version of The Likely Lads), soundtracked with…

Lust, Caution

4 Jan 2008

THRILLER/WAR/ROMANCE (18) 158min Just as he did with his Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee has plundered a novella to make his first film in Mandarin since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000. Eileen Chan’s largely autobiographical…

Breaking News - DVD review

(15) 90min

13 Dec 2007

Despite its rather extensive, one-note commentary on the media, this 2004 Hong Kong-set thriller from director Johnnie Fulltime Killer To doesn’t forget its main purpose – to thrill. When resourceful, ruthless heist planner Yuen (Richie Jen) and his…

Trent's Last Case - DVD review

(U) 90min

13 Dec 2007

Following the 1920 original and Howard Hawks’ 1929 remake, this third version of the archetypal English country house murder mystery, based on EC Bentley’s novel and made in 1952, is a workmanlike whodunnit directed by Irish journeyman Herbert Wilcox.

Youth Without Youth

(15) 124min

13 Dec 2007

Francis Ford Coppola was arguably the greatest of the New Hollywood directors, before losing his way in the 1990s with Jack and The Rainmaker. A decade on and Coppola has returned to the director’s chair with an experimental musing on what it means to…

You Kill Me

29 Nov 2007

COMEDY/THRILLER (15) 92min John The Last Seduction Dahl’s latest film is a work of modest ambition that manages to hit just the right notes. The gleefully morbid script, by screenwriting team Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (The Life and…

American Gangster

15 Nov 2007

Ridley Scott’s American Gangster opens with callous urban cruelty as a man is tied to a chair, doused with petrol and set on fire. But the reasons behind this violent act are less to do with anarchy than with good business, or at least that’s the lesson…

Sleuth

15 Nov 2007

Some typically terse Harold Pinter dialogue aside, Kenneth Branagh’s reworking of Anthony Shaffer’s theatrical two-hander is an annoyingly clueless affair. Having played opposite Laurence Olivier in the original, Michael Caine now switches to playing…

The Lookout

1 Nov 2007

THRILLER (15) 98min If life was a competition, then Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon Levitt) would be seeded one millionth. Nursing a serious head injury after causing a fatal car accident, the unfortunately named Pratt has both physical disability and…

Eastern Promises

18 Oct 2007

THRILLER/DRAMA (18) 100min Friedrich Nietzsche once asked ‘if evil men have no songs, how is it that the Russians have songs?’ A similar tone of revulsion and envy runs through Steven Dirty Pretty Things Knight’s script for David Cronenberg’s new…

Rendition

18 Oct 2007

THRILLER (15) 122min In a project which feels like it was hastily conceived at an Academy Awards afterparty, Oscar-winner Gavin Tsotsi Hood marshals a cast of worthy talent in the shape of Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Meryl Streep for an…

A Mighty Heart

20 Sep 2007

THRILLER/TRUE CRIME (15) 107min For a number of reasons, it’s difficult not to think of Henry Miller’s remark that ‘whatever there be of progress in life comes not from adaptation but through daring’ when watching Michael Winterbottom’s powerful…

The Brave One

20 Sep 2007

CRIME/THRILLER (18) 122min There is no actor working today who portrays motivational fear better than Jodie Foster. Her performances in The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs and to a lesser extent the more recent Panic Room and Flight Plan are…

War

20 Sep 2007

ACTION/THRILLER (18) 102min War, as Edwin Starr once noted, is good for absolutely nothing, particularly when it’s a non-event of a smack-down between cockney tough-guy Jason Statham and celebrated martial arts star Jet Li. Pop promo director Phillip…

Yella

20 Sep 2007

DRAMA/THRILLER (12A) 89min Nina Hoss won the best actress Silver Lion at the Berlin Film Festival for her turn as Yella. Uniting with director Christian Petzold for a third time (Wolfsburg and Something to Remind Me being their previous efforts…

Disturbia

6 Sep 2007

When Kale (Shia LaBeouf), a teenage rebel haunted by the memory of a traumatic car smash, punches out his Spanish teacher in class, he ends up electronically tagged and trapped in his suburban home. His activities are further curtailed by his concerned…

True North

6 Sep 2007

Without the knowledge of their skipper (Gary Lewis), Sean (Martin Compston) and sexed-up crewmember Riley (Peter Mullan) agree to solve their financial problems by illegally transporting a group of Chinese immigrants into the UK. As conditions worsen…

1408

(15) 105min

23 Aug 2007

Mikael 'Derailed Håfström'’s mild chiller is pretty much a one-man horror vehicle for John Cusack as Mike Enslin, a world-weary writer who makes his living from staying in supposedly haunted locations and describing his experiences. After a mysterious…

Bunny Lake is Missing

(12) 115min (DD Home Entertainment DVD retail)

9 Aug 2007

THRILLER Rejoice people rejoice! Otto Preminger’s long difficult to get hold of 1965 psychological thriller is finally seeing the light of day on a decent digitally remastered pressing. When single mother Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) moves to London…

Number One, Longing. Number Two, Regret

(15) 98min (Peccadillo Pictures DVD rental/retail)

9 Aug 2007

THRILLER Former computer man John Spears (Paul Conway) is arrested on suspicion of murdering a neighbour. Detective Kenosha (Jenny Agutter) becomes fascinated by the case and tries to work out whether or not he’s guilty. Debut filmmaker Neil…

Dead Man's Cards

1 Aug 2007

In modern day Liverpool, washed-up boxer Tom (co-writer James McMartin) accepts a job on the door of a low-rent Liverpool pub alongside the principled but violent Paul (Paul Barber aka Denzil from Only Fools and Horses’).

Perth

1 Aug 2007

The title isn’t where this Singapore film is set; it’s simply the city in Australia that our central character dreams of moving to, a place without the corruption and poverty of his immediate surroundings.

The Minus Man

DVD

16 Jul 2007

THRILLER THE MINUS MAN (15) 107min (Optimum DVD retail) Made way back in 1999 (but here receiving its UK debut on DVD), this overlooked American indie about a compassionate serial killer finds frat-pack comic actor Owen Wilson in an…

The Follower

2 Jul 2007

MYSTERY THRILLER A story about a stalker is hardly a novel idea, and Brooklyn-born and bred Jason Starr’s unimaginative treatment of the phenomenon brings absolutely nothing new to it. Set in a Manhattan populated with jocular and bimbotic college…

Captivity

19 Jun 2007

THRILLER Since she stopped watching the clock as Kim Bauer in 24, Elisha Cuthbert has been typecast on the silver screen as the archetypal damsel in distress. In Captivity she plays the kind of girl that, if she weren’t already famous, would be…

Cyprus

22 May 2007

Political thriller When Cyprus writer Peter Arnott’s taut, politically charged three-hander debuted at Mull Theatre in 2005, it was set on the day of the London bombings. ‘At the time, the bombings were the newest instalment of this continuing, sad…

Zodiac

7 May 2007

Se7en director David Fincher returns to the scene of the crime with another engrossing yarn about a serial killer. The film is based on Robert Graysmith’s books about the real life Zodiac, who terrorised San Francisco with a series of random murders in…

28 Weeks Later . . .

7 May 2007

As voracious as their flesh-eating antagonists, zombie movies can’t help coming back for more until a franchise has been picked clean. In order to maintain some semblance of fine dining from their 2003 sleeper hit 28 Days Later . . . director Danny…

Typhoon

(15) 105min

23 Apr 2007

THRILLER Prepare yourself for Typhoon, the biggest-budgeted smash hit South Korean movie ever made that was shot on location in Korea, Russia and Thailand. Overplaying the idea of a potentially volatile political standoff between North and South Korea…

Shooter

(15) 125min

11 Apr 2007

ACTION/THRILLER More adventures for Mark Wahlberg at the frontline of flawed American foreign policy. Here he swaps the Iraqi desert of Three Kings for the African coast. When a mission ends with the death of his best mate and spotter (the human…

Unknown

(15) 85min

11 Apr 2007

THRILLER Five guys (Barry Pepper, Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Joe Pantoliano and Jeremy Sisko) wake up in an abandoned warehouse. It’s obvious that some of them hate each other as one of them is handcuffed and another bound. Unfortunately they’re…

DVD - The Ultimate Film Noir Collection

The Ultimate Film Noir Collection

26 Mar 2007

THRILLER Although his fiction made a huge contribution to post-war American cinema via others’ screenplay adaptations, Raymond Chandler only wrote two films himself: The Blue Dahlia and (with Billy Wilder) Double Indemnity. Both feature in this…

Catch A Fire

(12A) 101min

13 Mar 2007

THRILLER/TRUE STORY Just a decade before South African State President FW de Klerk un-banned the ANC and other anti-apartheid organisations, and announced that Mandela would shortly be released from Victor Verster Prison in Paarl on 11 February 1990…

Outlaw

Outlaw

27 Feb 2007

THRILLER The appalling British writer/director Nick Love (The Football Factory, The Business) continues to commit the most heinous of crimes against the art of cinema with this vigilante thriller. Iraq war veteran Bryant (Sean Bean) finds himself the…

The Good German

(15) 105min

27 Feb 2007

MYSTERY/THRILLER Steven Soderbergh said he decided to direct this adaptation of Joseph Kanon’s murder mystery novel set in Berlin at the end of WWII because he wanted to make a movie in the classic film noir style. Soderbergh, who also produced…

The Illusionist

(PG) 110min

27 Feb 2007

MYSTERY/THRILLER The thing about the relationship between history and magic is that one man’s magic is another man’s engineering. This is the second film in as many months about the developments made in the dark arts of magic in Europe at the turn of…

Good Shepherd, The

The Good Shepherd

12 Feb 2007

HISTORY/THRILLER In 1977 a US Privacy Study Commission surmised that the real danger of the Central Intelligence Agency is ‘the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate…

The Number 23

12 Feb 2007

MYSTERY/THRILLER 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…

Black Book

(15) 145min

15 Jan 2007

WAR/THRILLER 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…

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

Smokin’ Aces

20 Dec 2006

GANGSTER THRILLER 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…

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…

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…

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

(15) 147min

7 Dec 2006

ADAPTATION/THRILLER 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.

Big Nothing

(15) 85min

27 Nov 2006

COMEDY/THRILLER 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…

London to Brighton

(18) 85min

27 Nov 2006

GANGSTER/THRILLER ‘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…

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…

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…

Asphalt Jungle, The

The Asphalt Jungle

13 Nov 2006

CLASSIC THRILLER 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…

Departed, The

The Departed

2 Oct 2006

THRILLER 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…

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…