Fallout brings little that is new to the Mission: Impossible franchise. It also brings everything that is new. It’s not a contradiction as you would assume. To the first point, it follows similar currents that the other films […]
Tag: Thriller
Upgrade (Whannell, 2018)
It’s not exactly sophisticated aesthetically or thematically, being another skeptical morality play on the dangers of biotechnological advancements that seek to erase our humanity, but Upgrade is quite a likable bit of pulp. There’s a Frankenstein quality […]
The Guilty (Möller, 2018)
Move over, Searching. Papa’s got a truly great single-locale thriller to cheer for this year. I approached it cautiously at first, since it’s set in a police dispatch centre, with a focus on only one officer (commandingly played […]
Searching (Chaganty, 2018)
Reader, when that Up-inspired prologue kicked into gear, with that inanely sentimental score blaring away as a mother was diagnosed with lymphoma and then swiftly killed off, I was tempted to switch this film off and […]
Cam (Goldhaber, 2018)
This film does a good job of fooling you into thinking you’ve pressed play on a low-rent affair, with sets that look like they were assembled on a tight budget, and a premise that feels […]
Nancy (Choe, 2018)
Christina Choe’s Nancy is surely one of the year’s most pleasant surprises. Its subject matter is familiar, dealing with a family who had lost their five-year old daughter to a kidnapper thirty years before, and a woman […]
Suspiria (Guadagnino, 2018)
A bit of a disclaimer: I am not an Argento purist, so a reimagining of Suspiria was never going to drive me up the wall. I’ve only seen the original once, and that was but a month […]
Nocturama (Bonello, 2016)
I could ding Nocturama for being on the nose in its second half, when it gathers its group of youthful terrorists within the confines of an expensive shopping mall and has them ogle over all the brand […]
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (Zahler, 2017)
Within the first ten minutes or so of Brawl in Cell Block 99, Bradley Thomas (Vince Vaughn) angrily dismantles his wife’s car after learning of her infidelity. Nearly two hours later, the guy drags a baddie […]
Super Dark Times (Phillips, 2017)
The opening of Super Dark Times is so rich in promise, with a bizarre setup that could either be literal or symbolic in nature. It’s never mentioned again, and it could very well be because it happens […]
Atomic Blonde (Leitch, 2017)
Um, so, I’m going to be one of the few people to admit that I enjoyed Atomic Blonde more than John Wick: Chapter 2… even though I’ll concede that the latter had a better plot (or, at the […]
All the Money in the World (Scott, 2017)
This is as competent as you’d want from a Ridley Scott picture. A very slick procedural and real-life thriller (with some fictionalized elements) that boasts a game ensemble and a compelling examination of capitalism’s dehumanizing […]
The Cloverfield Paradox (Onah, 2018)
I’m not averse to schlock if it’s entertaining. And there are definitely moments in The Cloverfield Paradox that are fun in a schlocky sense, like Chris O’Dowd’s arm being… ripped? sliced? bitten? from his body, and then […]
Roman J. Israel, Esq. (Gilroy, 2017)
I don’t really know if Roman J. Israel, Esq. can be summed up in a few sentences—and maybe that’s why it was largely tossed aside when it was released a few months ago. In lieu of tightly-woven […]
Don’t Breathe (Alvarez, 2016)
A most dangerous game of “blind man’s buff” plays out in Don’t Breathe, with a group of thieves trying to avoid the wrath of a blind army veteran after breaking into his home. It’s an interesting […]
The Lonely Film Critic 