This may be the funniest Hitchcock film I’ve seen yet? Not in the sense that I find Uncle Charlie funny—obviously he’s not a guy you’d want to mess with.
Tag: Thriller
I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (Blair, 2017)
I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore is as scrappy as they come, colouring within the lines of the comic thriller, while also gunning for something more intellectually engaging.
Good Time (Safdie & Safdie, 2017)
Good Time is gobsmackingly good. Thrillingly so. I’m in awe of what the Safdies achieve here, which is neo-noir (neon-noir?) and social realism mulched into a decayed panic attack.
Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich, 1955)
One thing’s for sure: I’ve never watched a noir quite like Kiss Me Deadly before. From the moment it begins, with Cloris Leachman breathlessly running on that deserted road, it never lets up on its relentless assault on our senses.
John Wick: Chapter 2 (Stahelski, 2017)
Am I no fun? Because I think John Wick: Chapter 2 is just okay. Not bad, not amazing, and certainly not as good as the first film.
Personal Shopper (Assayas, 2016)
Personal Shopper contains my favorite Kristen Stewart performance, and I would heartily argue it’s also her personal best.
Allied (Zemeckis, 2016)
To tell the truth, Allied would have been infinitely more interesting if the roles were reversed, and it was Cotillard who was investigating Pitt as the potential spy.
The Salesman (Farhadi, 2016)
Asghar Farhadi is a morality play machine. He cranks them out like no tomorrow, and every single time I can’t help but admire how grippingly he tells them. The Salesman is not his best work, no, but it’s still loaded with that neorealist world-building that I love him for.
Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich, 1964)
The film is the very essence of “hag horror”: we’ve got a mentally unstable protagonist (Davis) wasting away in a decaying Louisiana mansion, we’ve got dismemberment, we’ve got gaslighting, we’ve got sassy maids with suspicious minds.
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter is justly heralded for its craft, and I’ll join in the lament that Laughton never got the recognition he deserved for this.
The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1938)
The Lady Vanishes is not “lesser.” It’s about as good as anything I’ve seen from Hitch thus far (which is not a lot, admittedly, but I’m getting there).
The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer, 1962)
Saying that The Manchurian Candidate has renewed relevance is like the pot calling the kettle black.
Free Fire (Wheatley, 2016)
Ben Wheatley is—and always has been—an imperfect filmmaker. And I don’t think he gives a flying shit about it, to be honest. His filmography speaks for itself: frequently bold and daring confections that blow carefree raspberries to sparkly prestige pics and big-budgeted blockbusters.
Baby Driver (Wright, 2017)
Edgar Wright’s innate savviness is on full display here, especially during the first half: the diegetic sound squarely in Baby’s ears being grafted into the minutiae of the real world, the songs seamlessly orchestrating the sheer joie de vivre of adrenaline rushes and high octane pedal-to-the-metalling.
It Comes at Night (Shults, 2017)
Krisha was really great, so naturally I was excited to see what Trey Edward Shults would do as a follow-up. The ultra-personal, aggressively glum It Comes at Nightwas not quite what I was expecting.
The Lonely Film Critic 