thrillers
Veronica Lee
Death on the Nile, Kenneth Branagh's second visit to Agatha Christie's oeuvre, was supposed to be released in November 2020 but Covid, a studio sale and some embarrassing revelations about one of its cast members put paid to that. Was it worth the wait? Not really.Oh, it's as sumptuous as Branagh's first Christie adaptation, Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and boasts more gorgeous scenery, but it's noticeably less star-packed. If the cast of the train whodunit were all comfortably seated in Hollywood's first-class carriage, most of the Nile riverboat passengers are, with no disrespect Read more ...
David Nice
They’re back, the Lord and Lady Macbeth of the Ozark District, otherwise sleek-seeming middle class Chicagoans Marty and Wendy Byrde. And thanks to the super-subtle performances of Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, we hate them more than ever – except when they’re up against worse.It's clear where our sympathies should really lie, however complicated: with the young people caught up in the network of money-laundering, murder and general amorality. Ozark shares the concerns of Dickens over betrayed and abused children and adolescents. The Byrdes believe in family values, but are fucking up their Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The name of Neville Chamberlain and the term “appeasement” have become indelibly linked, thanks to his efforts to accommodate Adolf Hitler’s bellicose ambitions in the run-up to what became World War Two.This film version of Robert Harris’s novel Munich seeks to draw a more nuanced portrait of the British Prime Minister, putting the case that the agreement Chamberlain signed with Hitler in Munich in September 1938 delayed the outbreak of war long enough to allow Britain and her allies to prepare themselves for hostilities and eventually defeat Germany.It’s a thesis which might be deemed to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Based fairly closely on Sally Wainwright’s 2009 ITV series Unforgiven, The Unforgivable replaces the former’s star Suranne Jones with Sandra Bullock and has airlifted the action from Yorkshire to Seattle. A beefy supporting cast including Jon Bernthal, Vincent D’Onofrio and Viola Davis sprinkles on a modicum of box office glitter, while director Nora Fingscheidt has successfully evoked a menacing atmosphere of star-crossed characters battling a malignant fate.Despite all this, it can’t quite live up to its potential. The problem is Bullock, stoically persevering with the character of Ruth Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Is it a thriller? Is it a character study? Leopards, Alys Metcalf’s two-hander about a middle-aged white charity executive – male – and a young job applicant of mixed race – female – goes under the colours of both, but falls short of either genre.A windy retread of a thesis with which few could safely disagree nowadays (let’s say – leopards don’t change their spots, especially male white salaried ones), it makes an underwhelming opener for Christopher Haydon’s tenure of the Rose Theatre, Kingston.Requested by the publicity team not to reveal the final twist of the 90-minute drama, I can Read more ...
graham.rickson
One of several 1960s Czech films which explicitly addresses the Holocaust, Zbyněk Brynych’s 1964 thriller The Fifth Horseman is Fear ( …a pátý jezdec je starch) wrong-foots us from the first frame. There’s Jiří Sternwald’s jagged, brittle score, and the glimpses of contemporary Prague. The lack of explicit period detail is deliberate, Brynych admitting that “our story begins in 1941, but it could have occurred at another time.” The parallels between the Nazi occupation and Czechoslovakia’s post-war plight would have been as clear then as they are now.Adapted from a novel by Hana Bělohradská, Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
The Nest is a peculiar animal, hard to nail down, parts family drama and social satire, but with a creepy sense of suspense rippling under the surface that threatens to bust the plot wide open. The fact that it’s written and directed by Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Southcliffe) makes sense of the unease. But at the film's heart is an old-fashioned marital tussle, between an independent, no-nonsense American woman and her posturing, bullshitting, over-striving English husband, each performed with nuance and gusto by Carrie Coon and Jude Law. You could cut the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Written and directed by Lisa Joy, who masterminded HBO’s Westworld TV series, Reminiscence is a grandiose sci-fi blockbuster that looks great, sounds deafening, but ultimately disappoints because it’s a genre-sampler that can’t find a distinctive voice of its own. A powerful cast, notably the trio of Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson and Thandiwe (formerly Thandie) Newton, do their best, but their hands have been tied by echoes of Casablanca, Waterworld, The Big Sleep, Chinatown and probably many more.Joy is emphatically in the Nolan camp (she’s married to Jonathan, co-creator of Westworld and Read more ...
David Kettle
Fear of Roses Assembly Roxy ★★★One of the more disconcerting aspects to this year’s Fringe is different venues’ contrasting reactions to the easing of Covid restrictions. Some – like Army @ The Fringe and the Traverse Theatre – maintain limited audience numbers and careful distancing, as well as insisting on mask wearing. The Stand at the Corn Exchange even requires a negative lateral flow test for entry. Others, like Assembly, have performing spaces packed with audience members sitting shoulder to shoulder, and mask wearing apparently voluntary (though there are bars within the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Fans of Bob Odenkirk’s work in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul will be delighted to see him taking centre stage in Ilya Naishuller’s thriller, but perhaps bamboozled at the spectacle of Odenkirk taking the plunge into the blood-splattered territory previously the preserve of John Wick and Liam Neeson’s Bryan Taken Mills. Indeed, screenwriter Derek Kolstad created the Wick franchise. Nobody is a crisp 90 minutes of nearly-nonstop mayhem, with no time for the devious plotting or subtle character traits familiar from Odenkirk’s work as Saul Goodman.He plays Hutch Mansell, a suburban family man Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Perhaps inspired by its ever-intriguing Walter Presents strand, Channel 4’s new thriller Before We Die is based on a Swedish original called Innan vi dör (“before we die” in Swedish). The action has been transplanted to Bristol, whose buildings, bridges and narrow streets have been rendered atmospheric with rich colour textures and stylish visual compositions. The opening credits, with ominously pulsating music and dramatic monochrome portraits of the cast-members, also suggests we’ve stepped away a little from the Brit-TV norm.Lesley Sharp stars as DI Hannah Laing, who’s reaching a stage in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Darkest Hour may have been director Joe Wright’s finest hour, but we can say for certain that, despite its impressive cast, The Woman in the Window isn’t. Concocted from A J Finn’s titular novel with a screenplay by Tracy Letts, it’s a perplexingly derivative thriller which gives leading lady Amy Adams precious little on which to unleash her considerable talents. Predicting the outcome is merely a matter of totting up which scenario scores highest on the PlayItAgainSam-ometer.Adams plays child psychologist Dr Anna Fox, who’s separated from her husband and child and lives in a cavernous Read more ...