Movies in the Thriller genre (original) (raw)
When J.J. Abrams released Cloverfield in 2008, it arrived cloaked in secrecy. Now, some eight years later, the film’s so-called “blood relative” (Abrams’ term, not mine), comes with a similar marketing strategy. Going-in, viewers are unlikely...
12 Strong represents a recent war as depicted on screen in an old-fashioned way. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, war movies followed an established template that pitted the “good guys” (often Americans) against the “bad guys.” Such fi...
Danny Boyle doesn't believe in doing the same thing twice. After the rousing success of the romantic fantasy Slumdog Millionaire, he has switched not only gears but continents to tell the true story of Aron Ralston in 127 Hours, an "action film wit...
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
Benghazi. Few words have become more politicized in the last decade than this one, the Libyan city where, on September 11, 2012, two U.S. diplomatic compounds were sacked and four men (including Ambassador Chris Stevens) killed. It became a political...
When I think of director Richard Donner, my mind gravitates toward titles like Superman and Lethal Weapon - high points in the filmmaker's career. Recently, however, Donner's output has been less impressive, and includes the bloated excess of Assa...
If this is what it's really like to spend a couple days in the San Fernando Valley during the hottest time of the year, then, like W.C. Fields, I'd rather be in Philadelphia. Actually, for a movie that's so precise about time (one of the char...
Fast pacing and a high energy level can cover a lot of sins, and nowhere is that more evident that in 2 Guns. The storyline contains some ridiculous elements and the climax is more like a coalescence of chaos than a legitimate conclusion, but it so...
21 is a perfect example of how something that's "based" on a true story can nevertheless exist mainly in the realm of fiction. While it's true that the source material for the movie, Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House relates events that actuall...
211 (the name refers to the police code for a robbery) is a frustrating crime thriller that incorporates too many plot threads into the overall narrative at the expense of character identification, suspense, and emotional heft. Despite a high ...
Another week, another disappointing summer sequel. So it goes… In actuality, the screenplay for 28 Weeks Later isn't all that bad. Sure, it's repetitious and much of it has been regurgitated from 2003's 28 Days Later, but it contains some in...