Thriller
Cape Fear
If there’s one thing that will always be scary, it’s people. Old monster movies might lose their impact over the years as their special effects begin to age, and non-believers will never find much fear in the paranormal. But pe...
Victoria
Victoria takes the concept of cinema verite to all new levels. Because while many films aim for a documentary style Victoria is a two plus hour film that was accomplished in one single take. Search as you may there are very few...
Frankenstein
No stranger to the chilling side of the cinematic world, Candyman director Rose takes an old story and pokes at it from different angles giving the famed monster an infantile nature. Abandoned by his creators at the ‘toddler’ s...
Dark Places
Based on the book by Gone Girl’s Gillian Flynn you could be forgiven for approaching Dark Places with a sense of hope. It is, after all, a film that promises much: an unsolved murder mystery, a woman on the edge of society, a g...
Sicario
The war on drugs has long been a favourite of film. But if Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic illustrated it with a tapestry of characters and story Sicario gets into the nitty gritty. Because in the world of Sicario the emphasis is o...
The Gift
The Gift director, writer and star Joel Edgerton is one of those actors who is endlessly dependable in every film he’s appeared in. He’s rarely the headline name, arguably not a fully-fledged “star” in the sense many of the act...
Knock Knock
Coming from the mind of Hostel director Eli Roth you would be forgiven for assuming that Knock Knock would be a home invasion movie with plenty of gore. In some ways that might make for a more interesting experience because Kno...
The Connection
Back in the 1930s, the busy French port of Marseilles was home to a small drug-trafficking ring operated by a Corsican gang. The gang would buy surplus opium poppies from licensed farmers and export the product to America in th...
Fast & Furious 7
Fast & Furious 7 is the fifth highest grossing movie of all time. Yes, you read that right, not the fifth highest grossing Fast & Furious movie but the fifth highest grossing movie ever. How did we get here? To the poin...
The Town that Dreaded Sundown
In 1946 around Texarkana, a town on the border of Texas and Arkansas, a crime wave occurred, killings committed by an unknown figure simply referred to as the Phantom Killer. The case was never officially solved, and has led to...
Good Kill
Given the controversy and endless news coverage dedicated to drones it was only a matter of time before a film came along to address the point-click-and-kill form of modern warfare. For much of director Andrew Niccol’s career h...
Into The Grizzly Maze
As B-Movie titles go Into The Grizzly Maze is up there with an attempt at originality. The concept is pure B-movie brilliance though; deep in the Alaskan wilds a rogue bear is chomping on poachers, lumberjacks and pretty much a...
Stalag 17
Back in 1995, the British filmmaker Adam Curtis produced a documentary series about politics, memory and the construction of normality. The first episode of The Living Dead deals with the Second World War and how the harsh trut...
Trash
It would be churlish indeed to denigrate Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry and Notting Hill screenwriter Richard Curtis for turning in such a family-friendly and pat-happy movie as Trash – especially in these troubled ...
Can’t Come Out To Play
Released under the title The Harvest in cinemas it’s perhaps easy to see why director John McNaughton’s thriller was re-titled to Can’t Come Out To Play for its DVD release. Never quite lifting itself from its TV movie/Ch...
Blackhat
Blackhat ends a six-year absence from cinema for director Michael Mann. Throughout his career Mann has been a director of visual prowess. Even his more experimental dalliances with early digital technology, like the miss-judged...
The Loft
Remaking a foreign film can always be a tricky path to tread but when, as is the case with The Loft, you maintain the same director of the original there is always a chance. Taking the same premise from his 2008 film director E...
Stretch
Stretch director Joe Carnahan is a difficult filmmaker to pin down. One minute he can be offering musings on life and death while facing down man-eating wolves in The Grey, the next he can be delivering cartoonish violence in t...
Lost River
Lost River is the debut feature film of Ryan Gosling. Yes, that Ryan Gosling, the same Ryan Gosling who starred in Drive, Crazy Stupid Love and of course The Notebook. The same Ryan Gosling who oozes that effortless Steve McQue...
Automata
Robots and A.I.s have recently been the subject for quite a few movies, particularly in relationship to the concept of the Singularity, the idea that technology will become self-evolving. The Machine, Ex Machina, Her, Transcend...
