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Showing posts with the label thriller

WHAT LIES BENEATH - VLOG REVIEW

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I review Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath .

GLASS - REVIEW

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Review available on the new website .

NETFLIX CATCH-UP VLOG - THE BLACKLIST, THE GOOD PLACE

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My thoughts on shows The Blacklist and The Good Place .

GONE BABY GONE - REVIEW

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Directed by Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone was a 2007 neo-noir mystery starring Casey Affleck as a private investigator hired to solve a missing person case along with his girlfriend, played by Michelle Monaghan. This Boston-set drama follows street-smart P.I. Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) as he conducts his own investigation, occasionally sharing his information with the police. He gets closer and closer to the truth about the missing little girl's whereabouts through his, often dodgy, contacts. His ability to talk to people on their level, without sounding condescending or too much like a cop, means he manages to get a lot more information from locals, criminals and other suspects. The plot is set into motion when the missing girl's mother makes an emotional plea for someone to find her daughter on television and the child's aunt soon hires Patrick, despite his initial reluctance to take on the case. The deeper he gets into this story, the more secrets he discovers le

MUTE - REVIEW

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Directed by Duncan Jones, Mute is a science-fiction thriller about a mute bartender who investigates the disappearance of the woman he loves armed with only a notepad and the occasional wooden bat. The film has received mixed reviews since its Netflix release. Having the film come out so soon after a full season of Altered Carbon might have been a bit of a mistake as comparisons between both would no doubt arise, seeing as the film and the show owe a lot to Blade Runner  in terms of tone and visuals. The relatively recent release of Blade Runner 2049 did not help either since, by this point, this vision of the future might not feel quite as unique as it once did. All this coupled with Warcraft 's poor critical reception, the usual straight-to-Netflix stigma and the fact that Mute isn't really what you'd expect, probably means that Duncan Jones' film is destined for cult adoration and mainstream disinterest. While, in a way, this is your typical sci-fi film noir

MUTE - VLOG REVIEW

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My thoughts on Duncan Jones' latest: Mute .

THE WALKING DEAD DISCUSSION - PODCAST

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We talk briefly about the first few seasons of The Walking Dead on The Big Rewind .

BATMAN: GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT - REVIEW

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It's not exactly breaking news that fans were generally disappointed with DC's animated film adaptation of The Killing Joke  so this new attempt at taking on one of the most popular Batman graphic novels seemed like a perfect opportunity to get something right. Batman takes on Jack The Ripper himself in this steampunk story loosely based on Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola's one-shot  Gotham By Gaslight set in the late 1800's. When an exotic dancer (Poison Ivy) is brutally killed by The Ripper and the latter's victims keep piling up, the people of Gotham City start to suspect Batman. With the help of James Gordon and the police, Batman (voiced by Bruce Greenwood) attempts to stop further killings but Bruce Wayne is eventually jailed on suspicion of being The Ripper, which delays the Dark Knight's investigation somewhat. The film makes decent enough use of the familiar characters it does have including a trio of Robins as orphans, Hugo Strange, Selina Kyle (w

GET OUT - REVIEW

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Few films from 2017 made quite as much noise as Get Out in terms of starting a conversation about social issues. Directed by Jordan Peele, this was a horror film satirising more subtle forms of racism through a full-on psychological thriller with gory elements and a twisted sense of humour. Get Out sees Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) drive to the latter's parents' house so Chris can meet her family for the first time. Chris is somewhat reluctant at first because the parents haven't been informed that he his an African-American but he goes along with it eventually. This leads to thoroughly awkward encounters with Rose's parents and other family and friends who seem friendly enough at first but are also kind of creepy. When Rose's mother Missy (Catherine Keener) hypnotises Chris and, later, a guest loses it, warning Chris to "get out", the film descends into madness and this family turns out to not be at all what they

THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX - REVIEW

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After hinting for months about what the next Cloverfield film would be and when it would be released, The Cloverfield Paradox finally got a surprise release last night exclusively on Netflix right after the Super Bowl. This straight-to-Netflix approach to the film's release has prompted quite a bit of discussion in terms of whether the movie was just not good enough to get into theatres or whether this is something we're likely to see happen with more and more blockbusters, good or bad, in the future. Frankly, those statements are probably both true. With the success of Bright and others, we're definitely going to be seeing bigger movies released directly to Netflix, that's obvious. And yet, while the surprisingly good 10 Cloverfield Lane re-ignited interest in the Cloverfield franchise, the reality is that The Cloverfield Paradox would have probably bombed at the box-office. The great thing about this particular series of films, apart from its usually clever m

VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY - REVIEW

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Another year, another Nicolas Cage film that passed by almost unnoticed. Recently released on Netflix, Vengeance: A Love Story is a thriller about a woman who is abused by a group of men one night in front of her daughter and the aftermath of that traumatic event. On paper, this sounds like your typical revenge plot where someone is taken or raped or killed and a good cop takes the law into his own hands once all else fails. The film, perhaps aware of how overplayed that subgenre has become, makes a genuine attempt to keep that aspect of the film in the background and focus on everything else. While this was a wise decision as it allows us to spend more time with and feel for Teena (Anna Hutchison), the victim, and her daughter Bethie (excellent newcomer Talitha Bateman), the film is unfortunately not clever enough to really explore the impact of rape on someone or the justice system's failings on the matter in a way that rings true. Vengeance is like a poorly written essay:

WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY - REVIEW

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Released on Netflix in 2017, What Happened To Monday is a science fiction thriller starring Noomi Rapace as seven sisters named after each day of the week who try to survive in a dystopian one-child-only society. In order to tackle an overpopulation problem and attempt to fix the environment, the Child Allocation Bureau, run by Glenn Close's intimidating politician, enforces this one-child policy which takes the oldest siblings, if there are any, and cryogenically freezes them until society can accommodate them. When a woman dies while giving birth to identical septuplets, her father (played by Willem Dafoe) decides to raise the kids in a way that allows all of them to live their lives. Each of them is allowed to leave the house on a specific day of the week, hence their names, if they pretend to all be the same individual. At home, they can look and act like who they are but outside, they become the same person. Of course, when one of them doesn't come home as planned, t

MOTHER! - REVIEW

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Directed by Darren Aronofsky, mother! is a psychological thriller from 2017 about a couple living in the countryside who get a strange visit from another couple before things get truly out of hand, to say the least. Jennifer Lawrence is the titular mother who lives in an unfinished house with her rather intense husband, a writer (played by the ever-intimidating Javier Bardem) suffering from writer's block until he is visited by a fan and his wife. The latter couple, played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, show up randomly one day as Lawrence's character becomes increasingly suspicious of their bizarre behaviour and nervous about their influence on her husband. "mother" isn't all that normal herself as she appears to be obsessed with fixing her house and spends pretty much all her time walking around looking confused by everything. You're never quite sure what this awkward dynamic between her and her much older husband is all about since they're r

THE BYE BYE MAN - REVIEW

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One horror movie that stood out in 2017, mostly thanks to its silly title, is The Bye Bye Man . Based on a chapter from Robert Damon Schneck's book "The President's Vampire", the film received negative reviews despite its relative box-office success. The Bye Bye Man follows Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas) and best friend John (Lucien Laviscount) as they move into a house near their college. Soon enough, a lot of strange things start happening with Elliot having hallucinations and all three of them becoming increasingly paranoid of each other. The opening sequence, in which a man snaps and starts killing friends and family in an American suburb in the 60's, is genuinely chilling but, sadly, it doesn't set the tone for the rest of the film. The build-up to the titular monster is slow but rather effective as every creak inside the house and something as trivial as a coat hanging on the wall appears spooky. Then Elliot starts to

MY TOP 10 BEST FILMS OF 2017

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I finally pick my 10 favourite films from last year!

THE PUNISHER - VLOG REVIEW

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I talk about Season 1 of Netflix's The Punisher .

OZARK: SEASON 1 - VLOG REVIEW

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I talk a bit about Netflix's new show Ozark .

FARGO: SEASON 3 - VLOG REVIEW

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I talk about Season 3 of Fargo .

DESIGNATED SURVIVOR - VLOG REVIEW

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I talk about Kiefer Sutherland's latest show Designated Survivor .

ALIEN: COVENANT - VLOG 01/06/17

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I talk a bit about Alien: Covenant .