Downsizing the house to a 4-bedroom occupied by women on different points of the “psychotic” spectrum. Continue reading
Tagged with thrillers …
“WWII Thriller Hauls Hitler’s Corpse to a Dangerous ‘Burial'”
What’s buried should stay buried, or in the case of a certain Nazi bastard, torched to a crisp outside his bunker. Ah, well. Continue reading
“Overstuffed Adaptation ‘Attack on Finland’ Feels a Little Too Real”
An attack on one is an attack on all, at least in my neighborhood of our collective consciousness. Continue reading
“50 Years Later, ‘Klute’ Still Has Volumes to Say on Sex and Being Seen”
You haven’t seen this movie already?! Man, you really need to get a Klute. Continue reading
“‘Rebecca’ Quickly Subsides into the Dullest Parts of Its Source Material”
You come for the king, you best not make a half-assed Netflix movie. Continue reading
“‘She Dies Tomorrow’ and Maybe We Will Too”
Look, don’t get all mad at me, it’s literally true. Continue reading
“Hidden Gems: ‘Eyes Of Laura Mars’ Is A Stylish Thriller With Renewed Resonance”
We’re trying something new at The Playlist by writing about things that are old! (And also sort of kinky.) Continue reading
Review: Arizona, 2018, dir. Jonathan Watson
I run hot and cold on Danny McBride, in the sense that I run hot and cold on Danny McBride projects. If you wish to contain his brand of gregarious psychopathy, you have to build the right kind of cage for him, otherwise you end up with a Danny McBride performance without a structure to … Continue reading
Review: What Keeps You Alive, 2018, dir. Colin Minihan
My rating system has needed work for a good long while; too often I feel like I’m giving films too high a score, and thus giving them a pass on their flaws, when I’m much more mixed on them than the numbers imply. So basically, take my low-ish score on What Keeps You Alive with … Continue reading
Review: The Strange Ones, 2018, dir. Christopher Radcliff & Lauren Wolkstein
Here: Have some context. I saw The Strange Ones back in the summer of ’17 when a team of publicists were nice enough to send me a screener for the purposes of adding to my #52FilmsByWomen list. I waited for the film to become commercially available, and I waited some more, and then I stopped waiting … Continue reading
Review: Killing Ground, 2017, dir. Damien Power
In stark contrast to Kuso, that really gross movie I reviewed the other day, here’s my review of Damien Power’s Killing Ground over at Paste Magazine, which is arguably harsher while being much less offensive to watch. This is something I struggle with frequently as a critic and as an all-around cinephile: What is, and isn’t, offensive, and … Continue reading
Review: The Drowning, 2017, dir. Bette Gordon
Guys! I’m back! I made it home! I survived vacation! (TL;DR version of my vacation: We went to Vienna, Prague, Aberystwyth, and London, and now we’re all horribly jet lagged.) That means I have a whole lot of stuff to plop in your laps for your reading pleasure, and of course it would be pleasurable, wouldn’t it? We’ll … Continue reading
Review: Private Property, 1960, dir. Leslie Stevens
To know the work of Warren Oates is to love Warren Oates. Odds are you probably do know Oates’ work, too, even if you don’t realize it. Oates nailed down roughly 50 roles over the course of his too-short career, which spanned from 1959 to 1982; he kept busy, putting a particular emphasis on Westerns … Continue reading
Review: Side Effects, 2013, dir. Steven Soderbergh
Is this it? Is this the final theatrical release for filmmaking maverick Steven Soderbergh? The man has been threatening to retire for the last couple of years, so at this point any such claims feel akin to crying wolf, but were he to fully cease making movies tomorrow, Side Effects is a reasonable enough film to end … Continue reading
Review: Contagion, 2011, dir. Steven Soderbergh
I’ve said before that Steven Soderbergh is a genre chameleon; if this year’s Haywire doesn’t unequivocally prove that, then last year’s Contagion should, and soundly at that. Contagion may not be a straight genre film in the way that the multi-faceted filmmaker’s bone-snapping arthouse action film is, but it nonetheless exists as a synthesis of numerous filmmaking categories– essentially, … Continue reading
Go, See, Talk! Review: The Grey, 2012, dir. Joe Carnahan
Today marks the release of survival-action film/Liam Neeson vehicle The Grey, the latest film from director Joe Carnahan (Narc, The-A Team). I unequivocally loved it; it’s an immensely effective pulse-pounding thriller on the surface, but it’s characterized much more strongly by its more metaphysical and emotional traits, something that took me off-guard in the best … Continue reading
Review: Point Blank, 2011, dir. Fred Cavayé
Like it’s lead, Point Blank has no time to waste. With a mere eighty four minute running time, it’s not hard to understand why. With time being such a precious commodity, hapless everyman Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) hurries at every turn, and Fred Cavayé’s film follows suit. Point Blank distinguishes itself with boundless energy, an economy … Continue reading
Review: Wrecked, 2011, dir. Michael Greenspan
I’d consider it a party foul if Michael Greenspan didn’t splurge on a high-end fruit basket for Adrien Brody once Wrecked, their 2011 attempt at aping 127 Hours, made it to post. Well-intentioned, and certainly lovely to look at, the director’s first feature-length effort lacks much of anything by way of that genre-essential trait, tension; … Continue reading
Review: Winter’s Bone, 2010, dir. Debra Granik
There’s an argument out there somewhere stating that in the last ten years, film noir has enjoyed something of a revival with the release of films like Memento, Oldboy, and most notably Brick, and maybe there’s some validity to that claim. But film noir as a genre never died out; it just lost a lot … Continue reading
Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, 2010, dir. Niels Arden Oplev
Unspoken rule when discussing film adaptations of literary works: Films must be judged on their own merits rather than compared against the source material. For the most part, this seems fair. Film and literature, after all, constitute two very different storytelling mediums; the former must, if not for artistic purposes than for logistical ones, successfully … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 