Tag: thriller
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Jurassic Park (1993)
I watched Jurassic Park many times as a kid. It was the most thrilling and enthralling movie ever made when I was seven years old. As time’s gone by I’ve seen films that surpass it in my personal canon, but it remains an entertaining spectacle. It also remains the single unironically good film in the…
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A Haunting in Venice (2023)
I just saw A Haunting in Venice and it was first-class junk. I’m not sure what Kenneth Branagh’s motivation is to keep making these Poirot adaptations. He doesn’t seem to like the character much and from what I’ve read he’s not exactly making money hand over fist with them. His Murder on the Orient Express…
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Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Released seven years after the 1984 original, Terminator 2 famously makes a protagonist of the original villain, having Arnie sent back in time not to kill future resistance leader John Connor (Edward Furlong) but to protect him from another killing machine, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), a mass of liquid metal that can assume the shape…
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The Blackening (2023)
I just saw The Blackening and it was good. Based on a comedy sketch, it’s a satirical slasher film starring a black cast of actors playing former college friends who reunite at a cabin in the woods, but not before a couple of them make a rest stop at the proverbial rustic gas station run…
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Talk to Me (2022)
Directed by YouTube stars the Philippou brothers, Talk to Me is a surprisingly clever twist on The Monkey’s Paw, the 1902 ghost story by WW Jacobs in which the titular mummified paw grants wishes with terrible consequences. This time the paw is an embalmed human hand covered in names like a plaster cast, and the…
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Oppenheimer (2023)
Now that it’s been released, Oppenheimer feels like such a natural project for Christopher Nolan, a writer/director whose works have always been concerned with concepts. He approaches his stories rather like a theoretical physicist, starting with a baseline of plot and twisting it back and forth across many permutations, dissecting time travel, space exploration, unconscious…
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Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
So I saw Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One and it was… bad? I don’t consider myself a contrarian. I normally have views that fall somewhere in line with the general critical feeling. I might be more or less moved by a particular film than others were, but normally if one receives what can be…
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Sisu (2022)
I just saw Sisu and it was ehhhhhhhh… alright. A war film with an exploitation edge, it struggles to escape feeling Tarantino-lite, with its chapter headings and gore and pulpy characterisation. With Tarantino that works because he’s a genius at what he does, managing to stuff every frame with detail and create a whole film…
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Terrifier 2 (2022)
I just saw FX maestro Damian Leone’s Terrifier 2 finally, and it was pretty okay if you like this sort of thing, and probably the worst film ever made if you don’t. I dithered about watching this one for a while because of its reputation for sadistic violence but pushed ahead because the material I’d…
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The Boogeyman (2023)
I just saw The Boogeyman and surprise surprise, it was crap. I kind of knew that it’d be mediocre going in just based on its trailers, and certain details as to its inspiration, but went anyway because it’s “from the mind of Stephen King”. I didn’t expect it, however, to be as godawful as it…
I Just Saw 