Subterfuge and tension abound in the compelling papal thriller Conclave. The Pope has died and cardinals have been summoned from around the world to elect his successor. The man charged with the responsibility of seeing the process through to finality is the College of Cardinals dean, Brit Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes). Of late, he has…
Hugh Grant was once the affable if slightly awkward star of romantic comedies like Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill. But since Guy Ritchie cast him against type in a couple of his gritty thrillers, Grant has carved out a niche for himself in playing villainous types. He was great as the main…
Jo Nesbo’s 2020 book The Kingdom was a violent story centred around anti-hero Roy Opgard and the criminal machinations of Roy and his brother Carl in the small Norwegian town of Os. That book was marketed as a stand-alone crime thriller. And to some extent the story was wrapped up, tragically as expected, by the…
A political firestorm is brewing as the Far Right and LP the Far Left clash in the incendiary new work from writer Van Badham and director Gary Abrahams. There is no shortage of satire in this political thriller, which is bombastic and loud and revolutionary and proud of it. Between them, Badham and Abrahams set…
The cutthroat razor is sharpened and ready for the kill in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Forty-five years on, the musical thriller set in 19th century England retains its bite. It is a tale of murder, vengeance, cannibalism and entrepreneurial spirit. Benjamin Barker has been framed and is exiled to a penal…
There is one way to compromise a dramatic tale of obsession gone horribly askew that features impressive staging. Get the sound mix wrong. Unfortunately, that was the case at the premiere of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The music totally overwhelmed the opening number and did so again during parts of Act II. So much so that…
Writer and director JT Mollner (Outlaws and Angels) crafts a tightly wound, stylish, horror-thriller with Strange Darling. Shot entirely on 35 mm, it’s one of the most compelling movies I’ve seen in a long time. It concerns a serial killer with a kink who operated in the US between 2018 and 2020. More specifically, it…
I couldn’t help thinking about the warped Jeffrey Epstein while watching Zoe Kravitz’s psychological thriller Blink Twice. The film concerns billionaire tech mogul Slater King (Channing Tatum), who steps aside after a major error of judgment. He ups his philanthropy, buys a private island and makes a series of very public apologies for his actions….
Margaret Hickey hit the Australian crime fiction scene with Cutter’s End, the first of a (so far) three book series featuring South Australian detective Mark Ariti (also Stone Town and Broken Bay). In her latest book, The Creeper, Hickey is giving both Ariti and South Australia a rest as she moves the action to the…
Sex, religion and violence are again the key driving forces behind the dramatic action in this final instalment in Ti West’s trilogy of horror films starring Mia Goth. The series began with X, in which a group of amateur filmmakers headed to a remote ranch in Texas to shoot a pornographic movie but became caught…
