I suppose it’s almost impossible to use an exuberant color palette for a film situated in a Slavic country. Every time the story takes place in such a communist or ex-communist country, the screen is filled with depressing colors. The closer one approaches Russia (the motherland of communism) the more gray, grizzled, and duller the…
Post 9-11 it’s hard to think that there hasn’t been speculation about the next shock and awe campaign. I bet nobody thought there’d be an Australian, rough and tumble ex-commercial pilot, come spy at the centre of it all. The theory that Michael McGuire proposes in his thriller Flight Risk is, however, just believable enough…
Each year ends with a bang. You’ll have the end-of-year festivities and people party themselves into the New Year. But when it’s about movies, this one created an end-of-a-film-year-bang. Frankly, I didn’t expect too much of it. But maybe my prejudice about Sandra Bullock has something to do with that. I readily admit that I’m…
While it’s more common for theatre to be adapted into movies, some have gone the other way. They’re mostly however musicals (a la School of Rock: The Musical) or drawing room dramas. Certainly, the thought of staging a big action movie seems daunting. But the creative team behind North by Northwest have pulled off that…
One of the much-hyped books this year has been psychological suspense thriller The Nowhere Child by Christian White. The book was the winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and has been raved about for its intriguing premise (a child kidnapped in the US turns up years later in Australia). Here’s the blurb: ‘Her name is…
Ignorance is bliss, they say. And in the case of Fede Alvarez’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web, they might just be right. The film is a continuation of the so-called Millennium saga, originating from Steig Larsson’s books. You’re probably familiar with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was made into both Swedish (2009)…
John Krasinski – that all-round good guy from The Office (US) – never struck me as an action hero. But somehow he makes it work in Amazon Prime’s spy drama Jack Ryan (or to give it its full title: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan). Remember, this is a character that’s been played by Alec Baldwin (in…
This revisit of Halloween from the ‘70s features a good story – and it’s genuinely scary. \In this Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to her iconic role as Laurie Strode, as she comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers. He of course is the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped…
The Sunday Girl by Pip Drysdale – this snappy, fast-paced debut thriller hooked me in right from the outset and kept me on tenterhooks. Here’s the blurb: Any woman who’s ever been involved with a bad, bad man and been dumped will understand what it feels like to be broken, broken-hearted and bent on revenge….
Paul Feig steps away from broad comedy and onto the darker side with A Simple Favour. This pulpy thriller certainly has Feig’s fingerprints on it, but it’s easily his most expressive film in ages – maybe ever. Of course, the film invites comparisons with the David Fincher’s wonderful Gone Girl. But A Simple Favour is…
