wed 23/07/2025

thrillers

Ballard, Prime Video review - there's something rotten in the LAPD

Following the success of its screen version of Michael Connelly’s veteran detective Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver, Prime Video aims to make lightning strike twice by televising Connelly’s series of Renée Ballard books. Like Bosch,...

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Ballerina review - hollow point

John Wick’s simple story of a man and his dog became a bonkers, baroque franchise in record time, converting Keanu Reeves’ limited acting into Zen killer cool. Now Ana de Armas extends her delightful No Time to Die cameo as a high-kicking, cocktail-...

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Blu-ray: Eclipse

What constitutes a “lost classic”? I guess we can’t say it’s an oxymoron, since we readily accept the concept of “instant classic”? Either way, the “classic” aspect may be in the eye of the beholder, but “lost" is more easily quantified. Simon Perry...

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The Accountant 2 review - belated return of Ben Affleck's lethal bean-counter

It’s been nine years since Ben Affleck’s original portrayal of Christian Wolff in The Accountant, who’s not only an accountant but also a super-efficient assassin working for the highest bidders. In this follow-up, again directed by Gavin O’Connor...

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Misericordia review - mushroom-gathering and murder in rural France

“Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” The Aesop-ian maxim roughly applies to Jérémie Pastor (Félix Kysyl) in Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia. Though unemployed Toulouse baker Jérémie doesn’t acquire the business that was run by his...

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To a Land Unknown review - the migrant hustle

The Refugee Movie is rapidly becoming a genre unto itself, with elements of suspense and humanism woven together into something that’s very properly cinematic.Films like Io Capitano and Green Border, tracking the tragic migrant trail to and through...

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Blu-ray: Hitchcock - The Beginning

There's a tension in Alfred Hitchcock’s early films between misogyny and condemnation of the patriarchal suppression of women. The suppression was inherent in the original sources from which The Pleasure Garden (1926), Easy Virtue (1927), Champagne...

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Black Doves, Netflix review - Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw battle against the implausible

It’s rare to spot Keira Knightley in a TV series, and it’s no doubt a sign of changing times that she’s starring in this six-part spies-and-guns caper, penned by Joe Barton (of Giri/Haji and The Lazarus Project fame).Set in a seasonally Christmassy...

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Blu-ray: Juggernaut

That Juggernaut is as good as it is seems in hindsight to have been a happy accident. Inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 in 1972, the producers fired two directors (Bryan Forbes and Don Taylor) in succession before hiring Richard Lester in...

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Red Rooms review - the darkest of webs

A woman sits at her computer. She copy-pastes an address into a search engine. She goes to street view. She zooms in. Click. Opens a new tab. Click. Searches a name. There are no lines of green code on a black screen or indecipherable programmes...

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Trap review - how not to find a serial killer in a haystack

Don’t think too hard about the narrative absurdity of Trap, the new movie wriitten and directed by M Night Shyamalan. There’s a serial killer called The Butcher on the loose in Philadelphia and though the FBI doesn’t know their quarry’s name or what...

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Sleep review - things that go bump in the night

The question Korean director Jason Yu is asking in this eerie little spine-tingler (his debut feature) is “how well do you know your partner?” He may also be inquiring whether or not you believe in life after death, while planting nagging seeds of...

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