thrillers
Peter Høeg: The Susan Effect review - Nordic noir turns surrealSunday, 23 July 2017
Peter Høeg is still overwhelmingly known for a novel published a quarter of a century ago. Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow featured a half-Inuit woman whose suspicion over a young neighbour’s death in Copenhagen lures her from Denmark back to... Read more... |
Michael Connelly: The Late Show review - mesmerising and believable charactersSunday, 09 July 2017
Readers have been committed fans since 1992, when the sometime crime reporter Michael Connelly turned novelist. Connelly’s best-known sequence has featured, over three decades now, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detective Hieronymus Bosch... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Stormy MondayFriday, 07 July 2017
Using Hollywood stars to prop up British crime thrillers is an ignoble tradition. Guy Ritchie’s Snatch misused Brad Pitt, but John Wayne’s execrable Brannigan is probably the worst example. So one’s hopes aren’t high for Stormy Monday, a 1987 noir... Read more... |
Fearless, ITV review - Helen McCrory lights up dense conspiracy thrillerTuesday, 13 June 2017
Emma Banville is almost too good to be true: a human rights lawyer who houses Syrian refugees, wins the most hopeless cases of wrongful conviction, won’t be bullied by anyone – coppers, prison wardens, the system. OK she smokes, presumably for the... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: PrevengeThursday, 08 June 2017
“People think babies are sweet. But this one’s bitter.” So squeaks Alice Lowe’s malevolent unborn daughter in the horror comedy Prevenge, prompting her heavily pregnant host Ruth to embark on a killing spree. Think of it as an unholy blend of... Read more... |
Paula, BBC Two review - Denise Gough's the real thingFriday, 26 May 2017
Playwrights have long migrated to the small screen in search of better pay and room to manoeuvre. Most don’t leave it as long as Conor McPherson, who was perhaps cushioned from necessity by the global success of The Weir. A quarter of a century... Read more... |
Miss Sloane review - Jessica Chastain lobbies hard for your voteFriday, 12 May 2017
For a demoralising period towards the start of Miss Sloane, it looks as if we’re in for a high-octane thriller about palm oil. That’s right, palm oil. Everything you never wanted to know about the ethics and economics of the palm oil market is... Read more... |
City of Tiny Lights, review - 'Riz Ahmed sleuths in self-aware London noir'Wednesday, 05 April 2017
The harsh metallic rasp of a cigarette lighter; a glamorous, vulnerable prostitute in distress; a noble lone crime-fighter standing dejected in the rain. All the familiar tropes of noir are present and correct – in fact, almost self-consciously... Read more... |
Blu-ray: To Live and Die in LAFriday, 09 December 2016
William Friedkin’s super-stylish bad cop/bad villain thriller was his return to form after the disasters of Cruising and Sorcerer. To Live and Die in LA didn’t achieve the instant classic status of The French Connection when it was released in 1985... Read more... |
SuburraMonday, 20 June 2016
An underage prostitute dies from a drug overdose at a mini “bunga bunga” party with a high-ranking politician. When that’s one of a film’s less shocking moments, you know you’re in for a bumpy ride.With its steady stream of killings, maimings,... Read more... |
DVD: In a Lonely PlaceWednesday, 25 May 2016
In a Lonely Place (1950) contains one of the most harrowing night-time drives in all of film noir. Dix Steele (Humphrey Bogart), a volatile screenwriter suspected of murder, accidentally learns that his new girlfriend, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame),... Read more... |
DVD: The Manchurian CandidateTuesday, 10 March 2015
“A frivolous piece of hysteria. I liked it in a confused sort of way but when it was all over I must confess I couldn’t really see the point.” So ran the Daily Express review of The Manchurian Candidate on 5 November 1962. Other fascinating... Read more... |
