Category: thriller

A Quiet Place [2018] ★★★

This is the horror movie we’ve all been waiting for. Director John Krasinski (who would have thought) delivers the creepy goods, leaving us unnerved, terrified, and exhilarated. This is “A Quiet Place” in a nutshell, a tense and extremely well-crafted tale of survival. Krasinski himself plays a family […]

Red Sparrow [2018] ★★½

 Check your brain at the door. This tense, often confusing spy-thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence as a Bolshoi ballerina-turned-spy, gets a lot of things right, but also a lot of things wrong. My advice: go with the illogic or you’ll miss the fun. And there’s plenty of fun in […]

The Commuter [2018] ★★½

 Liam Neeson is on a train. No, his daughter hasn’t been kidnapped. I know you’re tempted to call it “Taken” on a train. Or maybe “Non-Stop” the train version. Ok, I’ll stop. Director Jaume Collet-Serra, who directed Neeson in several films before, throws our hero this time around […]

Better Watch Out [2017] ★★★

 On the surface, “Better Watch Out” sounds like a “Home Alone” rip-off. It isn’t. And the sooner you realize that, the more fun you’ll have watching this superbly twisted holiday thriller from director Chris Peckover, who does a great job of raising hell. With screenwriter Zack Kahn, “Better […]

Marrowbone [2017] ★★

How do you promote a great looking misfire these days? You tell people that it was written and directed by the same man who wrote the superior Spanish film “The Orphanage”. As much as I wanted to like his latest effort, “Marrowbone”, I have to be honest in […]

The Foreigner [2017] ★★½

A bomb goes off in London. Jackie Chan’s daughter dies in the blast. He wants answers from a British government official (played by Pierce Brosnan), who may or may not know the people behind the terror attack. Brosnan refuses to cooperate (naturally), and all hell breaks loose (naturally). […]

Gerald’s Game [2017] ★★½

I’ve been spending a lot of time watching Netflix shows. Every now and then they drop a new movie (avoid “Death Note” at all costs), so naturally I was intrigued when Stephen King’s “Gerald’s Game” was up next. This isn’t an easy movie to endure, mainly because the […]

Flatliners [2017] ★

It’s the end of the summer, a time where some studios start preparing for Oscar season, while others dump their summer leftovers. Case in point: “Flatliners”, a truly awful thriller (if we can call it that), that ranks among the worst films of the year. A remake of […]

Death Note [2017] ★

If  you thought “Dragonball Evolution” wasn’t bad enough, wait till you get a load of “Death Note”, Netflix’s very own disaster. Based on a popular Japanese manga series, this live-action version gets almost everything wrong, despite an intriguing premise. Nat Wolff seems clueless as Light Turner, a high-school […]