thriller
Last year, Denis Villeneuve directed one of the most pleasant surprises of the year with Prisoners, an unrelentingly tense film about child abduction that presented intriguing moral questions while also providing satisfying twists and turns throughout. That filmed starred Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal has teamed up with Villeneuve again in Enemy, a much smaller and much, much more mind-bending film than Prisoners.
Alfred Hitchc*ck. The name alone makes me shiver. Known for his concoctions of seriously haunting imagery and bone-chilling scores, Hitchc*ck films are acclaimed as some of the best thrillers of all time.
In The Purge, a happy, wealthy family gets ready for the annual night of the Purge, a 12-hour period during which all crime is legal. This new way to fight crime has been very successful – crime is at an all time low, as is unemployment. Moreover, it is supposedly an easy way to rid society of those who do not contribute.
The director of Training Day (2001) (a respectable movie to say the least) has made the most hilariously ridiculous, cringe-inducingly bad movie I’ve seen in some time. Boasting a cast of renowned actors like Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Basset, even this ensemble could not save it. Olympus Has Fallen opens on Christmas eve, showing a happy president, a happy first lady, a really happy kid, happy bodyguards – until something awful happens (of course).
Side Effects is a movie about the business of psychiatric medications, fraud, insanity and the failure of the criminal justice system. It’s a complex movie with many plots and twists, and is captivating from start to end. From a very creepy, melancholic opening, we are taken three months earlier into the story.