Thrilling!
Some favorite thrillers which are not to be missed!
I have been doing something absolutely after my heart these past few weeks - I have been seeing thrillers and writing on them!!
HT Media’s online platform for movies and shows OTTPlay has engaged me to write on films - and I am right now seeing thrillers, both known and unknown. And it’s been an absolute treat. Some of the films have been such discoveries, that they have stayed in my blood for days. I thought I would choose the most memorable of the ones I have seen so far, and give an excerpt from my reviews of them.
I am hoping I would be able to entice you enough to read the full reviews - and then see these brilliant films!!
So here goes!
LA Confidential is film noir drenched in despair, violence, angst and, paradoxically, tenderness. The softness of Crowe and Basinger's romance becomes a counterpoint to the all-male presence of violence and entitlement. Starting from the moment Basinger first appears, her white skin virtually leaping out of her black cape as she buys drinks, Crowe is smitten. They meet and Crowe asks if he can meet her again, and her question "Is it for a date or an appointment?" is answered soon enough. Their broken beings clutch at each other, and what emerges is a fledgling romance - they go to see Roman Holiday together and confess their hauntings to each other. Basinger's Oscar-winning performance is a warm tribute to womanhood as sheltering sky, beyond occupation or reputation.
Read the full review here! See it on YouTube Movies.
Malavita (called The Family in some countries) is a riot. It's Besson in Scorcese territory (Martin produces!) and is a hilarious homage, satire, send-off, welcome, to all the swarthy men in shiny tight suits and a gun poking from under their arms.
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In this hilarious black comedy, both Besson and Scorcese take potshots at French uber-culture and American uber-obsessions. And amidst the calm of a French village and the mayhem of an American shootout, have made a warm-hearted hot-blooded movie full of fun, gore and, well, family values!
Read the full review here! See it on YouTube Movies.
Embedded in this breathlessly suspenseful film (Oxygen) are questions of the nature of truth, of the premise on which lies the answer of what we are, the nature of experience, the importance of the tactile memory and the truths of what constitutes truth. As it is, one of the most frightening experiences for a human would be of isolation and entrapment, and the realization that there might not be a way out alive. And director Alexandre Aja plays on this, as he slowly moves towards the existential questions, even as he gives genuinely frightening moments.
Read the full review here! Catch it on Netflix.
Incendies is an indictment of everything senseless which demarcates man from man, and turns people into beasts - the casualness of the kill, the overbearing influence of religion, the mayhem done in the name of honour, the inequity of an entire system which turns people into their worst selves and changes lives with heart-rending irrevocability.
Director Denis Villeneuve fills the film with haunting sounds and images - the sounds of weeping, the screams of childbirth, the crisp crackling of a bus burning, the cinder emerging from the flames, the blood-spattered viscerality of a baby being born in a world which is ready to give it away, the sudden blast of a gun fired, the sound of a woman singing in a jail, the use of Radiohead songs. The grueling shock of the film comes from these strokes of suggestion rather than showing the deed itself. Killings are never shown for their goriness, but for their impact. And time and again, the barrenness of the land is symbolic of the souls of men who have found religion, politics or belief to be greater than family, understanding and love.
Read the full review here! See it on YouTube Movies.
Bitter Moon is, on one hand, a celebration of the tenderness of love and its concomitant universe-creation, but in its next beat is a psychological thriller examining the arc of obsession masquerading as love, and love masquerading as compulsion.
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Director Roman Polanski, whilst delving into the intricacies of obsession and ardour, also examines the levels of debasement a man is capable of, in the pursuit of both what he wants to get, as well as what he wants to give up. And much deeper than a love story gone wrong, Polanski uses the film to examine the tragic trajectory of the seasons of love, the truth of the old adage that true love stories start when love ends.
Read the full review here! Catch it on ViMoviesAndTV or YouTube Movies.
Thrillers often require generous space to get their kinetic energy going, but horror films masquerading as thrillers revel in the shrinking of space - think of Gerald's Game, Hush, Panic Room, Carnage, and other similar films which create big scares in small rooms . And director Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, The Girl in the Spider's Web) holds the flimsy story of Don't Breathe by its throat and gives it a claustrophobic edge-of-the-seat spin.
Read the full review here! Catch it on Netflix.
Black Swan is a brilliant psychological thriller, with a continuous undercurrent of sexual charge. Director Darren Aronofsky is masterful in creating a film with layers of surrealism, reality, desire, ambition and longing. In its incredibly fast-paced and perfectly-balanced puzzle, he has not got a piece wrong. He brings brightness into a nightmare and dream into reality in eerie and magical ways. In the world it creates, of a mind slowly losing control, even as it wants to master parts which it is struggling with, it closely resembles the atmospherics of Polanski's Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion, both of which Aronofsky has admitted to be influences in his work. As the film moves towards its hallucinatory denouement, one understands its undercurrents of obsession for perfection, with a body and mind which are just not ready to listen.
Read the full review here! Catch it on Disney Hotstar.
And if you’ve missed it - hear last week’s poem on Uncut Poetry!
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