Thriller

  • Hong-jin Na – Goksung AKA The Wailing (2016)

    2011-2020Hong-jin NaHorrorSouth KoreaThriller

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    Quote:
    Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing is a work of thriller maximal-ism, a rare case of more actually being more rather than less. In the spirit of other South Korean films like Memories of Murder, The Host, I Saw the Devil, and Park Chan-wook’s early work, among others, The Wailing thrives on genre crosspollination and tonal hyperbole, particularly a destabilizing contrast of broad comedy with ultraviolent portentousness. In American cinema, such a mix often results in a single tone dominating the enterprise, telegraphing to the audience how to feel. By contrast, prominent South Korean thrillers abound in ambiguous tones in which the comedy and the violence are accorded equal prominence, yielding an exhilarating sense of possibility and chaos.Read More »

  • Aarne Tarkas – Yö on pitkä AKA The Night Is Long (1952)

    1951-1960Aarne TarkasCrimeFinlandThriller

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    Synopsis:
    Åke Strandberg has managed to get a fine education and a good job at the bank, but he wants more. He wants to get rich no matter what. After holidays with his girl Rita, he comes back to Helsinki completely broke and meets up with his buddy Jussi in a bar.
    For months they embezzle money from the bank, but eventually do relize they have to cover the missing amount by orchestrating and comitting a robbery which will then rouse the intrest of the police. A hide and seek follows as they try to make their way abroad.Read More »

  • Gordon Douglas – I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. (1951)

    1951-1960Film NoirGordon DouglasThrillerUSA

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    Synopsis:
    The FBI infiltrates one of their agents in the US Communist Party. This causes big problems in the normal life of the agent. Nobody knows that he is with the FBI, neither his family.Read More »

  • Pedro Almodóvar – Matador (1986)

    1981-1990DramaPedro AlmodóvarSpainThriller

    Quote:
    A dashing former matador named Diego Montes (Nacho Martínez), prematurely retired after a career-ending injury, rehearses the principal tenets of the art of the kill at a converted classroom on his estate to a group of aspiring bullfighters, including an unlikely, hypersensitive student named Angel Giménez (Antonio Banderas). The training lecture then cuts to the image of a beautiful, enigmatic woman sitting on a park bench, María (Assumpta Serna) as she initiates contact with an anonymous man innocuously passing by, follows him back to an apartment, and, at the height of physical intimacy, stabs him with a long ornamental pin behind the nape of the neck – in the region between the shoulder blades defined in bullfighting as the cleft of the clods. Read More »

  • Abel Ferrara – The Gladiator (1986)

    1981-1990Abel FerraraActionThrillerUSA

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    Synopsis:

    A homicidal maniac is on the loose, killing motorists at random in his “death car” – after losing his brother to the twisted assassin “Skull”, Rick Benten becomes a vigilante, and takes it upon himself to hunt down the reckless drivers that fill the streets at night. Being a master mechanic, Rick spends his time converting his pickup truck into an armed and dangerous vehicle – with speed to take on the fastest car, and strength to make sure in a one-on-one situation, he will be the only survivor. The cops soon find out about the vigilante known only as the “Gladiator” and do all they can to catch him before his citizen’s arrests go one step too far – but will they find the Gladiator before the Gladiator finds Skull? When the two finally meet, it’s a duel to the death and maybe an end to Rick’s career as the vigilante.Read More »

  • Nobuo Nakagawa – Onna shikeishû no datsugoku AKA Death Row Woman (1960)

    1951-1960CrimeJapanNobuo NakagawaThriller

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    Synopsis:

    A Hitchcockian narrative and noirish atmosphere characterise this effective, taut thriller, made the same year as the director’s magnum opus, JIGOKU (Hell). Set in the present day, DEATH ROW WOMAN is at once a prison film, an innocent-man/woman-on-the-run story, a police procedural, and a family melodrama, that is equal parts Hitchcock, Samuel Fuller and Douglas Sirk.Read More »

  • Paul Schrader – Hardcore [+commentaries] (1979)

    1971-1980DramaPaul SchraderThrillerUSA

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    Quote:
    A conservative Midwest businessman ventures into the sordid underworld of pornography in California to look for his runaway teenage daughter who is making porno films in California’s porno pits.Read More »

  • Alfred Hitchcock – Under Capricorn (1949)

    Drama1941-1950Alfred HitchcockThrillerUSA

    Quote:
    Although John Colton’s and Margaret Linden’s onscreen credit reads “by”, they had actually written an unproduced and unpublished play based on Helen Simpson’s novel. The novel was adapted for the screen by Hume Cronyn and was the basis for the screenplay. In this film, Alfred Hitchcock continued to experiment with long takes, a technique that he began in Rope, which was also adapted by Cronyn. Ingrid Bergman’s monologue, during which she relates the story of her marriage to “Flusky,” the subsequent shooting of her brother and their experiences in Australia, lasts nine and one-half minutes and was shot in one take.Read More »

  • Manuel Pradal – A Crime (2006)

    2001-2010DramaFranceManuel PradalThriller

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    Quote:
    The devastated life of a man haunted by the unsolved murder of his beloved wife is strangely complicated by the mysterious neighbor who loves him from afar in a dark noir thriller directed by Manuel Pradal and starring Norman Reedus, Emmanuelle Béart and Harvey Keitel. Vincent (Reedus)’ wife has suffered a most brutal fate, and these days the once happy New Yorker is but a frozen shell of his former self. Vincent is not a man unloved, however, because although he may currently be unaware of her feelings for him, his neighbor Alice (Béart) knows in her heart that she and Vincent were meant to be together. All that needs to happen to make Vincent recognize her love is for the grieving widower to finally be liberated from his tragic past; and Alice is willing to go to any lengths necessary in order to make this happen. If Vincent was finally to find the man responsible for his wife’s death, he could finally be free to open his heart to Alice. When Alice hails a cab driven by lonely New York soul Roger (Keitel), the gears of the scheming woman’s elaborate plan are slowly set into motion despite the ignorance of both the naïve cabbie, and the somber object of her delusional affections.Read More »

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