This is a minuscule plot, presented in a stylish cinema noir wrapper and packed with Gallic panache. It features powerful performances from the two male leads, as it explores their relationship and the consequences of the catastrophic event which saw one of them drummed out of the police force and imprisoned for causing deaths while…
We enjoy all sorts of thrillers here at MMM, from non-stop action romps to inexplicable international arthouse adventures, from popcorn puff to self-indulgent intellectualism.* Recently we’ve seen three wonderfully weird examples of world cinema, each of which revolves around a captivating female central character. Each of them is a solid four-star flick, worthy of…
Don’t watch this looking for a Hollywood-style sword-n-savagery action flick (although there is plenty of bloodily realistic hacking, maiming and killing). This is not the Mads Mikkelsen you know from Hannibal. This is experimental, art-house, risk-taking film-making. It is weird and beautiful and brutal. It’s also minimalist, surreal, philosophical and prone to showing extended clips…
It’s Movie Monday which means crime-thrillers, murder mysteries, sci-fi fantasy, Eurocrime and Nordic noir; mainstream, indie, art-house and B-movies. Recent screenings feature Stellan Skarsgård, Persian vampires, Gillian Anderson, Ving Rhames, Victor Garber and Lance Reddick. Eclectic? Exactly. THE GUEST: savvy super-soldier action thriller This got off to a slow start but is worth holding your…
Saturday night is movie night. It is in the MMM household at any rate. Mind you, so is Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night and… you get the picture. The motion picture. So we watch an awful lot of films; murder mysteries, sci-fi fantasy, noir (Nordic and otherwise); mainstream, indie, art-house and B-movies. Here’s just…
This gloriously shambolic, rambling psychedelic mess of a movie brilliantly captures a slice of 1970’s beach-bum life, mixing it with all the black paranoia of hard-boiled noir. Only an extremely ambitious auteur (or an idiot) would attempt to translate Thomas Pynchon’s loosely lucid perspectives in film form. Paul Thomas Anderson deserves credit for even having…
We’re giving away two terrific crime-thriller flicks on DVD this week. EL NINO is intelligent Eurocrime; a stylish slice of modern Spanish movie-making about narcotic smuggling in the Med. Here’s our full review. ALL THAT MATTERS IS PAST is a disconcerting Scandinavian psychodrama featuring murder, a tangled love-triangle, sibling rivalry and sexual violence. Here’s all…
If you blend together murder, a tangled love-triangle, sibling rivalry, sexual violence, the isolation of rural Norway and people trafficking in a modern film then people will inevitably think it’s Nordic noir. And in some ways, ‘All That Matters Is Past’ conforms to many of the conventions of the genre. But it’s hardly a fast-paced…
A clever, low-key thriller, Closed Circuit has more in common with Tinker Tailor than Jason Bourne. It’s a typically English conspiracy, exploring similar issues of modern political morality as Bill Nighy’s Page Eight, and harking back to the days of Sandbaggers and beyond. This is most definitely not a running / shooting / shouting action-adventure…
More art-house than action-adventure, Pioneer nonetheless kept us utterly gripped with intriguing plot developments, stunning underwater photography and a powerful central performance. There is, inevitably, an American re-make on the way but this multilingual Scandinavian film (with subtitles, no need to learn Norwegian) perfectly captures the feel of the times. In common with many…
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