This is the crime drama of the year for me, and the BBC deserve considerable kudos for bringing a concept this challenging to our screens. It proves that intelligent and gripping thrillers aren’t the sole preserve of ScandiLand, and Rellik is every bit as good as the best Nordic noir. The six-part drama isn’t just…
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…
Ten more episodes of The X-Files will be filmed in 2017, and are scheduled to be aired at the end of the year / beginning of 2018. So this seems like the perfect moment to look at Season 10, aka X-Files X. The revived series came in for mixed reviews from the professional critics but……
A Hijacking is 100 minutes of gruelling, gripping tension. It doesn’t seek to glamorise or Hollywoodise the very real threat of modern-day piracy to commercial shipping. Instead it starkly portrays the at times horrific possibilities when hostages are held long-term for ransom. It is not a barrel of laughs… The action switches between a Danish…
Seeking something to spice up your Saturday night? Try these three gritty thrillers, which expose the ultimate extent of human cruelty and the defiance it inspires… The Treatment: This Scandinavian-style crime-thriller is not for the faint-hearted. It’s a subtitled Belgian production, masterful in its manipulation of emotion and plot. It’s utterly gripping, and not a…
The Hateful Eight: Quentin Tarantino’s eight film turned out to be one of his best. It’s a ‘return to your roots’, character-led drama of escalating tension and utterly outlandish, gory violence. If you prefer QT’s more action-adventure type films (‘Inglorious’ and ‘Kill Bill’ spring to mind) then this might be a bit too much talky-talk…
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…
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…
MurderMayhem&More 