thrillers
Saskia Baron
The Safdie brothers, Josh and Benny, once programmed a season of films entitled Emotional Sloppy Manic Cinema, and if sloppy is subtracted from that description, it’s a pretty accurate summation of their work here in Uncut Gems. This is edge-of-the-seat filmmaking, with vertiginous camerawork by Darius Khondji and a relentless, immersive soundscape of electronica and layered dialogue.Adam Sandler, transformed with false teeth and a dazzling selection of designer shirts and shades, plays Howard Ratner. He’s a compulsive gambler and jewellery dealer who sells diamond encrusted Furbies and dodgy Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
The greatest war films are those which capture the terrifying physical and psychological ordeal that soldiers face, along with the sheer folly and waste of it all – Paths of Glory, Come and See, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, most recently Dunkirk. Sam Mendes’ 1917, which has just won two Golden Globes and could well triumph at the Oscars, joins their ranks.Inspired by the stories of his late grandfather, who fought in the First World War, Mendes has forged a film that combines the contrivance of a race-against-time thriller with the verisimilitude of documentary, astonishing Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The dinosaur credentials of disgraced cop Frank Penny (Aaron Eckhart) litter his flat, from his battered old TV to his binning of his daily newspaper, bar the sports section. As he begins his beat, vlogger Ava Brooks (Courtney Eaton, pictured below) is blathering wokely about the mainstream media. The appearance of a pair of ruthless but remarkably stupid kidnappers results in Penny’s jaw-dropping decision to let her live-stream his hunt for the kidnap victim, due to drown in 63 minutes in an undisclosed location.The film’s real-time rampage through those minutes is screamingly unconvincing, Read more ...
Lauren Brown
Nalini Singh's debut thriller thrusts us into Golden Cove, a small coastal town in New Zealand at "the edge of nowhere” that isn't everything it seems. What on the surface is a sun-bleached paradise made recently popular with back-packers is revealed to be much more sinister. The crashing waves harbour a vicious maelstrom, people aren't who they purport to be, and behind the sunshine-smiles of the tight-knit community lies madness.The vision of a fiercely self-contained town where everyone has known each other since childhood is shattered when Miriama, a bright-eyed, (and much over-mentioned Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The first feature by Copenhagen-born director Ulaa Salim dives boldly into a cauldron of hot-button issues – terrorism, racism, nationalism and fascism. It’s set in 2025, in a Denmark suffering from bomb attacks and violently polarised politics. This climate has spawned the titular Sons of Denmark. They’re a gang of neo-Nazis preaching racial purity and zero tolerance of immigrants, singling out Muslims for especially hostile treatment, threatening them with severed pig’s heads and slogans daubed in blood.We don’t get to learn much about the Sons of Denmark themselves, who remain sinister, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Alibi is usually your one-stop shop for re-runs of Father Brown or Death in Paradise, so well done them for commissioning this new murder mystery. It comes with a glittering pedigree, having been created by actor-turned-writer Amelia Bullmore (Scott & Bailey etc) and bestselling crime novelist Val McDermid, but despite a cracking cast it struggles to pass the credibility test.Emma Hedges (Molly Windsor) is an aspiring young lab technician who’s landed herself a prestigious job with the Scottish Institute for Forensic Science and Anatomy (SIFA) in Dundee, where she works under the auspices Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
In films, as in life, unreliable narrators are not hard to find. But there is something remarkable about the unreliable narrator of Elizabeth is Missing, BBC One’s newest feature-length drama. Its protagonist, Maud (Glenda Jackson), is unreliable in the extreme – confused, forgetful and emotionally wounded. Yet unlike most unreliable narrators, we never fear that Maud is trying to sell us a false story. She is so clearly fighting to understand the truth.Here’s the thing: Maud has advancing dementia. She’s a strong-willed 80-something, trying to remain independent as the disease wreaks havoc Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Some two million Americans are currently in prison in America. A disproportionate number are black and nearly 200,000 are estimated to be innocent. John Grisham’s quietly horrifying new novel is a damning indictment of the inequities and corruption of the American legal system, which is shown to be not only corrupt but also profoundly inefficient and adept at making victims of those it incarcerates.Over two decades before the story begins, in the small Florida town of Seabrook, a young white lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead while working alone at his desk late into the night. There were Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Ian McKellen, his Mr Holmes director Bill Condon and Helen Mirren play clever, nasty games with conman clichés and presumptions about the elderly in this sometimes absurdly twisty thriller.McKellen’s Roy Courtnay is an irascible, whiskery cad, Mirren’s Betty McLeish the trusting, rich widow he entraps. His slow courting of her in her genteel, suburban estate home is only part of a wide portfolio of dishonesty, aided by his avuncular partner in crime Vincent (Jim Carter), a fake lawyer ever ready with dummy investment papers, whether enticing a widow over cream teas, or luring a businessman Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Ballard and Bosch sound like some dystopian upmarket commodity. They are, but deep in with the low life. They are Michael Connolly’s new duo of detectives, one in semi-disgrace, one retired. Throw in Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, and you’ve got one of the most fascinating and satisfying series of crime novels out there. Throughout the 33 that Connelly has published since 1992, familiar characters turn up regularly. Interconnected webs of professional and personal acquaintances enrich the narratives. Back stories are lightly sketched, as needed. Readers are immersed not only in the varied Read more ...
Owen Richards
How long can one decision follow you? How long can you hide from it? This is what underpins After the Wedding, a remake of Susanne Bier’s Efter brylluppet. It’s a drama shaped like a thriller, driven by emotion rather than intrigue. We’re introduced to an extraordinary situation and piece the story together as the lies fall away. With powerhouse performances from Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams, it’s an engrossing watch.Isabel (Williams) works at an orphanage in Kolkata, but is called to New York to secure funding from possible benefactor Theresa (Moore). Isabel hopes for a speedy visit Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
That John le Carré! It turns out the agent isn’t so much running in the field as playing badminton. The master of the spy novel, of the foibles fantasies and sadnesses of our imperfect world – with the occasional excursion to excoriate Big Pharma and the like – has produced a magnificent slow burner. The short novel is predicated on Britain’s current mess, in which the country is betrayed by its own nostalgia and incipient xenophobia.Now in his 88th year this is Le Carré’s 25th novel. His last, A Legacy of Spies, was elegiac: a trip down memory lane to sort out an incident from the distant Read more ...