Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver all feature, but there’s too little character development and too little dialogue for us to get much of a sense of any of them. Weaver in particular is underused, as if she only had a day available for filming and did it as a favour to the director (Pete Travis).
I was expecting a mind-bending plot twist that never arrived, and overall it’s oddly unsatisfying.
A professor (Neeson) has an accident on a work trip to Berlin. After he wakes up from a coma four days later, he has to prove his identity after no one recognizes him – including his own wife. Then another man claims to be him.
It’s engrossing if you don’t ask too many questions about the plot and if you don’t mind key elements of the story appearing to have been borrowed from the Jason Bourne films.
Lawyer Mickey Haller works in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car rather than an office, although not enough is made of this fact. He is hired to represent a Beverly Hills playboy accused of brutally beating a prostitute.
It's an exciting, highly watchable thriller that's enhanced by McConaughey's considerable charm and charisma.
Extremely disappointing thriller directed by David Fincher and adapted from the popular novel by Gillian Flynn.
I’d heard great things about it, but it turns out to be oddly mannered and unconvincing.
While it’s very basic in some ways, and we never really learn what the villains were planning to do, there are genuine thrills and surprises along the way. The fairground sequence is highly effective. And it was difficult to predict the ending. The filmmakers wrestle with how to make typing on a computer keyboard look exciting and just about make it work with fast edits and unusual close-ups.
As always, Sandra Bullock is highly watchable.
It’s confusingly plotted. The acting is hammy. There’s a total lack of dynamism. Clint is alone for much of the film so has no one to play off or interact with. Indeed, he has to talk to himself most of the time. Meanwhile, stilted, static scenes of grumpy army generals standing around talking does not make for good drama.
A fundamentally misconceived mess.
It’s not quite the thriller you might have imagined or hoped for – mainly because Redford never gets out of the office. Somehow he is able to run rings around his CIA colleagues, even though they would’ve had the same training as him. As such, it’s an intriguing thriller that doesn’t quite work. The basic ingredients are good, and with more focus in the storytelling, it might have been more satisfying.
An Indonesian National Police tactical squad attempts a raid on a deadly drug lord's apartment block.
It's incredibly violent – almost certainly the most violent film I've ever seen. The action is relentless. There's endless hunting, fighting and killing that ultimately becomes numbing. The film is extremely well choreographed, shot and edited, but its unrelenting quality makes it both disturbing and difficult to watch.
A secretary with a major law firm (Melanie Griffith) falls in love with a spy (Michael Douglas) and takes on her own spy mission in Berlin. Her only qualification is that she speaks fluent German (although, unlike the other actors, she doesn’t even try to put on a German accent) and has learned about intelligence work from enjoying films at the cinema. On this ridiculous premise, the film wobbles along in a highly entertaining manner.
Liam Neeson isn’t too bad as the Nazi officer General Franze-Otto Dietrich. John Gielgud isn’t very well used as the agent “Sunflower”. And Joely Richardson is fairly watchable as the double agent Margrete von Eberstein.
There are plenty of implausible moments but the film does have a few things in its favour. There are a few exciting sequences and Douglas and Griffith both have charm. But it’s so far-fetched and silly (with several unintentionally funny moments) that you wonder if it would’ve been better played as a comedy.
It’s genuinely exciting, with some particularly strong scenes – one set on a bridge and another in the streets of New York City. It’s the sort of film you wish the 1990s James Bond instalments had been, with strong characters, credible geopolitics, tight plotting, and a convincing scenario. The Pierce Brosnan films, sadly, had none of those things.
The dialogue is trite, preventing any development of the characters (weakly portrayed by Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss). There's an ugly aesthetic, too. The plot isn’t explained very well and there's not even much action – just a lot of “enigmatic” non-conversations that go nowhere. You get no sense whatsoever of the wider world or the notion that humanity is in peril.
I really couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
Nicolas Cage plays a CIA man intent on revenge after he was tortured by a terrorist 22 years previously. The unusual twist is that he is suffering from a form of dementia, which affects not only his memory, but also his moods and behaviour.
It has a low-budget feel and there’s very little action. It seems like a cut-price attempt to make a Jason Bourne film, but without Paul Greengrass’s directorial energy and skill.
The dementia angle is surprisingly low-key in the plot. I was expecting it to be used as a rationale for all sorts of odd outbursts from Cage.
An “ordinary” American, Tom Stall, works in a cafe in a small town. One day, a pair of crooks come in and threaten him and his staff. With what might be pure luck or uncanny combat skills, he quickly dispenses with them and is celebrated as a hero by the town. But then some gangsters show up in the same diner and appear to know Tom. Is this just a case of mistaken identity or does he have a troubling and mysterious past?
Viggo Mortensen stars, bringing depth to a complicated part. His wife is played brilliantly by Maria Bello in a fully rounded role. Ed Harris plays the sinister criminal whose appearance changes everything.
There’s strong suspense and – as the title implies – a fair bit of blood. Cronenberg explores the nature of identity and violence, and the impact they have on family life.
It's a scary and compassionate drama.
Two eastern European criminals arrive in New York City. (They are portrayed in a crassly simplistic, racist manner.) The pair want to be famous, and will commit murder to achieve that. Meanwhile, a detective (De Niro) and a fire investigator (Edward Burns) team up to catch them.
There are lots of unexpected twists – not because the film is well-plotted, but because it’s a sprawling mess. Certain threads are never resolved, such as the fate of Vera Farmiga’s character. She’s meant to be the love interest, but she’s quietly sent away rather than being allowed to develop her relationship with Burns’ character.
The biggest flaw of all is the two criminals, who are woefully one-dimensional and presumably intended to be semi-comedic (the tone of the film is especially uneven). One of them video-tapes everything they do, thereby incriminating them. Maddeningly, the film presents some of the action through their camera footage – a gimmick that very quickly wears thin. This camcorder view of the violence also seems like exactly the sort of sensationalist rubbish the film claims to be satirising. It’s way dumber than it thinks it is.
There’s also a silly plot about a true-crime TV show presented by Kelsey Grammer (of Frasier) that feels like a different film entirely.
It’s frustrating because De Niro, Burns and Farmiga are all on good form, and some of their scenes are highly watchable. It’s as if director John Herzfeld sub-contracted some of the work, so jarring and uneven are the various different kinds of film clumsily cobbled together for the final edit.
There’s no tension or drama. But there’s plenty of sexism, homophobia and racism. There's also a clumsy sub-James Bond plot that doesn’t make sense, and a total lack of characterisation. Even the celebrated climbing sequences end up being dull.
Clint is usually reliable, so you can only wonder how this ended up being such a turkey.
It’s an enjoyable twist-filled tale, even if it begins to stretch credibility in the final sections. Owen is always charming, and he is excellent with the limited material. Aniston is better than expected – or rather, at least she’s not merely reprising Rachel from Friends.
On the downside there is a silly character played by rapper RZA, and Clive Owen’s wife played by Melissa George is sketchy and unconvincing.
A teenage girl (Jennifer Lawrence) and her mother (Elisabeth Shue) move to a new neighbourhood. They learn that a nearby property was the scene of a double killing by a 17-year-old girl, whose older brother still occupies the house. But of course nothing is as it seems.
The film suffers from being directed at teenagers. There’s little depth, with the usually brilliant Lawrence giving a merely adequate performance. The slightly tortured twists of the plot don’t satisfy, either, and there’s not a great deal to enjoy.
New York psychologist Dr. David Callaway (Robert De Niro) finds his wife dead in the bathtub, after what seems like a suicide. David takes his nine-year-old daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) to upstate New York, where they can live in a big spooky house miles from anywhere. But when Emily makes friends with “Charlie”, who may or may not be imaginary, events quickly take a sinister turn...
While De Niro is somewhat wasted in the role, it’s a tense drama with horror tropes and it keeps you guessing until the big reveal towards the end.
Cher stars as lawyer Kathleen Riley. Liam Neeson plays Carl Wayne Anderson, a homeless Vietnam vet who she defends. Dennis Quaid, meanwhile, is an agribusiness lobbyist.
Cher is great, with an undeniable presence, and to the credit of director Peter Yates the film is never formulaic. But there are too many red herrings for the story to truly satisfy. And it's never entirely clear why the plot required Neeson's character to be deaf and dumb.
The plot features a retired FBI agent attempting to catch a killer. The twist is that he is suffering heart problems, which make it even more difficult.
Eastwood is great, as always. In fact, this could have worked as the next Dirty Harry film, although the main character is perhaps too compassionate to be Callahan.
There are strong female characters – notably Anjelica Huston as Dr. Bonnie Fox. Jeff Daniels also co-stars.
