The Place Beyond the Pines is a linear anthology film telling three distinct chapters in a much looser story about fathers, sons, and personal responsibility. In the first story, professional motorcycle stuntman Luke discovers he has an infant son with…
Trance is the intimate, quiet, and reality-driven companion film to 2010′s Inception. An art auctioneer in London gets pulled into organized crime when he helps steal Goya’s Witches in the Air. He loses all memory of the theft after being…
End of Watch is a documentary-style crime thriller about a tight group of LAPD officers fighting against gang violence. Mexican drug cartels have moved into the neighborhood and violent crime is on the rise. The two main officers, Taylor and…
Director Lee Daniels follows up his Academy Award-nominated genre-fluid coming of age masterpiece Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire with the not-Academy Award-nominated genre-fluid pulpy noir psychedelic coming of age crime thriller The Paperboy. The film opens with…
If you could live in a world where criminals could be apprehended before they even committed a crime, would you? This is the central premise of Psycho-Pass, a new anime written for television and airing in time with the Japanese…
If a thriller is purely an intellectual exercise in misdirection but contains no tension or actual excitement, can it still be a successful thriller? Side Effects is an interesting experiment in a genre that, at least in America, seems to…
O is the narrator and central figure of Savages. She works for and dates Ben and Chon, two friends who run the largest independent medicinal marijuana farm in California. After receiving a threatening tape from the representative of a Mexican…
Skyfall, the latest James Bond film, has a lot of things going for it. It’s really funny. The cast is fantastic. The underlying premise is also very strong. It’s a beautiful film with a great look to it and will…
The year is 1979. A large militarized group of Iranian citizens storm the American embassy in retaliation for the United States taking in their deposed Shah for medical treatment. Six embassy workers escape to the Canadian ambassador’s home. Their escape…
Martin McDonagh has a darkly comedic view of the world. Despite all of the violence, corruption, and anger, he sees a twisted river of humor rushing through the lands. Nothing is off limits if it serves the purpose of exploring…
If an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, what happens when the first person to take revenge doesn’t go for equal punishment? What happens when he choose to torment the original perpetrator in a bizarre reconditioning experiment?…
David Cronenberg knows how to create a universe. Even when adapting his films from novels, there is never a doubt as to ownership of the film. Cosmopolis is an adaptation twice over, working with the premise of Don DeLillo’s 2003…
You don’t know how badly I want to love Drive. The crime/thriller from director Nicolas Winding Refn has to have some of the best editing, sound design, and structure of any action film I’ve seen in years. It’s uber-stylish and…
I decided to put the time in to watch the entirety of Death Note over the weekend. It is a 37 episode anime series adapted from the manga series of the same name. Essentially, it’s a twisted detective story/crime thriller…