Short, unadorned potboiler, written on the heels of James Dickey's Deliverance (1970), about three couples whose white water rafting trip on the Salmon River in Idaho is crashed by four violent escaped convicts. Not in the least introspective, yet not hardboiled, either, as hero Jack Trahey intermittently wonders whether murderers and rapists deserve to die. Reduced to two couples for a 1975 TV movie starring Vince Edwards (Ben Casey), Carol Lynley, Vic Morrow, and Neville Brand.
**
Short, unadorned potboiler, written on the heels of James Dickey's Deliverance (1970), about three couples whose white water rafting trip on the Salmon River in Idaho is crashed by four violent escaped convicts. Not in the least introspective, yet not hardboiled, either, as hero Jack Trahey intermittently wonders whether murderers and rapists deserve to die. Reduced to two couples for a 1975 TV movie starring Vince Edwards (Ben Casey), Carol Lynley, Vic Morrow, and Neville Brand.
0 Comments
** Dull, unengaging "thriller" about two viruses -- one bad, the other very bad -- that are stolen from a lab; the thief uses the first to demonstrate his power, saving the second to guarantee it. Our hero, a former intelligence agent, is introduced as a potential traitor, then all that is forgotten as he tracks down the bad guy. Director Sturges, eschewing close-ups, keeps the whole story at arm's length. Based on the novel by Alistair MacLean (writing as Ian Stuart). ***** Outstanding thriller starring Gregory Peck as a lawyer whose testimony sent a violent man to prison eight years ago. Now the man (Robert Mitchum) is out and seeking revenge on Peck through his wife and daughter. Excellent if not entirely faithful adaptation makes several changes to John D. MacDonald's novel The Executioners, but unlike Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake, which muddied the waters of the plot with infidelity and discord in the hero's family, the alterations here streamline the story and allow the tension and suspense to build to a very satisfying climax. Not as explicit as the later film, either, but just as rough in its evocative innuendo. Peck and Mitchum make weighty (rather than flashy) adversaries. Top-notch. *** Tongue in cheek spy thriller has professor (Gregory Peck) turning spy to translate a hieroglyphic cipher for one Arab group so that he can turn it over to another, but he can't decide whether the mistress (Sophia Loren) of one of the Arabs is helping him or setting him up. Mix of humor and action doesn't add up to much, yet is superficially entertaining. And when it isn't, you can make a game of spotting all the times director Donen shoots the action in reflections -- off mirrors, a chandelier, fish tanks, and so on. Based on Gordon Cotler's novel The Cypher. ***** Adroit adaptation of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac's novel The Living and the Dead sees acrophobic James Stewart hired to keep an eye on suicidal Kim Novak and falling in love with her. A mystery-thriller with supernatural overtones: Novak believes she is the reincarnation of her great-grandmother, who killed herself years before. An adult thriller on every level, this fascinating and unpredictable movie gets better with each new twist. By no means universally acclaimed on its initial release (with Variety's "Stef." going so far as to give away the last minute of the film, before tossing the whole thing off as "only a psychological murder mystery"), it was widely praised on its 1983 reissue and is now seen as one of the best movies ever made. With terrific performances all around, unflinching dialogue, and several standout scenes, including a haunting (and humbling) sequence among California's aged redwoods. *** FBI trainee Clarice Starling is tapped to interview incarcerated psychiatrist-turned-serial-killer Hannibal Lecter in the hope he can shed some light on a series of murders in which women are partially skinned; Lecter obliges by doling out just enough information to keep Starling on the case. Features a better ending than its predecessor, Red Dragon, but falls short in nearly every other respect, with a less interesting killer and a bifurcated plot (the primary purpose of which is to set up Harris' next book in the series, Hannibal). Still, a satisfactory thriller, and the greenhorn Starling (though unnecessarily gorgeous) is appealing enough. Jodie Foster stars in the movie adaptation, directed by Jonathan Demme. *** Creasy, an aging, disillusioned mercenary, accepts a change-of-pace job as the bodyguard for an 11-year-old girl, taking it personally when she is kidnapped by the Italian Mafia. Character-driven thriller that is really less about the action than tough-guy Creasy's emergence into the larger world of human contact. Quinnell takes his time, and if he isn't particularly perceptive here, he does succeed in bringing Creasy off as likable and easy to root for -- and even touching as he learns to relate first to the little girl then to a woman whose status as a divorcée severely limits her social prospects. Nevertheless, Creasy eventually goes into revenge mode, with violent and satisfying results. Followed by The Perfect Kill (1992) and three additional sequels. Adapted twice to film, first in 1987, then in 2004. ** The first Temperance Brennan book, in which Brennan is hardly recognizable as the inspiration for Emily Deschanel's character in the television series Bones and significantly less entertaining. Here she's a recovering alcoholic who likes cats; more interestingly, she's an American serving as the Director of Forensic Anthropology for the Canadian province of Quebec investigating a series of murders that may be linked to a serial killer. And that's about as interesting as it gets, as Reichs saddles her with a sexist, proprietary cop who's smart when he wants to be, dumb and exclusionary otherwise, and a generic killer we hardly ever see and who, when we do, behaves in generically stupid ways. Still, the book is reasonably well-written, if excessively detailed (though not regarding the science, oddly enough). But it's a slow starter that is almost embarrassing when it finally picks up a bit of steam: we want to berate Brennan for her foolishness in going into the field herself (she's much too smart for that), yet it's only when she does that the book becomes mildly involving. Followed, to date, by seventeen more books in the series, all written exclusively by Reichs, a forensic anthropologist herself. ** Highly fictionalized account of the case of Robert Hansen, the man who kidnapped, tortured, raped, and then hunted women in the Alaskan wilderness, finally killing them. At any rate that's what one would think the movie is about. Writer-director Walker, however, was perhaps so determined not to glorify Hansen -- he barely shows us anything the man actually did -- that he ultimately made a movie about someone else. With Nicolas Cage as Jack Halcombe, the detective who figures out there's a serial killer on the loose, and Vanessa Hudgens in the egregiously embellished role of intended victim Cindy Paulson who, after escaping Hansen's clutches, remains a target. All the faux excitement generated by Paulson's peril is wrapped up in a script that wanders aimlessly between Halcombe, Hansen, Paulson, and a couple of ancillary characters -- Paulson's pimp and a hired thug -- as if searching for its genre. Is it a police procedural, a thriller, or a redemptive tale of a brooding cop and a tragic hooker? You know it's confusing when the man who murdered at least 17 women isn't even the bad guy of the climax. *** Highly skilled ex-Intelligence agent finds new career as vigilante after prostitute gets beaten up by her Russian pimp, but the trail of evil leads him inexorably to bigger and bigger fish. Solid thriller all around, with Denzel Washington giving another excellent performance as a quiet man of power and resolve. Lacks only an emotional center to complement its hardboiled moral core. Based on the Edward Woodward television series of the same name. With Chloë Grace Moretz, Marton Csokas, and, in small roles, Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman. |
KinoLivresBooks. Movies. Mostly. Archives
July 2017
Categories
All
|