Thriller

The Handmaiden

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Handmaiden
  • IMDb: link

The Handmaiden

Presented in three acts, director Chan-wook Park‘s erotic thriller inserts a new handmaiden (Tae-ri Kim) into the home of a Japanese heiress (Min-hee Kim) in Victorian-era Korea as part of a larger plot to steal the woman’s vast fortune. Part crime drama, part thriller, and part love story, The Handmaiden offers a tale of complicated motivations (where almost no one is exactly who they initially appear to be), betrayal, greed, sex, and love.

The first act of the film is presented from the role of the handmaiden, who is actually a plant to help steer the heiress into marrying her partner (Jung-woo Ha) to steal her money away from the lonely woman and her perverted uncle (Jin-woong Jo) who has his own plans for that wealth. However, when the handmaiden and her mistress begin falling for each other it throws a wrench into everyone’s plans.

The film’s second act offers a slightly different take on events from the perspective of the heiress, offering new motivations and insights, and setting up the film’s final act in where each member of the small cast will face the consequences of their actions.

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Allied

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Allied
  • IMDb: link

AlliedThere’s so much wrong with Allied it’s hard to know where to start. At times director Robert Zemeckis‘ film is laughably, occasionally excruciatingly, bad. In its best moments Allied is ill-conceived, and it doesn’t have many of those.

Who thought it was good idea to set a WWII movie in Casablanca? The script by Steven Knight (Burnt, Seventh Son, Eastern Promises) plays like a bad romance novel mashed-up with a hollow spy thriller. The result might make for an okay trashy vacation read on the beach but fails spectacularly on film.

Reminding you immediately of Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Casablanca, spies Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) and Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard) meet in Casablanca. Assigned by their respective countries to work together to kill a high-ranking Nazi officer, the pair play husband and wife while falling into causal sex which I guess is supposed to look like love on film. (It doesn’t.) In a move that seems completely out of the blue, after completing their mission, Max invites Marianne to return to England with him and be his wife. And life is good, for awhile, until Max discovers that his wife may be a German spy.

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Anthropoid

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Anthropoid
  • IMDb: link

AnthropoidBased on the true events of Operation Anthropoid, the historical thriller tells the story of the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich by Exile Czechoslovak soldiers in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia during WWII. What begins as a two-man suicide mission by Jozef Gabčík (Cillian Murphy) and Jan Kubiš (Jamie Dornan) soon grows to include the remnants of the Czech resistance and a pair of young women (Charlotte Le Bon and Charlotte Le Bon) who will lose more than just their hearts to the cause.

After the action of Jozef and Jan’s arrival, the pair settle in for the long haul while bidding their time to take down the third highest-ranking Nazi and one of the leading minds behind the Final Solution. The script by director Sean Ellis and Anthony Frewin is a slow build to the film’s climactic scene inside Prague’s Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius. While the pacing might seem slow in spots, Ellis keeps the film moving and the payoff to the set-up is one of the more memorable action sequences of the year.

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Nerve

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Nerve
  • IMDb: link

NerveEmma Roberts stars as Venus “Vee” Delmonico, an amalgamation of every secretly-cool high school nerd ever, whose introverted personality is tested when she chooses to sign-up for a super-secret (AKA everyone knows about it) online game of truth or dare known as NERVE.

Against the advice of her friends (Emily Meade and Miles Heizer), Vee finds freedom in the dares far away from her over-protective mother (Juliette Lewis) and drab life. Paired with the mysterious Ian (Dave Franco) by the game’s Watchers, the two Players will be put through a series of increasingly bold and dangerous dares until the movie basically loses any interest in common sense or reality and devolves into a battle between the pair and the underground hacker community responsible for the game.

Starting with an interesting idea, and timed perfectly to coincide with the popularity of Pokémon GO, Nerve is a tonal nightmare that wants to be both a fun high school flick and dark techno thriller (which it doesn’t have the brains or technical expertise to pull off). While the first works at times, the later leads to an unimaginative final act and questionable conclusion.

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Our Kind of Traitor

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Our Kind of Traitor
  • IMDb: link

Our Kind of TraitorAs spy stories often do, Our Kind of Traitor opens in Russia. However, for our protagonist things begin far away from Moscow. On vacation with his wife Gail (Naomie Harris), Perry (Ewan McGregor) has a chance encounter with a Russian gangster named Dima (Stellan Skarsgård). One wild night later, Perry is presented with an offer he can’t refuse.

With the murder of his business partner and his entire family in the movie’s opening scene, Dima is desperate for any help he can get. As unlikely a candidate a college poetry professor is, Perry proves to be Dima’s only hope to save himself and his family from meeting the same gruesome fate. Convincing Perry to take a flash drive to MI6 on his return to London proves to be only the first step in getting the professor caught up in the world of the Russian money launderer.

Like many spy novels, Our Kind of Traitor offers various twists and turns including a British agent (Damian Lewis) who lies to get Dima’s information for personal reasons leading to further complications. And like many movies adapted from novels, I’m guessing the book was better.

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