Thriller

The Secret Agent

  • Title: The Secret Agent
  • IMDb: link

Set during the two-decade Brazilian military dictatorship, Wagner Moura stars as a former professor in hiding who returns to his home town to reconnect with his son (Enzo Nunes) and father-in-law (Carlos Francisco) and get the help of the local resistance to eventually flee the country. Filmed in location in both Recife and São Paulo, cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova used vintage cameras and equipment to help recreate the look of the 1970s in which the story unfolds.

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Meridian

  • Title: Meridian
  • IMDb: link

One of several B-movies Sherilyn Fenn made during during the late 1980s, Meridian was released originally on home video in 1990 (the first of many releases under a variety of titles over the years). Part sexploitation thriller and part fantasy horror, the script adapts ideas from the classic Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, while also weaving in ghosts along with its curse. While problematic, for a number or reasons including our lead falling in love with her rapist, the film has impressive production values for a B-movie with the castle, and the various statues and gargoyles across its lawn, making for a visually interesting backdrop to the proceedings.

Fenn stars as Italian-American Catherine Bomarzini who returns to her family’s castle for the first time in years, also reuniting with her more adventurous college friend Gina (Charlie Spradling) working nearby as an art restorer. Talked into seeing a traveling carnival just outside the castle grounds by Gina, who also invites the performers to dine with them in the castle over Cathehrine’s reservations, the night ends with the twin brothers (who hide the fact that there are two of them) drugging and each raping one of the women.

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A House of Dynamite

  • Title: A House of Dynamite
  • IMDb: link

Opening in theaters for a limited run before hitting Netflix in two weeks, director Kathryn Bigelow‘s A House of Dynamite is an intriguing film exercise of replaying the same 20-30 minutes after a nuclear missile is launched on the United States from enemies unknown. Focusing on a large ensemble of actors, perspective shifts and the timeline resets to show us the same events from other characters’ point of view.

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The Bone Collector

  • Title: The Bone Collector
  • IMDb: link

Feeling every bit the 90s movie it is, The Bone Collector throws Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie together in a crime thriller based on Jeffery Deaver’s novel. Washington stars as brilliant, but suicidal, quadriplegic homicide detective Lincoln Rhyme who sees wasted potential in Officer Amelia Donaghy (Jolie) who takes the kind of initiative he, but not her superiors, appreciate in preserving a crime scene. Not initially pleased with her reassignment, Amelia works as Rhyme’s legs in the field helping to track down a serial killer leaving obscure clues and removing bones from his victims.

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The Hunt for Red October

  • Title: The Hunt for Red October
  • IMDb: link

Easily the best adaptation of any Tom Clancy novel, 1990’s The Hunt for Red October starred Sean Connery as defecting Russian submarine captain Marko Ramius and Alec Baldwin as CIA analyst Jack Ryan who sniffs out the truth and finds himself thrown into the field to bring Ramius in before the United States or the Russians (claiming Ramius plans to fire his missiles on U.S.) can sink the stealth prototype submarine the Red October.

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