Movies in the Thriller genre

In the Heat of the Night was the first film – and not the last – to capture the Academy’s attention with its clear-eyed but hopeful examination of race relations in the South during the 1960s. Based on John Ball’s 1965 novel of the sam...

Since Liam Neeson began his action star career with Taken, most of his play-for-pay films have been depressingly generic. Although far from a revelation, In the Land of Saints and Sinners rises above many of those. Perhaps that’s because the...

In 1963, Frank Horrigan was among the "best and brightest" of the Secret Service, the personal choice of President Kennedy. On November 22 in Dallas, an afternoon that Horrigan will never forget, he became one of the few living agents to lose a pr...

Andrew Niccol is fascinated by the impact of futuristic technologies on society. His gripping feature debut, 1997's Gattaca, explored a civilization in which genetic tinkering rendered natural reproduction obsolete. With In Time, he is again looki...

Undoubtedly, some reviews are going to describe Inception as confusing. Such a description confounds me, and may be more indicative of how accepting people have become of screenplays that allow for no ambiguity and traverse plotlines by blazing tr...

One of the biggest mysteries about the Robert Langdon movies is why they don’t work. Dan Brown has a large, built-in fan base. There’s no lack of talent in the productions. The director is Oscar winner Ron Howard (who was near the zenith ...

The story told by The Infiltrator - an undercover cop begins to confuse his true identity with that of the “character” he plays - may be familiar but the film’s tone is not. As directed by Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer), this movi...

It’s apparent that writer/director Brandon Cronenberg has a fascination with what constitutes identity. That question, posed existentially without the involvement of religion or spirituality, lies at the core of both Cronenberg’s dark, trippy ...

Under the control of a different director, The Informant! might have been a reasonably straightforward thriller. With Steven Soderbergh at the helm, however, this has become a whimsical, semi-comedic romp, complete with a score by Marvin Hamlisch ...

At first glance, Inherent Vice might seem to be a detective story. Look a little closer, however, and it becomes clear that this is Paul Thomas Anderson's idea of a comedy. There's slapstick, lowbrow material, and enough strange characters an...