Patriot Games‘ Patrick Bergin is Tiberon (get it?), a madman who clutches a pearl necklace, has Kick-Ass’ Yancy Butler draped on his arm, and channels John de Lancie. He’s collected these poor souls for reasons unbeknownst until the final five minutes; you can gather it’s for personal revenge. He forces them into his baby shark-infested […]
thriller
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The Heineken Kidnapping
Portraying Heineken, who passed away in 2002, is Rutger Hauer. As good as he was as the Hobo with a Shotgun, that flick is a throwaway goof, whereas this carries heft and gives him a better vehicle for the dramatic might he rarely gets to show — at least in American productions; this is a […]
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The Viral Factor
Best known on our shores as Kato to The Green Hornet — and on others, in the likes of Kung Fu Dunk — Jay Chou stars as Jon, the International Security Affairs agent in charge of preventing disaster. In the exciting, extended prologue fueled by plenty of firepower, he takes a bullet to the head. […]
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Hell
In the bleak thriller, director/co-writer Tim Fehlbaum imagines that our world of 2016 has ceased to exist — at least as we know it. Solar storms have raised the temperature by 50? Fahrenheit — something Oklahomans currently can sympathize with — and with resources bare, society has collapsed. Sisters Marie (Hannah Herzsprung, The Reader) and […]
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The Moth Diaries
Told from the perspective of 16-year-old Becca (Sarah Bolger, The Spiderwick Chronicles, In America), it chronicles a year at Brangwyn, a private school for girls. With the help of her best friend, Lucie (Sarah Gadon, A Dangerous Method), Becca is just starting to cope with her father’s recent suicide as the semester begins. A new […]
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Elevator
Last year’s M. Night Shyamalan-produced Devil, right? Well, yes, but also the new-to-DVD Elevator. Whereas supernatural forces were to blame in Devil, the indie Elevator boasts something even more evil: mankind. Going up in a metal box to a corporate fundraising party are nine people, including:• the CEO (John Getz, The Social Network) and his […]
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Penumbra
That sounds too good to be true, but stranger things have happened on the day of a total solar eclipse. And they will. Too bad Penumbra takes a full 51 minutes of its 90 to get near there. Only then does the Argentinian film approach any plot points that reveal themselves as thriller-esque. Before then […]
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Lovely Molly
The film opens with a deeply distraught Molly (newcomer Gretchen Lodge, in a fearless, go-for-broke debut) recording herself on Oct. 16, 2011, saying, “Whatever has happened, it wasn’t me.” Immediately, we jump back to “whatever.” Married just 13 months earlier, mall janitor Molly and her level-headed truck-driver hubby, Tim (Johnny Lewis, TV’s Sons of Anarchy), […]
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Headhunters
Compared to the continent of Europe, the rate of death by guns in America is six times higher. You wouldn’t know it based on the current wave of crime films from that half of the globe. Arguably kicked off by the worldwide success of Sweden’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, the movies of […]
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Elena
Moral bankruptcy looms over Elena, a noir-ish Russian-language drama that screens Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, but director Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return) would have us withhold judgment of the dreary, compromised characters he presents. In lengthy, often static shots, Zvyagintsev urges his audience to study every inch of the bleak […]