Tag Archives: thriller

The Gordon Willis Frame

Gordon Willis was one of cinema’s greatest artists. Regardless of genre, his style and technique were so singular he should be regarded as a cinematrograph-auteur.

The Hitchcock Gallery

This short video-essay compares various themes and techniques that Alfred Hitchcock developed over his career. With 40 titles, it includes every feature film Hitchcock made from 1934 through to his retirement in 1976.

396. L’Avventura

With this modernist masterpiece, Michelangelo Antonioni told a story that abandoned its initial plot. Booed at Cannes, it paved the way for a new cinematic form.

358. Memories of Murder

Bong Joon-Ho embraced every cliché of the serial killer genre to examine masculinity, institutional repression and national identity.

356. Hidden

Michael Haneke asks audiences difficult questions yet never provides easy answers. When he calls his film Hidden, can we expect anything different?

344. The Double Life of Veronique

Krzysztof Kieślowski avoids all the clichés of doppelgängers, doubles and lookalikes to deliver a meditation on freedom.

225. Diva

Like many other cult classics, the French thriller Diva was almost still born. Rejected by the French critics and public, it only got a second lease of life in the US.

219. Klute

With its progressive attitude toward gender and sexuality, is Alan J Pakula’s 1971 film more a character study than it is a psychological thriller?

182. Gaslight

Made in 1944, Gaslight is an Oscar-winning melodrama concerning madness and murder. The film itself is guilty of attempted homicide.

168. Rear Window

He was called The Master of Suspense (a title he coined himself), but for all the thrills did Alfred Hitchcock not make rom-coms wrapped inside mysteries?

162. True Detective

Whether it be theatre, film or TV, all stories need good plots and performances. But what elevated True Detective Season 1 to the status of classic was its structure.

119. Annie Hall

You can divide Hollywood rom-coms into two eras; before and after Annie Hall. The film also marked the arrival of one of America’s most individual artists.

88. Bullitt

With Steve McQueen in the title role, a legendary car-chase and a score by Lalo Schifrin, Peter Yates’ Bullitt still oozes as much cool now as it did in 1968.


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