Thriller

Vicious

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

Vicious DVD reviewRecently released on home video, Vicious is nearly unwatchable. The film, if it can be called that, answers the question of what a TBS attempt to recreate a Cinemax After Dark movie might look like. Written and directed by Jason Rosenblatt, Vicious stars Angela Nordeng as law student Belle White who pays her bills by stripping under the stage name of Roxy. The film primarily focuses on a pair of customers who frighten Belle, one overtly by stalking her, and the other passive-aggressively by consistently odd behavior hoping to convince Roxy to quit the business.

The film is presented as a thriller of our protagonist falling into despair and fighting back. The result is far less interesting. Troubled by low production cost, inconsistent cinematography, questionable acting and dialogue, and a meandering plot, Vicious is a mess. For a thriller, it’s far from thrilling. For a film about strippers, it’s far from titillating. For a drama, it’s far from dramatic. Because the film is hyper-serious about its content, this dog of movie can’t even make it into the realm of cheesy fun. About the only thing the film is good for is a cure for insomnia.

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Possessor

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

Possessor Blu-ray reviewWriter/director Brandon Cronenberg‘s Possessor is a gory techno-thriller set in a world not unlike our own where a company has devised a method to enter a person’s mind and take control of their body. Rather than use the technology for good, it sells it for profit by making assassins out of anyone they can get their hands on. Andrea Riseborough stars as agent Tasya Vos, although mostly we see other actors playing the bodies she has been given control. As the film opens we can already begin to see the effect of the body swapping on Tasya both in detachment to her real life and during her job which foreshadows larger problems to come.

Possessor is at times a brutal film, and Cronenberg never shies away from gore (even going so far to hold scenes longer than necessary to illicit a response from his audience). Jennifer Jason Leigh also stars as Tasya’s handler, whose team scrambles when something goes wrong with the latest assignment leaving her agent trapped in another body.

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A Call to Spy

/ / Home Video
  • Title: A Call to Spy
  • IMDb: link

A Call to Spy movie reviewSet during WWII, Stana Katic stars as Vera Atkins charged with finding and recruiting women to be spies for the Special Operations Executive in order to obtain vital information in Nazi-controlled Europe. Trained in sabotage and subversion, the SOE’s agents are sent in to build spy networks and relay information back about the enemy.

Based on true events, A Call to Spy focuses on two of Vera’s recruits Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas), who would become known to the Germans as “the most dangerous of all Allied spies,” and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte) who became the first female wireless operator sent into occupied France.

A Call to Spy is an old school spy thriller about normal people standing up to do the extraordinary when called upon to serve a country that doesn’t value them as much as it should. Director Lydia Dean Pilcher and screenwriter Sarah Megan Thomas not only shed light on the women’s accomplishments but also highlight the sexism and racism they fought both abroad and at home by those questioning their loyalty and usefulness as part of the war effort.

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The Lie

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Lie
  • IMDb: link

The Lie movie posterThe Lie is a joyless exercise featuring Peter Sarsgaard and Mireille Enos as a pair of divorced parents who decide to to work together to hide the fact that their daughter (Joey King) is responsible for the death of one of her friends (Devery Jacobs) during a contrived set-up in the film’s tiresome first act.

The film features the parents making a series of bad decisions, including trying to throw suspicion on the missing girl’s father (Cas Anvar) as the reason for her disappearance by painting him as a child abuser while forcing their daughter to echo the lies to the police. Sarsgaard and Enos do what they can, but there’s not much here to work with, while King is stuck with a character the script can never properly come to terms with. Melodramatic as a tween with her first phone, events spiral out of control and even an absurd late twist can’t save what is best forgotten.

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Unhinged

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

Unhinged movie reviewWhile far less clever than Falling Down, the new thriller from director Derrick Borte and screenwriter Carl Ellsworth plays on some of the same themes with a protagonist completely out of control. The difference here is that “The Man” (Russell Crowe), as he’s credited, is never internally explored. The perspective of the film is shown through the eyes of his victims as he targets friends and family of a woman (Caren Pistorius) for the slight of daring to honk at him in traffic and refusing to apologize.

Prior to introducing Rachel (Pistorius) and her family, the film opens with The Man’s brutal attack on another home. Obviously, he has anger management issues. After targeting Rachel, he gets an inordinate amount of information from her cell phone in short period of time, helped out by the single mother not locking her phone and people making calendar appointments on spur-of-the-moment get togethers. Unhinged isn’t the kind of movie you’ll want to start questioning or dissecting how likely something may have occurred (like the chance second meeting at the gas station) as it relies completely on the rage of Crowe’s character and the pressure it can apply.

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