TRANCE is a thing of grotesquely fascinating beauty, an evolved noir designed to provoke and to disturb in equal measure as it toys with the audience’s notions of absolute certainty. It begins with the winsome James McAvoy addressing the audience directly, his sadly earnest face a perfect picture of open honesty as he sets up… Read More »
DERAILED
Clive Owen is an actor of enormous charisma, a tough vulnerability, and a not inconsiderable amount of animal magnetism, none of which are on display in DERAILED, a ridiculously overplotted and underthought exercise in muddled filmmaking. Blame director Mikael Hafstrom for quashing Owen’s appeal along with everything else that threatens to light up his film.… Read More »
EASTERN PROMISES
EASTERN PROMISES is a gloriously dark and compelling thriller that plays cat and mouse with its audience the way that the characters involved play cat and mouse with each other. The tension, though, in this well-plotted suspense yarn arises not so much from the evil that the villains purvey, it’s the way that the underworld… Read More »