Thriller

[7] Kerwin Mathews (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) stars an American painter who strikes up an affair with mother and daughter barkeeps in rural France. He agrees to help them break their patriarch from an asylum where he’s been sentenced for murdering the daughter’s rapist with a blowtorch four years earlier. They go through with the plan, but come to regret it when they discover …

[7] Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) gives a powerhouse performance as a ruthless, court-appointed legal guardian who preys upon her elderly wards, draining their savings and selling off their assets for her own financial gain. But she finally meets her match in an elderly woman (Dianne Wiest) with a mysterious past whose dangerous acquaintance (Peter Dinklage) threatens to topple the profiteering empire Pike has built for …

[3] Boris Karloff stars as a doctor who transplants the brain of a gangster into the body of a dying professor (both played by Stanley Ridges), then tries to get the convalescing professor to remember — with his new brain — where the gangster hid half a million dollars. Once they visit the gangster’s old stomping grounds, the memories come flooding back and the professor …

[6] Elisabeth Shue (Adventures in Babysitting) stars as a scientist working on an invisibility experiment for the U.S. military in this thriller from director Paul Verhoeven (Spetters, RoboCop). Things are looking good until her brilliant cohort and ex-boyfriend, played by Kevin Bacon, decides to be the first human subject. He successfully becomes invisible, but the transformation also weakens his state of mind and moral grounding. …

[6] Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight) directs Sylvester Stallone in this serviceable, high altitude actioner about a mountain rescue team that gets embroiled with deadly thieves searching for money they’ve lost in the snow-topped Rockies during an airplane heist. Janine Turner (Northern Exposure) and Michael Rooker (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) play Stallone’s estranged team members, both bitter at him …

[7] Robert Forster (Jackie Brown, The Black Hole) stars as a police detective in this better-than-average monster movie about a giant alligator that terrorizes the Chicago suburbs. Screenwriter John Sayles (Passion Fish, Lone Star) probably deserves most of the credit, giving Forster and co-stars just enough character and backstory to elevate them above the two-dimensional pawns you usually find in these flicks. He also makes …

[4] Debra Winger plays a federal investigator on the trail of a ‘black widow,’ a woman (Theresa Russell) who marries and murders one rich man after another, collecting inheritances as she goes. It’s great to see Debra Winger in anything, even if she’s under-utilized. Under-utilization is actually a recurring theme in the making of Black Widow. Russell’s mysterious character is also under-written. Supporting players the …

[7] After an earthquake devastates their facilities at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, a handful of deep sea drillers decide their only chance of surviving is to walk along the ocean floor to another nearby facility miles away. But the journey becomes even more perilous when they discover mysterious creatures unleashed by their drilling efforts are preying on them. Kristen Stewart (Twilight) heads up …

[7] Director Alexandre Aja (High Tension) serves up a father/daughter survival thriller that takes place primarily in a basement full of alligators during a hurricane. Sound preposterous? Well, that’s part of the charm. But Aja and screenwriters Michael and Shawn Rasmussen give the tale enough verisimilitude to suck you in and make you root for these people — and their dog, too. Kaya Scodelario and …

[8] Chameleon master craftsman Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, The Lost Weekend) staked a name for himself and elevated low-budget film noir to new levels of respectability with his Hitchcockian suspense yarn Double Indemnity. The film, co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, stars Fred MacMurray as an L.A. insurance salesman who conspires with an unhappy housewife, played by Barbara Stanwyck, to collect a massive insurance payout …

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