The author of The Girl on the Train on discovering Alison Bechdel, identifying with Physical, and her favourite new crime novelBorn in Zimbabwe in 1972, author Paula Hawkins studied PPE at Oxford University before joining the Times as a business journa…
Alan Johnson: ‘John Betjeman was wrong about Slough’
The former health secretary and acclaimed memoirist on his rock’n’roll past, how the Litvinenko poisoning inspired his new thriller, and how he’d have handled CovidAlan Johnson grew up in working-class Notting Hill, London, in the 1950s, raised by his …
Sweet Girl review – Jason Momoa’s Netflix action thriller is a non-starter
The Game of Thrones alum headlines a conventional on-the-run conspiracy thriller that boasts a nonsensical last act twistGetting one’s own sub-par Netflix action movie has become a rite of passage for male and female actors alike, regardless of fame, a…
Sonny Chiba, martial arts master and Kill Bill star, dies aged 82
Chiba made his name with the 1970s Street Fighter trilogy, before Quentin Tarantino’s admiration brought him fame in the westSonny Chiba, the Japanese martial arts movie star who found late-career renown in Hollywood after outspoken admiration from Que…
Don’t Breathe 2 review – dull and dingy home invasion horror sequel
A follow-up to 2016’s sleeper smash reunites us with the murderous blind antihero yet fails to recapture even the slightest bit of tensionAs box office continues to be wounded by both hybrid release strategies and the Delta variant (The Suicide Squad i…
Beasts Clawing at Straws review – jet-black comedy in arch Korean thriller
A long-suffering sauna worker finds a bag stuffed full of cash in a crime caper with perfectly pitched performancesWhen Korean director Bong Joon-ho won the best picture Oscar in 2020 for his near-universally acclaimed Parasite, he suggested that maybe…
Midnight in the Switchgrass review – Bruce Willis and Megan Fox firmly in 90s mode
The flashy editing and schlock-by-numbers plot leave not much to like here, including an uncomfortably exploitative element Everything about this tawdry thriller feels dated, from the serial-killer premise that was all the rage back in the 1990s, to th…
Stillwater review – thoughtful Matt Damon vehicle hiding inside an action thriller
Damon plays a man trying to extricate his daughter from the French penal system, with help from Call My Agent!’s Camille CottinConstruction worker Bill (Matt Damon) travels from Oklahoma to Marseille to visit his twentysomething daughter Allison (Abiga…
Zola review – pulp-factual viral tweet becomes an icily slick urban thriller
Aziah ‘Zola’ Wells’s viral story of her crazily dangerous 2015 trip to Florida in search of pole-dancing money is brought to the screen with seductive comedyIn 2015, a part-time dancer from Detroit called Aziah “Zola” Wells went viral with a cheeky Tw…
Old review – M Night Shyamalan’s beach thriller is all washed up
Gael Garcia Bernal and Vicky Krieps are all at sea in this holiday-from-hell dramaThere’s only a certain extent to which a director can flirt ironically with the clunky storytelling of a Tales of the Unexpected episode before it stops being ironic and …