Society of the Snow (4.5*)
Anatomy of a Fall (4*)
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (4*)
Nimona (3.5*)
The Creator (2.5*)
There were five Oscar thriller films for 2024 and I can recommend four of them. Society of the Snow (4.5*) is my favorite of these five films precisely because it sets up a very uncomfortable situation, hints at solutions in various ways, and asks the viewer to contemplate just how far they might go in order to survive. Spain’s candidate for International Feature fictionalizes the very real 1972 plane crash in the Andes of a rugby team flying to a match in Chile that ends up in a desperate battle for survival – several don’t make it. The thrill in this film is in seeing how human beings do whatever they need to do in order to survive…or not!
Anatomy of a Fall (4*) gives us more pleasurable thrills. We are shown the death of a father and husband early in the film and then find the wife and mother is on trial for the possible murder. By flashbacks during the court hearings we keep getting pieces of the puzzle as we have to decide whether it was murder, suicide, or just an accident. The effective script makes all of these options possible with various suggestions. The movie also examines the many misunderstandings that often happen in a marriage.
Physical action thrills are the specialty of Tom Cruise films and he delivers again with Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (4*). Doing most of his own physical stunts – with little CGI – we are taken on thrill rides from submarine warfare to car chases to a stunning motorcycle jump and ending in a train wreck that seems to go on forever. Like the best James Bond films, Cruise, as IMF head Ethan Hunt, goes from one dazzling situation to another leaving us breathless on the edge of our seats.
Our fourth “thriller”, Nimona (3.5*), is an animated film that tells an adventurous story, but I’m not quite sure it fits as a thriller. The character Nimona is a shapeshifter who uses that skill to get herself and her knight Ballister out of many different troubles. But Nimona’s intrigue as a character is in how she doesn’t quite fit a standard male/female gender definition. Indeed the writer of the original graphic novels on which the film is based is transgender and they are clearly using the Nimona character to explore their own gender identity. I suppose there is something thrilling in that, but it isn’t what the conventional idea of “thriller” means. But the movie is worth a view if you want to delve into this issue from an artistic point of view.
The last movie in this genre, The Creator (2.5*), involves a battle between opposing forces trying to acquire possession of a child robot that has super-human, and super-robot, powers. (And, like all robots in this world, it has a hole running through its head where its ears should be.). Especially in our own age of nascent A.I., I had great expectations for this film, but found that it seemed to have missed multiple opportunities to say something important about the relationship between humans and machines. The movie couldn’t find anything significant to talk about. Instead it borrowed action from older films, like Apocalypse Now and Star Wars movies. See this one only if you are one of those nerds that has to see every science fiction film ever made!
There were two movies from last year in this genre that I could recommend. The Batman (4.5*) was a pleasant surprise: There is a ticking time bomb here and it’s worth it to hear it out! And I liked the Knives Out sequel Glass Onion (4*) Daniel Craig is back as the goofy but brilliant detective with the Louisiana accent. The mystery is exposed early, but the fun is in how they got there.
So if you are into thriller films, here are six of them I can recommend – don’t fall off the edge of your seat!
