Sentences with phrase «exercise in suspense»

Flightplan (Touchstone Pictures) has a routine finish but up to that point is a more than decent thriller — or, given its taut self - containment, a more than decent Hitchcockian «exercise in suspense.»

It's a relentless exercise in suspense, the anxiety throbbing through my veins as events ran their course was almost overwhelming, the emotional shock of the final moments so all - encompassing they took me over completely.

Director Anthony Waller made quite a splash debut with the clever Hitchcockian exercise in suspense with Mute Witness in 1994, but hasn't exactly lived up to the promise shown in it since.

Family vacations became trips to the local splash pad; making mortgage payments became an exercise in suspense.

Not exact matches

I won't keep you in suspense about my opinion of this exercise: Mr. Reilly is full of prunes — that's an expression we old folks like to use.

De Niro's performance begins to seem more a matter of well - practiced gestures than real conviction, and the long, silly finale more an exercise in empty panache by director Tony Scott than a truly gripping suspense piece involving people we care about.

A tiring exercise in time - biding sadism (versus wit or suspense), inflated with shock editing, noisy effects and an angry score, like a thriller with road rage.

I was frustrated by Loktev's first narrative feature, Day Night Day Night, because her decision to elide the specific political motivations of her central character, a would - be suicide bomber, turns the film into a prolonged exercise in Hitchcockian suspense.

Other highlights in this strand include: the World Premiere of Thierry Poiraud's DO N'T GROW UP, a stylish and inventive film about a group of teens on an unnamed island who wake up to find their youth facility eerily abandoned; the World Premiere of Jon Spira's affectionate documentary ELSTREE 1976 about the bit performers who appeared in George Lucas» box office behemoth Star Wars; GHOST THEATER, the latest film from director Hideo Nakata, the forerunner of J - horror; GREEN ROOM, Jeremy Saulnier's latest exercise in edge of the seat suspense, starring Patrick Stewart, Imogen Poots and Anton Yelchin; returning for the third year running, Sion Sono screens LOVE AND PEACE, his tale of punk rock and talking turtles; and the fantastically prolific Takashi Miike's riotous, unruly gangster vampire concoction YAKUZA APOCALYPSE.

Instead, we merely have a bland exercise in globe - hopping suspense, complete with lackluster chase scenes, indifferent plotting, and rote xenophobia.

-- than THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and is a masterful exercise in claustrophobic suspense.