thriller

Segel and Weaving are clearly having the time of their lives, trading insults with the ease of a couple who’ve had years to sharpen them. The best running gag is physical: injuries accrue and stay, so by the closing stretch Segel genuinely looks like a man who’s been through everything the film has put him through. War of the Roses crossed with cartoon splatter, and mostly a delight. Less charming is the mid-film swerve into a rape threat played for tension. It doesn’t land, and the film would lose nothing without it. Plenty of fun regardless.

Inspired by a Guardian ranked list, I’ve decided to spend the summer rewatching John Cusack films—I’m not sure why, but I’ve been rather obsessed with him for about 35 years—and where better to start than one of the most insane films of the 90s. It was intended as an action film, but it works far better in hindsight as a dark comedy: a postmodern blend of Top Gun, The Rock, Speed, and Face/Off, celebrating and unwittingly sending up those sorts of films by sheer excess.

An absurd premise, stacked cast, bonkers juxtapositions of scene, score and dialogue, an audience set up to cheer for a cannibalistic child killer’s escape to freedom… I ought to watch this more often. Cusack plays his honest, moralistic US Marshal straight as the madness unfolds around him.

Kaufman’s least immediately legible film, and potentially his most rewarding for it. I didn’t clock how the Jake scenes and the janitor scenes connected until the credits rolled, which may be the point or may just be me being slow—either way, I want to come back to it, just not yet. I suspect a lot more clicks if you’ve got the full reference shelf to hand (David Foster Wallace, Pauline Kael, Wordsworth, A Beautiful Mind, the musicals, etc), rather than catching half like I did. Buckley and Plemons are fantastic, and Collette and Thewlis match them on a fraction of the screen time.

The plot creaks and Cruise does his earnest-sprinter routine, but the real pleasure is watching Pollack assemble the deepest supporting cast of the decade. Hackman (weary, rueful), Hal Holbrook’s avuncular menace, Ed Harris doing more with a sigh or a “fuck!” than most leads manage with a monologue, Holly Hunter stealing twenty minutes outright, plus Strathairn, Brimley, Busey, Tobin Bell, Sorvino, Dean Norris: every door that opens, someone you recognise walks through.

Most of Riz Ahmed’s acting happens through his eyes—Ash barely speaks aloud, his lines passed through a telephone relay operator. That constraint sharpens everything, and it’s all gruff exchanges, mailed packages and payphone protocols. Then the ending arrives, and it crumbles. A script this fastidious about process shouldn’t ask you to swallow quite that much.

Uses each of its 160 minutes. Digressions into folklore, a severed leg inside a shark, Jaws, Carnival, yet it’s compelling throughout. Moura anchors the sprawl with a fantastic performance. The real achievement is textural: the 1970s Recife of the dictatorship years is rendered so completely, with all the grain, the cars, the sweat-damp collars, the paranoid zoom-ins that you’d hope for. You’d believe it was unearthed from a vault rather than shot last year.

I expected a materialistic thriller and I got an iPhone ghost story about grief. Quietly great!

I’m not always the biggest Tarantino fan. The cleverness is too often the point, the references fold in on themselves, the secondary meaning always matters more than the first. But I’ll say this: he makes a hell of a good movie now and again.

20-odd years since I last saw this and I can only watch it through two modern lenses: roguelikes and LLMs. None of us knows what happened; we’re all just dying and resetting for each new run. And Leonard’s context window is tiny; the Polaroids are his system prompt.

Watched on Sunday March 1, 2026.

My gateway to the Coens. A VHS buy sparked by an Empire review. From there it was Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, and The Hudsucker Proxy in quick succession—possibly the same week.

Since then they’ve made slicker and more audacious films, but this remains my favourite.

Watched on Saturday February 14, 2026.

There is absolutely no need for either Damon or Affleck to be in this, although they do improve it.

100 minutes spent rooting for one of the worst guys

First viewing in maybe 15 years?

Chases the Heathers energy but adds a few too many plot twists and minutes.

The Game by way of The Truman Show and The Running Man. A weird one. Either a ⭐️⭐️ high-concept throwaway comedy or a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ portrait of deep, lonely paralysis. Maybe both, so I’ll meet in the middle.