Thriller

Scream 2

  • Title: Scream 2
  • IMDb: link

Hitting theaters less than a year after the original, Scream 2 has all the marks of a sequel including bigger, gorier, and more over-the-top kills all while shoehorning in even more notable faces and cameos as the franchise follows Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) to college where the release of the movie Stab (loosely based on the events of the first film) lead to a new Ghostface (Roger Jackson) hunting Sidney, Randy (Jamie Kennedy), Dewey (David Arquette), and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) along with new faces such a sorority girl Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sid’s roommate Hallie (Elise Neal) and new beau Derek (Jerry O’Connell).

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Scream

  • Title: Scream (1996)
  • IMDb: link

The brainchild of Kevin Williamson, 1996’s Scream enjoyed playing with the concepts of a classic slasher flick often satirizing them when still  using them to tell the story of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her friends dealing with a serial killer in a Halloween costume murdering their way through their small California town. Director Wes Craven hits the right notes to stage and sell the concept for maximum effect while the characters often remark on the various aspects of horror movies culminating in the movie-obsessed Randy (Jamie Kennedy) summarizing rules which the franchise would live by for decades to come.

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Black Bag

  • Title: Black Bag
  • IMDb: link

An evening with the Woodhouses would certainly be a memorable experience. More John le Carré than James Bond, Black Bag is a slow burn spy thriller that starts by introducing us to George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) who learns one of five intelligence officers is responsible for the leak of top-secret software called Severus. The suspects include Freddie (Tom Burke) and his girlfriend Clarissa (Marisa Abela), psychologist Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris) and her current fling James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), and George’s wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett).

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Zero Day – Episode 1

  • Title: Zero Day – Episode 1
  • IMDb: link

The opening episode of Netflix’s Zero Day introduces us to former President George Mullen (Robert De Niro) who after a cyber attack is tapped by the current President (Angela Bassett) and given extraordinary powers to uncover those responsible. Presenting Mullen as the last politician who successfully bridged the two parties, the political thriller early on feels like a cautionary tale of the potential of abuse of power even in the best hands, with the problems of Hollywood not knowing how technology works and relying on “something bad happening involving computers” to be our boogeyman. Presenting Mullen as an unreliable protagonist in the first episode who is either being gaslight or is suffering from early-stage dementia (or possibly both) simply muddies the water before the show ever gets off the ground to very mixed results.

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