detective
The chemistry between Bogart and Bacall and Howard Hawks’ storytelling have turned The Big Sleep into a lasting classic.
Year of the Rabbit thrives in its beautiful blending of cinematography, music, and script that all come together to create an experience you do not want to miss.
Clement Tyler Obropta looks back at four BBC Agatha Christie adaptations, all reimagined for the small screen by Sarah Phelps.
Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse, though not quite a detective story, seems designed to test the genre’s rules, and also my patience.
If The Maltese Falcon is a work of high Modernism, then The Big Sleep has more in common with Postmodernism, with an obsession with the simulacrum of detective stories, not the quest for truth.
Out of Blue can’t be faulted for its ambitions, but there’s a lack of focus, oscillating wildly between genres and never satisfying as any.
Film Inquiry spoke to director Carol Morley about Out of Blue, why she chose to adapt a Martin Amis novel, and why Patricia Clarkson is a gay icon.
Despite its ambition and occasional impressive visual flourish, Monochrome is wrecked by its slow pace, poor writing and dull, unconvincing characters.
Koreeda Hirokazu’s intimate family drama After the Storm captures a side of Tokyo rarely seen in cinema, as well as beautifully depicting a turbulent familial relationship with glimmering hope.
Despite a hopeful change of pace for Jim Carrey, Dark Crimes doesn’t deliver, suffering from choppy editing, a lack of dynamic characters, and a generic murder mystery story.
Chen Sicheng’s Detective Chinatown 2 is a manic pop-fuelled explosion of fast-paced crime-solving, fringe supernatural developments and a brash indulgence in outdated stereotypes.
Crooked House was one of Agatha Christie’s best novels- so it’s a treat to finally see this subversive work translated to the big screen.
If it were not for Paul Thomas Anderson, there is a (very) good chance I wouldn’t be interested in writing about movies. It is because of his films that I take time to write for this humble little website. When I was a high school senior in 2009, my interest in movies inflated dramatically, and I watched a movie just about every night.
There is something so endlessly fascinating about the character of Sherlock Holmes that prevents him from ever becoming boring to audiences, no matter how different Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective creation is to the pop-culture tastes of the time. The source material is so undeniably entertaining that even if it gets revised as an action blockbuster, as seen in Guy Ritchie’s two recent movies, or transplanted into the modern day, on Steven Moffat’s BBC series, it never loses any of its original charm. No matter how unique a new adaptation of the stories may be, Doyle’s stories are so widely revered that nearly every adaptation of them remains faithful to the essence of the characters, even if they may take a few liberties.