Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) Review
I have watched this more times than is defensible. A film about a computer, a requirements document and a mountain, and the machine is never once broken.
Tag: Paranoia
Paranoia stories work because the audience cannot verify anything either. This tag collects reviews of films built on paranoia and the craft of withholding certainty from a reader.
1990sThe Arrival (1996) Review
The Arrival (1996) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A radio astronomer finds a signal and works out that the aliens landed decades ago and are quietly heating the planet to suit themselves. It cost twenty-five million…
1960sThe Manchurian Candidate (1962) Review
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Frankenheimer made a political thriller that is also a comedy, a nightmare and a story about a mother, released it thirteen months before Dallas, and Angela Lansbury…
1970sThree Days of the Condor (1975) Review
Three Days of the Condor (1975) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A man who reads books for the CIA goes out for lunch and comes back to find everybody he works with shot. The film changed…
Cold WarThe Greatest Spy Films
Twenty spy films covering the full spectrum from Bond's glamour to le Carré's paranoia — procedural thrillers, Cold War tragedies, satires, and action cinema. Every spy film is answering one of two questions: what would it feel like to be…
1970sFutureworld (1976) – Review
Futureworld (1976) earns its 7 as a lean 1970s paranoid thriller. Cheesy, dated, and genuinely unsettling.
1980sThe Thing (1982) Review
The Thing earns its 9.5 primarily through Rob Bottin's practical effects work, which remains the gold standard for creature design in horror cinema more than forty years later. Carpenter built something rare: a film where the monster is original, the…
1970sInvasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Review
The 1978 Body Snatchers remake improves on the 1956 original in one key respect: it doesn't flinch at its own ending. Philip Kaufman follows the premi.