Thriller Research // "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" VS "Kill Bill Vol. 2"

Three men, one graveyard and a load of confederate gold. All of these combine to make one of the best duels within any western, and within cinema itself.


This scene, the finale in Sergio Leone's western classic "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" set a benchmark of style and tension, with the quintessential anti-hero- Blondie, and the man behind him- Clint Eastwood, assimilating into popular culture. This scene has been referenced many times and often hailed as one of the finest scenes in film-making, cementing the feature as a staple of cinema's history.

Thriller Research // Representation of Suburbia In Hollywood Film

"this is my neighbourhood, this is my street, this is my life"

Suburbia and the associated culture of superficiality, consumerism and ennui it is intrinsically linked to is a common feature of post-modern cultural criticism, and this extends and features extensively in film, especially those made by and about members of the post war, post baby boomer generation of the eighties and nineties, also known as generation X. Though there are many films dealing directly with these themes of angst and existentialism, many films link back heavily to these films using techniques and images such as lines and lines of identical uniform houses, bright colour filters, connoting hyper-reality and superficiality ,and stereotypes of nuclear families, pristine homes and bored consumers buying and smiling their ways through mid life crisis.

Thriller Research // Stereotypes In Jackie Brown

'Jackie Brown' (1997) is a crime thriller directed by Quentin Tarantino and Within its 154 minutes, many thriller conventions and stereotypes are referenced and subverted, particularly in relation to stereotypes of women, criminals and African Americans within Thrillers and within society. Tarantino, known for his referential style and wit, plays with and satirises many of the hallmarks of the films from genres as diverse as Film Noirs to Westerns, weaving a diverse tapestry of inter-textuality and film history. Jackie Brown is perhaps one of the best examples of Tarantino's directing at its most referential, calling back heavily to the Blaxploitation film movement of the 1970s, with its primarily black cast and funk and soul soundtrack. A diverse range of narrative and visual techniques are used to reference a wide range of conventions within the genre and film history.

Thriller Research // Essex Boys Opening Shot Analysis

Essex Boys Opening Analysis by LarsosMedia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ05xM4bhB0 (0:00-5:46)

Thriller Research // No Country For Old Men (2007)





"In rural Texas, welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss discovers the remains of several drug runners who have all killed each other in an exchange gone violently wrong. Rather than report the discovery to the police, Moss decides to simply take the two million dollars present for himself. This puts the psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh, on his trail as he dispassionately murders nearly every rival, bystander and even employer in his pursuit of his quarry and the money. As Moss desperately attempts to keep one step ahead, the blood from this hunt begins to flow behind him with relentlessly growing intensity as Chigurh closes in. Meanwhile, the laconic Sherrif Ed Tom Bell blithely oversees the investigation even as he struggles to face the sheer enormity of the crimes he is attempting to thwart. - --IMDB user Kenneth Chisholm

No Country For Old Men (2007)

Written and directed by: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Starring: Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin

Thriller Research // Dead Man's Shoes (2004)

"Richard returns home from military service to a small town in the Midlands. He has one thing on his mind: revenge. Payback for the local bullies who did some very bad things to his brother. At first his campaign employs guerrilla tactics, designed to frighten the men and put them ill at ease. But then he steps up his operation, and one by one these local tough guys are picked off by the terrifying angel of vengeance that Richard has become."

Dead Man's Shoes (2004)

Dir: Shane Meadows

Screenplay: Paddy Considine & Shane Meadows

Starring: Paddy Considine, Toby Kebbell, Gary Stretch

Thriller Research // Battle Royale (2000)

"Forty-two students, three days, one deserted Island: welcome to Battle Royale. A group of ninth-grade students from a Japanese high school have been forced by legislation to compete in a Battle Royale. The students are each given a bag with a randomly selected weapon and a few rations of food and water and sent off to kill each other in a no-holds-barred (with a few minor rules) game to the death, which means that the students have three days to kill each other until one survives--or they all die" -from IMDB

Battle Royale (2000)

Dir: Kinji Fukasaku

Screenplay: Kenta Fukasaku

Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda

Summer Task // Film Noir

Black Cinema 

Film Noir (translated literally as black cinema) as a genre refers to a period of stylish Hollywood crime drama ranging from the early 40’s to the late 50’s, famous examples of the genre include Carol Reed’s  ‘The third man’ (1949) and John Huston’s  ‘The Maltese Falcon’ (1941). Films of the genre typically encapsulated dark, cynical narratives based on crime fiction novels of the great depression containing moody detectives with swanky hats and seductive ‘Femme fatales’ with cigarette addictions, as well as a low key black and white aesthetic borrowed from German expressionistic cinema  and a taste for the smoothest of jazz.

Both La Confidential and La Noire were produced long after the classic period of Film Noir, but as may be clear from the setting, character types and the themes presented within the short clips they are both in debt to the classic genre. They conform in very similar ways to the conventions of the film noir genre from the gritty urban location, 1940’s time period and jazzy soundtrack. They bear a common resemblance to the cynical attitudes classic to the film noir genre as the narrators scoff at the idea of Los Angeles as some form of urban paradise, although this is more evident in the La Confidential clip, a self-referential nod to film noir commonly used in many other neo-noir’s.