Thrillers 'Best of All Time'

• Thrillers 'Best of All Time' are:                                                         (http://www.film4.com/special-features/top-lists/top-30-thrillers)

The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed

Dominated by Orson Welles' extended cameo as the charming Harry Lime, believed dead in post-war Vienna but returning to befuddle his old friend Holly Martins (Josepth Cotten), Carol Reed's noir thriller is one of the great British suspense films. Debate constantly rages as to how much of Welles' performance was either written or directed by him - including the famous 'cuckoo clock' monologue - but this speculation is a disservice to Graham Greene's excellent, cynical script. Beautifully capturing the atmosphere of a world where nothing seems to count any more, the film is helped immeasurably by Anton Karas' zither score. 

Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock

Had Rear Window been made by a director like Truffaut, it would have ended up being a meditation on voyeurism, the role of the cinema and that of the auteur behind it, and the participation of the audience in the relationship. As it was made by Hitchcock, it is all these things, but also a gripping and exciting thriller revolving around wheelchair-bound photographer LB Jeffries (James Stewart) and his suspicions that his neighbour Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife. Hitchcock moves from light social comedy to edge-of-seat suspense with alacrity, and is helped by a positively luminous Grace Kelly as Stewart's girlfriend. 

The Usual Suspects (1995) Bryan Singer

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.' With this showy Baudelaire quotation, Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie announced their intentions from the off. Beginning as a fairly standard thriller - the aftermath of a massacre sees the sole survivor, Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) interrogated by police - the film slowly acquires mythic dimensions as a legendary crime lord, Keyser Soze, becomes the pivotal figure in flashbacks of a heist planned by a gang of ne'er-do-wells, including Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) and McManus (Stephen Baldwin). Finally, one of cinema's most iconic twists reveals what, precisely, has been going on.

The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) Jonathan Demme

The popularity of Jonathan Demme's movie is likely to last as long as there is a market for being scared. Like “Nosferatu,” “Psycho” and “Halloween,” it illustrates that the best thrillers don't age. Fear is a universal emotion and a timeless one. But “Silence of the Lambs” is not merely a thrill show. It is also about two of the most memorable characters in movie history, Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter, and their strange, strained relationship (“people will say we're in love,” Lecter cackles).

Reservoir Dogs (1992) Quentin Tarantino

This film, the first from an obviously talented writer-director, is like an exercise in style. He sets up his characters during a funny scene in a coffee shop, and then puts them through a stickup that goes disastrously wrong. Most of the movie deals with its bloody aftermath, as they assemble in a warehouse and bleed and drool on one another.

Old Boy (2005) Park Chan-Wook

A man gets violently drunk and is chained to the wall in a police station. His friend comes and bails him out. While the friend is making a telephone call, the man disappears from an empty city street in the middle of the night. The man regains consciousness in what looks like a shabby hotel room. A bed, a desk, a TV, a bathroom cubicle. There is a steel door with a slot near the floor for his food tray. Occasionally a little tune plays, the room fills with gas, and when he regains consciousness the room has been cleaned, his clothes have been changed, and he has received a haircut.

North By Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock

Roger O. Thornhill ("ROT," played by Cary Grant) pulls Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) up the cliff and into bed, so that she becomes "Mrs. Thornhill" in a matter of seconds, in the course of two quick close-ups and a pull-back. The ever-tightening close-ups of Eve are used to disorient the viewer -- there are a couple seconds where you're in a confused into a sort of dream state -- and fuzz the transition from Rushmore into the train compartment (scene of an earlier dizzying kiss). But with each close-up we feel Roger and Eva getting closer (she tells him to "pull harder") until he pulls her right into the shot (and their honeymoon bed) with him. They are united within the same frame as man and wife. And they seem pretty tickled about it, too. Roger even gets a little halo above his head from a light fixture. Or is that just an "O" for his middle name, which stands for "nothing"?

We knew that Eve and Roger were going to get down off of Washington's neck somehow. Hitchcock doesn't bother to show us because it really doesn't matter. Time to wrap things up. He left Jimmy Stewart hanging at the end of the opening sequence in "Vertigo," but this time the transition has a visual logic ("pure cinematics") intended to be emotionally satisfying, not unsettling -- plot details be damned.

Se7en (1995) David Fincher

"Seven," a dark, grisly, horrifying and intelligent thriller, may be too disturbing for many people, I imagine, although if you can bear to watch, it you will see filmmaking of a high order. It tells the story of two detectives - one ready to retire, the other at the start of his career - and their attempts to capture a perverted serial killer who is using the Seven Deadly Sins as his scenario.

The Departed (2006) Martin Scorsese

Matt Damon is Colin Sullivan, the kid spotted in that soda fountain by mob boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). He enlists in the state police after Costello handpicks him so many years before as a promising spy. Leonardo DiCaprio is Billy Costigan, an ace police cadet who is sent undercover by Capt. Queenan (Martin Sheen) to infiltrate Costello's gang. Both men succeed with their fraudulent identities; Colin rises in the force, and Billy rises in the mob.  Instead of a kid who dreamed of growing up to be a mobster, we have two kids who grow up as imposters: One becomes a cop who goes undercover as a gangster, and the other becomes a gangster who goes undercover as a cop.


Fargo (1996) Joel and Ethan Coen

There is a scene in “Fargo” where it shows how it is going to take a story about pathetic criminals which also make it into a great movie. Our first shot of Chief Marge Gunderson (comes deep into the film. The crime elements are already in place. We've met Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), the auto sales executive with an absurd plan to have his wife kidnapped so he can steal most of the ransom. We've met Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and his silent, implacable partner (Peter Stormare), who have agreed to kidnap her for $40,000, plus a new car Jerry will steal off the lot. These are quirky, skewed, priceless characters, but when things go wrong and Marge and her husband, Norm (John Carroll Lynch), are introduced, the movie finds its center.