Genre: Thriller – Wimbledon Film Club

Holy Spider

Zar Amir Ebrahimi won Best Actress at Cannes for her role as an investigative journalist going undercover to track down a killer.
Pamfir

A family man returned from working abroad is dragged back into crime for one last job. Thrilling and compelling Ukrainian drama set deep in the Carpathians during carnival season, drawing on local folklore to great visual and dramatic effect. "Savagely cinematic, charged with feral energy" (Guardian)."Bold and brave, like its protagonist, PAMFIR gorges on its…
Riders of Justice

A revenge thriller that combines deadpan humour and violence will inevitably evoke the Coen brothers, while the dynamic of a scarred older man and a young girl on a revenge mission has its precursors in films such as Kiss-Ass and Léon (that the young girl is also called Mathilde is surely no coincidence in a…
Wild Men

Danish cinema is having a moment. The last two years have seen the release of award-winning films like Another Round, Riders of Justice, Flee and The Guilty. Wild Men co-writer and director Thomas Deneskov credits the Danish Film Institute and public support: “The funding system allows us to really play, and not worry about making…
The Harder They Come

The subsequent role of the film in the popularisation of reggae has detracted from the fact that it’s actually an entertaining crime thriller whose appeal owed much to its social authenticity, notably the use of patois, which gave the film the sense of a national conversation about poverty and opportunity a decade after the early…
The Big Heat

Police Sergeant Bannion is investigating the apparent suicide of a policeman, when he is suddenly ordered to stop. Bent coppers and systemic corruption drive this classic Hollywood noir, incisively directed by emigré Fritz Lang, visionary creator of the dystopian Metropolis and disturbing M. Essentially a 1950s B movie, The Big Heat has since attained enduring…
Drive

Accounts differ over how they came to collaborate on Drive, but Refn and Gosling both describe their close relationship as “telekinetic.” Their greatest difference is that Refn can’t drive. Most of the film is shot with wide-angle lenses. “I want you to see what’s behind the actor, what’s going on behind the character action,” says…
The Ritual

Four thirty-something university friends reunite for a hiking trip through the forests of north Sweden. Adapted by Joe Barton from the 2011 award-winning novel of the same name by British author Adam Nevill, this indy chiller is the first solo directing feature from American director David Bruckner. It stars Rafe Spall (son of Timothy), whose…
The Glass Key

Renowned crime novelist Dashiell Hammett’s tale of big-city political corruption The Glass Key was originally filmed in 1935, starring George Raft. This version was devised as a follow-up vehicle for its charismatic lead Alan Ladd, who had recently impressed in This Gun for Hire; and with Hammett’s stock in Hollywood high in the wake of…
Elle

Based on Betty Blue author Philippe Dijan’s novel Oh, this controversial revenge melodrama is the first film in 10 years from Dutch director Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, Total Recall, Robocop). Now in his late 70s, he retains his trademark blackly-comic, provocative approach to serious issues, in this case the effects of an attack…