Irrational Man (2015)

Not only is this 2015 Woody Allen movie thematically similar to his 2005 Match Point - another of his movies that references Crime and Punishment -- but this movie's Joaquin Phoenix (a tormented philosophy professor who is reinvigorated by murder) very closely resembles that movie's Jonathan Rhys Meyers, which makes you wonder if Woody Allen hasn't churned out so many films so often that he has lost track of which ideas he has already committed to celluloid, but thankfully he casts Emma Stone as a college student in the murderous professor's thrall and she is a fresh element and is as always captivating.

★★★☆☆

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Swimming Pool (2003)

A mystery writer on deadline retreats to her publisher's Spanish hacienda to really engross herself in writing but instead becomes engrossed in the publisher's wayward sex-kitten daughter unexpectedly there - she creates mayhem but will surely provide enough fodder to ease the writer's writer's block, in this suspense thriller full of all the right ingredients but sadly undercooked.

★★★☆☆

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Nocturnal Animals (2016)

After 19 years apart from her first husband, an insomniac and deeply unhappy art dealer receives from him a draft novel, a devastating tale of loss she suspects conceals a sinister meaning, in this slow burn thriller with a, sadly only deceptively, arresting opening scene and first half.

★★★☆☆

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The Ghost Writer (2010)

A satisfying, moody thriller from Roman Polanski about a man, Ewan McGregor, who takes over the task of ghostwriting an ex-Prime Minister's memoirs after the former ghostwriter tasked with the job mysteriously dies.

★★★★☆

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