Phone Booth

1/16/2020

Phone Booth dials up its millennial tension through suspenseful confined calls. Joel Schumacher is a rather inconsistent director. Unusual, yet capricious. From ‘The Lost Boys’ to ‘Batman & Robin’, his career has been considerably scattershot in terms of quality. Phone Booth, whilst quintessentially being a product of its time, happens to be his most simplistic. An arrogant publicist is held hostage in a phone booth by a mysterious sniper who offers him an ultimatum. A hyperbolised exercise in absolution from an absurdist’s perspective, Schumacher delivers a nail-biting thriller from the confinement of one besmirched public booth. Unscrupulous sex shops on one side of the grubby New York street, and a religiously inclined series of posters dictating “who do you think you are?” on the ot

2/5/2023

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12/14/2024

"Phone Booth" starts off a bit slow in the first act, but it quickly picks up the pace and becomes more intense as it goes along. Colin Farrell and Forest Whitaker deliver fantastic performances that really bring the intensity to life. Kiefer Sutherland, who I know and love from 24, is chilling as the voice on the phone, adding a menacing layer even without much screen time. What’s also impressive is that the whole movie was shot in just 10 days, with two extra days for some additional shots. It’s amazing they created such a suspenseful film in such a short time. Overall, I really enjoyed it!