Walking away with Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Sound, Platoon is the next recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film following my screening of Apocalypse Now. The film serves as a commentary on the horrors of war, even as two sergeants seem to be fighting for the…
Month: December 2017
The Deer Hunter (1978) – Micheal Cimino
Micheal Cimino’s examination of the effects of war, framed around the Vietnam conflict and a small industrial town in Pennsylvania is the next recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of Apocalypse Now. Laying out the scars, physical, mental and unseen that affected those who fought in it,…
Doctor Who (Matt Smith) – The Wedding of River Song, and The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe
The Wedding of River Song, which aired on 1 October, 2011, was penned by Steven Moffat, and brought the sixth series of the relaunched Doctor Who to a close. Things are strange from the off, as the Doctor (Smith) seems to be stuck in a bit of an alternate timeline where all of time seems…
12 Years a Slave (2013) – Steve McQueen
What kind of species are we that we can enslave our fellows? There are two scenes in McQueen’s masterpiece 12 Years a Slave, that shook me to my core. The first was a scene in which Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Solomon Northup is left to hang, while life goes on around him, and another when Solomon is…
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1991) – Devil’s Due, and Clues
Captain’s log: stardate 44474.5 With an airdate of 4 February, 1991, this episode, written by Philip LaZebnik, from a story by LaZebnik, and William Douglas Lansford, has always been a fun one for me. Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Data (Brent Spiner) find themselves in a mystery when they answer a call from a planet that…
The Twilight Zone (1964) – Night Call, From Agnes – With Love, and Spur of the Moment
It’s back into the depths of The Twilight Zone as I continue my exploration of The Complete Series, now on blu-ray from Paramount Pictures. Up first this week is Night Call. This episode originally aired on 7 February, 1964, and was penned by the legendary Richard Matheson. Elva Keene (Gladys Cooper) is living a nightmare,…
Coraline (2002) – Neil Gaiman
It’s always a delight to dig into a Neil Gaiman story, and I have come to this one after seeing the movie a number of times. I knew going in it would be slightly different, so I was eager to see what the original text would bring me. And what it brought me was a…
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) – Rian Johnson
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… Every time I see those words on a big screen, I get a shiver of anticipation, and if I’m being honest, a little teary-eyed. There is an inherent nostalgia when it comes to Star Wars. I can’t tell you what I had for dinner two…
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1991) – Data’s Day, and The Wounded
Captain’s log: stardate 44390.1 Airing on 7 January, 1991, this Data (Brent Spiner)- centric episode did something that hadn’t been done in Star Trek before. It gave us a ‘day in the life’ episode. It also further cemented Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney) in the Trek Universe. Written by Harold Apter and Ronald D. Moore, the…
Dunkirk (2017) – Christopher Nolan
When I saw Dunkirk in IMAX this summer, I came out of the theatre with a one word review, “Wow.” Now Christopher Nolan’s brilliant retelling of the British evacuation from Dunkirk comes home on blu-ray and DVD thanks to Warner Brothers. Running at a taut hour and forty five minutes (Nolan’s shortest film since Following),…
The Mind Reels 