Coming home on blu-ray and DVD today is the wonderful family film from Disney, Christopher Robin, that takes a page from Spielberg’s Hook, and posits what if Christopher Robin (Ewan MacGregor) grew up and left he Hundred Acre Wood, Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and the rest behind. Directed by Marc Forster, the film, set in post…
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1995) – The Visitor, and Hippocratic Oath
Station log: stardate unknown Micheal Taylor pens this exemplary episode that first aired on 9 October, 1995. Tony Todd plays an adult Jake Sisko as we find ourselves in a temporal tale that is one of the best of the series. A young writer, Melanie (Rachel Robinson) knocks on an elderly man’s door, and we…
Lifeforce (1985) – Tobe Hooper
Special effects wizard John Dykstra, legendary composer Henry Mancini, Alien scribe Dan O’Bannon, Sir Patrick Stewart, and the lovely Mathilda May are all part of Tobe Hooper’s sci-fi vampire movie. And you’d think that with credits like that, including Steve Railsback and Peter Firth would make this a solid entry in the Monsters in the…
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) -Jacques Demy
I was a little unsure of what to expect when I settled in for the next big film in DK Canada’s The Movie Book. IMDB describes it as a drama, musical and a romance. All of which I am okay with, I was just wondering how it would translate for an English viewer who would…
Space: 1999 (1976) -Catacombs of the Moon, and Space Warp
Apparently evangelicals (of a sort) continue to exist in space when they rear their head in this episode of Space: 1999 written by Anthony Terpiloff. It first aired on 25 November, 1976. Patrick Osgood (James Laurenson), one of the engineers on Alpha, is looking for teranium in the depths of the moon. Just a few…
Near Dark (1987) – Kathryn Bigelow
If Fright Night got me into horror movies then Near Dark, the next vampire film in DK Canada’s Monsters in the Movies book showed me that the undead could be vicious, occasionally hate their existence and live on the edges of the night. Despite the ending (actually the return to humanity sequence) of the film,…
Star Trek: Voyager (1995) – Projections, and Elogium
Captain’s log: stardate 48892.1 Johnathan Frakes directs this Doctor (Robert Picardo) episode that was written by Brannon Braga and first aired on 11 September, 1995. When the holographic Doctor is activated, he discovers the ship is practically deserted but for Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), Torres (Roxann Dawson) and Neelix (Ethan Phillips) after a Kazon attack. With…
Miami Vice (1986) – One Way Ticket, and Little Miss Dangerous
Vice detectives Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) and Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Micheal Thomas) go after lawyers and drug dealers in the first episode of Miami Vice this week. Written by Craig Bolotin and John Mankiewicz, this episode first aired on 24 January, 1986. When an attorney friend is murdered, Sonny discovers that it was because they…
The Haunting of Hill House (1963) – Shirley Jackson
Having just finished the amazing Netflix series (seriously, watch it) and loving the Robert Wise film, I felt it was time to re-read the original novel, something I’m sure I hadn’t done for about twenty years. In fact, I think I read it just before that abomination by Jan De Bont was released in 1999….
