Rififi (1955) – Jules Dassin

  I love when the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film brings me a film that I’d never heard of, and then makes me fall in love with it. I dove back into the thriller and crime chapter of the book and was promptly introduced to this brilliant French film that tells of the…

Issues Vol. 13

  It’s a smaller week for the West End Comics pull list, but Kirk made sure to recommend a new title to me, and anyway, in just a couple of weeks, there will be a whole new Star Wars title, filling in some of the space between Jedi and Awakens… EXCITING TIMES! Welcome Back (Boom…

Doctor Who (Tom Baker) – The Android Invasion

  This week finds us visiting the small village of Devesham in this four-part story penned by Terry Nation, which aired from 22 November to 13 December, 1875. The Doctor (Baker) and Sarah-Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) arrive back in the right time, 1980, but still not quite to London. Instead they discover the little town of…

The Day of the Triffids (1963) – Steven Sekely 

  The Sci-Fi Chronicles brings me yet another film I’ve never seen, and yet feel I know, because it shows up everywhere, The Day of the Triffids. based on the classic science fiction tale by John Wyndham. This adaptation fairly mangles the original novel, tagging on a Hollywood Happy ending, or as happy as a…

In the Garden of Beasts (2011) – Erik Larson

  After I finished Erik Larson’s latest book, Dead Wake, I made sure to go out and track down another one. Not since Stephen Ambrose have I enjoyed a historian’s storytelling method, and it was with great delight that I picked up In the Garden of the Beasts, even the subtitle on the cover was…

Cub (2014) – Jonas Govaerts

  Also releasing from Anchor Bay today is this film that hails from Belgium. The blurb had me from the outset. Young Sam (Maurice Luijten) is troubled and imaginative. He’s off on a camping trip with his local cub scout troop, with Kris (Titus De Voogdt), Peter (Stef Aerts) and Jasmijn (Evelien Bosmans) as their…

Ejecta (2014) – Chad Archibald and Matt Wiele

  Our friend Julian Richings gives a tour de force performance in the first release from Anchor Bay this week. The film itself, Ejecta, is a bit of hit and miss b-movie affair, but Richings, himself, is perfectly on point giving his all, and elevating every scene he’s in, which is practically all of them….

Black Swan (2010) – Darren Aronofsky

  The next recommendation from my viewing of Gold Diggers of 1933 in the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book, is less musical, but more behind the scenes of a production, and the lead’s gradual descent into madness, in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. The beauty and sensuality of the ballet, Swan Lake, is…