Percival Everett offers a fresh perspective on Mark Twain’s adventure of Huck and Jim. Filled with humor, heartbreak, horror, and irony, Everett’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel is captivating, powerful and entertaining. Jim, as one will remember, is a runaway slave, and is later thought to have murdered Huck. The pair travel down the Mississippi tumbling…
Tag: brilliant
Lake Michigan Monster (2018) – Ryland Brickson Cole Tews
I loved Hundreds of Beavers so I was eager to check out an earlier film from the creative duo behind it, Lake Michigan Monster. Sharing some of the film’s creative styles, it’s shot in black and white, made to look like a throwback to yesteryear, and has a goofy sense of humor that slides from…
TIFF24: The Life of Chuck dir. Mike Flanagan
Tears. Happy tears. When things just feel right, when something is translated so well from page to screen that it looks the way it did in your mind’s eye. The Life of Chuck moved me to happy tears. Mike Flanagan is at the top of his game. He has proven that he excels at adapting…
The Last Action Heroes (2023) – Nick de Semlyen
If you were wandering the aisles of the video stores in the 80s like I was, you were always looking for something fun and exciting to watch and a good percentage of the time one of the films that found its way home with me, or passed to me by a friend at school would…
Batman (1966) – Hi Diddle Riddle, and Smack in the Middle
I have never seen the original Batman television series. I did see the movie that was released between seasons at a Saturday matinee when I was a kid and it inspired hours of play, but I’d never dug into the 120 episodes that comprised the series. I’m determined to fix that, so here we go…
The Last House on Needless Street (2021) – Catriona Ward
Catriona Ward delivers a fantastic, engaging tale that is horrific, heartbreaking, and revelatory. I discovered this title when I went searching for something scary to read, something to freak me out, and mess with my brain a bit. The Last House on Needless Street does exactly that. The book is broken up into three narratives,…
M*A*S*H (1977) – The Winchester Tapes, The Light That Failed, and In Love and War
James Fritzell and Evertt Greenbaum give us another slice of life episode with The Winchester Tapes, which first debuted on 18 October, 1977. Winchester (David Ogden Stiers) is still having trouble settling into things at the 4077th, and is recording tapes to send home to his parents that not only illustrate his life in the…
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (2018) – Michelle McNamara
Halfway through the HBO docu-series, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, I knew I had to read the source material, and learn more. Written by Michelle McNamara, a brilliant true crime writer, who passed before the book could be published, or the book’s subject caught, sentenced and jailed. As captivating as the series was, the…
Murderers Among Us (1946) – Wolfgang Staudte
The Directory of DK Canada’s The Movie Book continues to provide exemplary titles, despite the fact that they didn’t make the cut for the main body of the text. And Murderers Among Us is a moody, brilliant watch that reminds us of the horrors of war, humanity, and the cost of terrible events. A German…
Rocketman (2019) – Blu-Ray Review
The fantasy biopic about musical legend (and one of my favorite artists) Elton John has come home on blu-ray and DVD thanks to Paramount Pictures. Taron Egerton who is bound to be nominated for an Oscar (or should be) IS Elton John in this jukebox musical that tells the musician’s personal history in a fantastical,…
The Mind Reels 