I remember seeing the book cover for Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith everywhere in the early 80s. I suppose had I wanted to I could have read it then. My parents were pretty liberal with letting me read whatever I wanted, and I had just started delving into mysteries, I read a couple of…
Tag: cast
The Wild Geese (1978) – Andrew V. McLaglen
The Wild Geese has a horrible title song, but then as I watched the credits I saw that it had production design by Syd Cain, and its opening title sequence was done by Maurice Binder. It also has a very impressive leading cast, Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Roger Moore. Not bad. And while the…
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) – Guy Ritchie
While there isn’t much to describe in terms of character arcs, Guy Ritchie’s latest, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare has a couple of things going for it. It’s based on a recently declassified (2016) true event of World War II, it has an enjoyable cast, and it’s always fun to see Nazis get punched, and…
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) – Blu-ray
I’ve been with the Ghostbusters since before the first movie came out, forty years ago. I remember seeing the advertising for it on the back of my comic books, I also tried writing my own version of the story before I even knew what it was or what it was about. I had a little…
The Gray Man (2022) – Joe and Anthony Russo
The Russo Brothers, who made an indelible print on the MCU, gather a fun cast to deliver a fast-paced action film that features fantastic kinetic camera work, but is held back by some cardboard characters. Six (Ryan Gosling) is a career criminal that gets recruited by a CIA handler, Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton). He’s incredibly…
The Delta Force (1986) – Menahem Golan
Chuck Norris has never really done it for me when it comes to action movies. No matter what his martial arts skills, he’s not the best actor, and consequently, he found himself stuck in lower-budget action films, much like The Delta Force. But with all of it’s trappings and tropes, the film has a really…
The Name of the Rose (1986) – Jean-Jacques Annaud
Jean-Jacques Annaud’s adaptation of Umberto Eco’s novel, The Name of the Rose, is an engaging tour-de-force with a fantastic cast, an intriguing mystery, and a fantastic setting. Amazingly, Sean Connery’s career was in a bit of a lull when he lobbied for the part, one which, it seems, much like Bond, and Indy’s father, he…
Deep Blue Sea (1999) – Renny Harlin
This one is for my friend Lindsay, who insists this is a better shark movie than Jaws, and yet it can’t help but make a number of references to it, not the least of which is a familiar-looking licence plate. Director Renny Harlin does, for the most part, deliver a fairly solid thriller though even…
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Ultimate Visual History (2017) – Michael Klastorin
I remember the first time I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was 1984, it was my 13th birthday, I had read the fotonovel from the school library, was fascinated by the subject matter (I still am), and though I had seen the rubber toys in grocery stores when the film came out,…
Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013) – Jay Oliva
Flash (Justin Chambers) has his hands full after the timeline is changed around him in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. Based on the graphic novel, Flashpoint by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert, this animated feature, though featuring great voice work by its all-star cast suffers from the same thing most of the other adaptations suffer…
The Mind Reels 