Michael Crichton writes and directs The Great Train Robbery and invites Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down along for the ride. Not quite a romp, the film is definitely an entertaining heist film, resting easily on Connery’s charm, and Sutherland turning in a wonderfully goofy performance. It’s England, in the 1850s. Connery plays Pierce,…
Tag: cool
Smallville (2001) – Cool, and Hourglass
Sure it’s another freak-of-the-week episode, but the series is still finding itself, and building its characters and narratives. Cool first aired on 13 November, 2001 and was written by Michael Green. This time out, Sean (Michael Coristine) apparently drowns in ice-covered Crater Lake. At the bottom of that crater, kryptonite-infused rocks (as usual) which give…
TIFF 2021: Saloum dir. Jean Luc Herbulot
The frenetic, genre jumping Saloum from Jean Luc Herbulot combining action beats with a revenge thriller, and dancing on the line of supernatural horror. Three bad-ass mercs, Chaka (Yann Gael) Rafa (Roger Sallah), and Minuit (Mentor Ba) who each exude a laconic cool in their own ways, are guns for hire, and getting a drug…
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984) – W.D. Richter
For many people Peter Weller will always be RoboCop. For me, Weller will always be the super-cool Buckaroo Banzai, the neurosurgeon, rock star, comic book hero who fights Red Lectroids from Planet Ten with help from his back-up band (of fellow awesomely named scientists) The Hong Kong Cavaliers, as well as his fan club, the…
Underwater (2020) – William Eubank
Borrowing (very, Very, VERY) heavily both visually and story-wise from Alien (without the 70s cinema verite nods to overlapping dialogue) as well as having nods to The Abyss, Leviathan, DeepStar Six and even Lovecraft, Twentieth Century Fox invites you into the depths with its new release, Underwater. Kristen Stewart starts as Norah, a mechanical engineer…
Blade II (2002) – Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro’s other vampire movie is the next title I came across in DK Canada’s Monsters in the Movies book. A stronger entry than the first film, del Toro proves he can handle action beats with ease, and can work within the confines of a franchise. Wesley Snipes returns as Marvel’s day walking vampire…
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) – Robert Rodriguez
The solid team of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino paired up for the first time with From Dusk Til Dawn the next stop in the vampire section of Monsters in the Movies, the wonderful coffee table tome from DK Canada. Featuring an all star cast, as well as being stacked with cult favorites, the film…
The Meg (2018) – Blu-Ray Review
Going into this movie, I was reminded of a piece of dialogue from Back to the Future Part II – “Shark still looks fake.” But that doesn’t really hold Warner Brothers’ The Meg, which releases today on blu-ray and DVD from being a silly bit of cinematic confection. A Chinese-American co-pro, shot largely in New…
The Lost Boys (1987) – Joel Schumacher
My trio of favorite vampire films is now complete with the viewing of 1987’s The Lost Boys. If Fright Night got me into horror movies, and Near Dark showed me how violent and bloody vampires could be, then The Lost Boys showed me how cool vampires could be (and how awesome the occasional vampire hunters…
In Conversation with Adam Bray
Next week, DK Canada unleashes Marvel Studios: Visual Dictionary, filled with a plethora of pictures, a cornucopia of content and tons of trivia, their latest offering takes us deep into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Written by Adam Bray, who has turned in a number of standout reference books for DK Books the Visual Dictionary is…
The Mind Reels 