Akiva Goldsman wrote and directed the series opener for Strange New Worlds, which was first broadcast on 5 May, 2022. It had to tie in with the established canon of The Original Series, and what had happened in Star Trek: Discovery during season two. It also riffs on The Day The Earth Stood Still, which…
Tag: director
Star Trek: Picard (2023) – Vox, and The Last Generation
Showrunner Terry Matalas slips into the director’s chair to give us a powerful penultimate episode, Vox. Written by Sean Tretta and Kiley Rossetter, this episode was first broadcast on 13 April, 2023. Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the rest learn that the symptoms of Irumodic Syndrome were simply a side effect of what was really wrong…
Allan Quatermain & The Lost City of Gold (1986) – Gary Nelson
Gary Nelson, who directed my beloved The Black Hole, directed the sequel to 1985’s King Solomon’s Mines, Allan Quatermain & The Lost City of Gold, which was filmed back to back with the first film. In fact, it steals a large portion of Jerry Goldsmith’s score for the first film as a way to save…
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (2023) – Zack Snyder
I’ll say this. Snyder can create some great visual images, but as a director, I often find myself disappointed by his work. Sadly, the first installment in his Rebel Moon series leaves me unimpressed with what he’s created. Playing as a cross between Star Wars: A New Hope (apparently Rebel Moon was originally going to…
Insidious: The Red Door (2023) – Patrick Wilson
Patrick Wilson makes his directorial debut with the fifth (and final?) Insidious film that takes us back to the Lambert family, checking in on them nine years after the events of Insidious 2, which was the last time the family was featured as the main characters in the series. There are some fun ideas here,…
Star Trek: Picard (2023) – Seventeen Seconds, and No Win Scenario
The stress of the situation doesn’t let up for a second in the third episode of Picard’s final season, Seventeen Seconds. Written by Jane Maggs and Cindy Appel, it was directed by Jonathan Frakes and was first broadcast on 2 March, 2023. As Vadic (Amanda Plummer) and the Shrike continue to stalk the Titan (injuring…
Star Trek: Picard (2020) – The End is The Beginning, and Absolute Candor
Picard (Patrick Stewart) attempts to make amends with Raffi (Michelle Hurd) as he seeks a ship to take him in search of Burce Maddox and Soji (Isa Briones). We see how their relationship fell apart when the synthetic attack on Mars disrupted and caused the cancellation of Starfleet’s aid to the Romulan Evacuation, causing Picard’s…
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmicheal Manor (2023) – Stephen Cognetti
While I’m not always the biggest found footage fan, it’s a genre that has really been done to death because everyone thinks they can do it, I quickly became a fan of Stephen Cognetti’s Hell House LLC series. He’s written and directed all the films so far, which makes The Carmicheal Manor the fourth in…
TAD 2023: Lovely, Dark and Deep dir. Teresa Sutherland
Writer/director Teresa Sutherland delivers a moody, atmospheric hallucination that follows Park Ranger Lennon (Georgina Campbell) as she takes on her new backcountry assignment, and attempts to reconcile an event that has haunted her since childhood. Positing that there are too many missing people in national parks, Sutherland’s story wonders if there is perhaps something more…
Death on the Nile (2022) – Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh continues his exploration of the Agatha Christie creation, the world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells with Death on the Nile. It follows on the tail of Murder on the Orient Express, which Branagh also directed and starred in. I do like the fact that Branagh seems to have taken…
The Mind Reels 