Fake Blood (2017) – Rob Grant

Whether Canadian film-makers Rob Grant and Mike Kovac movie is fact or fiction isn’t the point of their latest cinematic effort. What is important is the film’s subject matter, and the commentary it makes on film, violence in cinema and the responsibility of the film-makers. Opening Friday at the Carlton here in Toronto, Fake Blood,…

The Shape of Water (2017) – Guillermo del Toro

del Toro’s latest film, The Shape of Water is very much a fairy tale for adults, as well as sharing a kinship with the horror films of the 1950s, specifically, 1954’s The Creature From the Black Lagoon (as well as to Abe Sapien as seen in del Toro’s own Hellboy series). But in this film,…

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1991) – In Theory, and Redemption

Captain’s log: stardate 44932.3 Patrick Stewart directs this Data (Brent Spiner) story that was written by Joe Menosky and Ronald D. Moore. It first aired on 3 June, 1991. While investigating a dark matter nebula, another crew member, Lt. Jenna D’Sora (Michele Scarabelli)  becomes infatuates with the most emotionally unavailable man ever, the android, Data. Unable…

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1991) – The Drumhead, and Half a Life

Captain’s log: stardate 44769.2 Jonathan Frakes directs his third episode of the series, from a script by Jeri Taylor. This episode, a bottle show, first aired on 29 April, 1991. Trouble comes aboard the Enterprise when a Klingon exo-biologist, J’Ddan (Henry Woronicz) is being investigated by Riker (Frakes) and Troi (Marina Sirtis) for sabotage, and…

Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series

Debuting on blu-ray from Paramount Pictures this week is the incredible follow-up to the cult television program, Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series. When I first heard of the possibility of a new series, set twenty five years after the first, just like Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) said would happen I was ecstatic. When I…

Acceptance (2014) – Jeff VanderMeer

The final book in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy is on the book shelf this week, and like its predecessors is immensely enjoyable with its ominous overtones even as it hints at something stunning, amazing and beyond human comprehension. We are taken back into Area X, and the government institution investigating the geographical anomaly, the…