Writer/director Spike Lee’s powerful drama is the next recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of American Beauty. A powerhouse cast brings a multi-cultural street in Brooklyn to life on the hottest day of the year, as the heat builds so does the tension as hate, racism…
Tag: director
Looker (1981) – Michael Crichton
I love when a movie I’ve never heard of at all comes along on the lists I am working through, and as I dove into the Sci-Fi Chronicles book today, I learned Michael Crichton’s films were next on the list. He only wrote and directed a few and this one is one of them,…
Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite (2015) -Svyatoslav Podgayevskly
It’s always interesting to see what genre films look like from other countries, and this Friday at select cities across the country, and on VOD on the 19th, we can have a look at Russia’s Queen of Spades. A riff on the Bloody Mary urban legend that is seemingly as old as mankind, the…
Vinyl – Season 1
Vinyl, Season 1, recently got its home video release from HBO, and I was lucky enough to be given an opportunity to take a look at it. Partly created by Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese, who also directed the two-hour pilot, the series is set in New York during the early 70s and follows…
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) – Stuart Baird
It’s time for the cinematic swan song of for the Next Generation cast, as my journeys with Star Trek, via the Sci-Fi Chronicles book continue. Directed by Stuart Baird (a helluva editor, not the best director) the film is nowhere near as strong a film as it could have or should have been. One…
Sister Act, Presented by Drayton Entertainment
I love stagecraft, and I love seeing a well-produced, perfectly acted and paced stage production. Drayton’s 2016 season has all of that and more, and playing on the main stage currently at the Huron County Playhouse in gorgeous Grand Bend (though to be honest I feel like I’m on Amity Island from Jaws) is…
Star Trek: First Contact (1996) – Jonathan Frakes
The strongest of the Next Generation films is the next stop for the Sci-Fi Chronicles book as I continue the exploration of the Star Trek cinematic universe. This one combines the best elements of the Next Generation universe, with drama, action and comedy as it combines a time travel tale with a war story and…
X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) – Bryan Singer
There’s probably a good, or at least a passable story somewhere amongst the mutants, Singer as a director has done some nice work with Marvel’s X-Men franchise in the past, but this time, it just feels like too much flash, and no substance. To say the visual effects super-saturate this film is an understatement….
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) – William Shatner
The next stop with the U.S.S. Enterprise according to the Sci-Fi Chronicles is the fifth film in the series, as I’d previously reviewed IV. Shatner takes the helm both as Captain James T. Kirk and as director and helped with the story as well. Big ideas get caught up in budget restrictions and less…
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) – Leonard Nimoy
I continue to boldly go with the Star Trek films, courtesy of the Sci-Fi Chronicles, and having previously covered Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I moved onto the third film in the series, helmed by Nimoy himself, one of the caveats about his reprising the Spock character. Spock is dead. The events…
The Mind Reels 