I like Luc Besson’s work. His films tend to be slick, pretty to look at, throw in some fun effects, and usually attract solid actors to the project. Lucy is no different, and lets Scarlett Johansson take the titular role in a science fiction-tinged action movie. Lucy (Johansson) is betrayed into being a drug mule…
Tag: effects
Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) – Brian Taylor
I love the character of Hellboy, both the cinematic and the source material brought to life in the Mike Mignola’s comic books. However, this time out, thanks to budget constraints, which directly impacted actors, effects, camera et. al. what fans are given feels like a fan-film and not a studio one. Set in the early…
Twisters (2024) – Lee Isaac Chung
I love Twister. Unabashedly. Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, Cary Elwes, Philip Seymour Hoffman, some fun tunes, some solid (mostly) effects (cow!) and some great pacing and set pieces. So I was both excited and nervous when Twisters was announced. There’s some nice nods to the original film, and there’s some pretty easy character set-up. You…
Farscape (1999) – Through the Looking Glass, and A Bug’s Life
When Moya overhears the discussion of her passengers about perhaps leaving her and her unborn child, the leviathan with Pilot’s (voiced by Lani John Tupu) guidance triggers a starburst, and gets them stuck. Through the Looking Glass was written by David Kemper and was first aired on 10 September, 1999. Moya seems to be split…
The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944) – Ford Beebe
John Carradine plays a scientist, Drury, who has perfected an invisible serum, though it has no relation to the work that the Griffin family was working on in previous films. We are introduced to him when an escaped psychotic murderer, Robert Griffin (Jon Hall) – no relation escapes to the U.K. It seems that he’s…
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981) – Episodes 4, 5, and 6
Douglas Adams iconic story The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy continues with Arthur Dent’s (Simon Jones) comedic and intergalactic travels . The fourth episode aired on 26 January, 1981. The gang are still on Magrathea and the reveal that mice were the ones who financed the planet Earth, and were conducting experiments there. Arthur confers…
Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) – Roy William Neill
I quite liked this entry in the Univeral Monsters series. Lon Chaney Jr. returns as Lawrence Talbot aka The Wolf Man, and Bela Lugosi, whose name gets buried in the starring credits while Chaney gets an ‘and’ plays Frankenstein’s Monster. Apparently, Talbot wasn’t dead. He was buried, draped in wolfsbane to keep him trapped and…
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981) – Episodes 1, 2, and 3
I feel that most of North America was introduced to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when this version of the novel, adapted from the BBC radio broadcast, jumped the pond. I remember 1980, at Christmas the novel was under the Christmas Tree for me. I may have been a little young for it at…
Son of Dracula (1943) – Robert Siodmak
A mustachioed Lon Chaney Jr. takes over the role of Dracula in Son of Dracula, and while people insist he sounds like a foreigner he doesn’t sound like the Dracula we’ve been introduced to before, but perhaps he’s just another incarnation of the same creature. The Count, under the assumed name of Alucard (come on!)…
Thir13en Ghosts (2001) – Steve Beck
Executive producers Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver were fans of William Castle films from the 50s and 60s and they set about creating remakes of some of the cult classic films he, which all featured some kind of tweak to get audiences in seats. Under the name Dark Castle Entertainment, the first remake was The…
The Mind Reels 