The penultimate episode of the ninth season is all about family, in a roundabout way. Written by Vince Gilligan, who also directed it, it first aired on 12 May, 2002. When a body is recovered from a location that sometimes appears to be the Brady house from The Brady Bunch television show, Doggett (Robert Patrick),…
Tag: effects
Son of Godzilla (1967) – Jun Fukuda
It was gonna happen sooner or later. There was going to be a classic Godzilla film that just didn’t ring my bell like the rest of the series, and as of this moment, it’s Son of Godzilla. While I enjoy all the monster fighting sequences, and even some of the goofy science outpost plot, the…
Flight of the Navigator (1986) – Randal Kleiser
Disney delivers a staple of 80s childhood with a revisit to Flight of the Navigator. Watching it now, I find myself more interested in the mysteries going on at the edges of the story than the main thrust of the narrative following young David Freeman (Joey Cramer), his abduction and subsequent return eight years later,…
The X-Files (2002) – Hellbound, and Provenance
Reyes (Annabeth Gish) brings an unusual case to Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) in Hellbound. She also has a strange connection to it that she can’t quite figure out. Written by David Amann and first airing on 27 January, 2002, the agents find themselves a series of deaths involving ex-cons who were skinned…
Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965) – Ishiro Honda
Godzilla is back! But he almost takes a backseat to the rest of the story, which sees an expansion of the Godzilla universe by bringing in aliens, flying saucers, and seeing the return of Rodan and King Ghidorah. When a new planet, Planet X, is discovered in orbit around Jupiter, a joint Japanese/American mission is…
Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) – Ishiro Honda
Japan’s countryside, city, and infrastructure is in danger again as Godzilla returns in Mothra vs. Godzilla, which sees the giant kaiju slug it out in an enjoyable piece of melodrama. This time around things get underway when a giant egg comes ashore in Japan, and a photographer, Juno Nakanashi (Yuriko Hoshi) and newspaperman, Ichiro Sakai…
Godzilla Raids Again (1955) – Motoyoshi Oda
Even before Godzilla came ashore in North America with the recut 1954 feature Godzilla (Gojira)/Godzilla: King of the Monsters!, a sequel was unleashed on Japan with Godzilla Raids Again. Gone are the more serious overtones of the first film, the commentary and subtext; the exploration of radiation and its effects on the Japanese, the still…
TAD 2021: Nightshooters dir. Marc Price
Nightshooters is a kinetic, frenetic, UK actioner laced with humour, cold tea, and explosive gore, and it’s enjoying its Canadian premiere on today’s line up of Toronto After Dark titles, as the virtual format of the film festival continues! Falling squarely into the wrong place wrong time of action films, the film follows a group…
TAD 2021: Alien On Stage dir. Lucy Harvey & Danielle Kummer
The right idea, at the right time, can be magic. It happened in 1979 when Ridley Scott delivered the first true science fiction horror film. It also happened again in 2013, in Dorset, when a group of amatuer actors, and professional bus drivers decided to bring the film to the stage instead of their usual…
Willow (1988) – Ron Howard
I remember the first time I saw Willow. I know where I was, and I remember how it swept me up in its narrative. I knew I had to see it the moment it told me it was from the imagination of George Lucas. I knew who Ron Howard was, but I was a teenager…
The Mind Reels 