I remember the summer that Alien opened, 1979, two years after Star Wars rocked the world. The Force stayed with me all through my childhood, and through to this very day. But Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and a little magazine called Starlog, got me very interested in genre film and television. I wasn’t…
Tag: franchise
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001) – Chris Columbus
The next recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my return to the family genre and my screening of The Fellowship of the Ring is another franchise that captured hearts and imaginations. Looking back, as I rewatch this film, there is no way that this movie could fail. It’s based…
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) – Gore Verbinski
Who would have thought that Disney could turn one of their oldest theme park attractions into a tentpole franchise back in 2003? Sure the series has floundered, and perhaps overstayed its welcome since, but that first film, directed ably by Verbinski, with a definitive score by Klaus Badelt, and featuring an A-list cast delighted audiences…
Dr. No (1962) – Terence Young
It’s back to the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book to check in with the Action genre, and consequently, I get to spend some tine with secret agent 007. Bond, James Bond. Sean Connery brings Ian Flemings’s spy to the big screen in Dr. No, the first recommendation for the previously reviewed Goldfinger….
Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia (2017) – Tricia Barr, Adam Bray and Cole Horton
Star Wars. Sometimes, I wish I could go back to visit six year old me, who had just had his life changed after seeing that film in late summer of ’77 and tell him that Star Wars would be with him for his entire life, and that he would see a time when there would…
Terminator Salvation (2009) – McG
The final stop with the Sc-Fi Chronicles book for me with the Terminator franchise, as I’ve now had a chance to cover all of them, is this interesting entry from the same pair of writers who gave us Rise of the Machines. This one could have been alright, though I feel McG was probably the…
Maximum Ride (2016) -Jay Martin
James Patterson’s young adult novel series, Maximum Ride, takes flight cimematically this week from Paramount Pictures. I read the first book when it came out in 2005. It was fun, engaging. Patterson is a very entertaining and imaginative writer, and Max seemed perfectly suited for exploration in other media. The downside to this big screen…
Blu-Ray Review: Star Trek – Beyond (2016) – Justin Lin
Beaming in on Blu-Ray and DVD today from Paramount Pictures is the latest entry in the reboot or Kelvin-verse Star Trek series. I’d previously reviewed my theatrical experience of the film here, so I was eager to see how my impressions of it changed when viewed at home. I actually found myself enjoying it more. Knowing…
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 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 