Coming some thirty-six years after the release of the first film, Top Gun: Maverick reminded film-lovers why we love going to the movies. It was a spectacle of the highest order as viewers joined actors in the actual cockpit of jets and planes to film a sequel that pays homage to its origins while pushing…
Tag: homage
Scream 4 (2011) – Wes Craven
Kevin Williamson is back with a script that gives the Scream (and Stab) franchise the course correction it needed following the Scream 3 misstep, and right off the bat, the film has the sense of fun, and play that was messing in the third film. In fact the casting seems steps above the third film…
The Final Girl Support Group (2021) – Grady Hendrix
I’ve been a fan of Grady Hendrix’s writing since I first discovered the vhs looking cover of My Best Friend’s Exorcism. Since then, I hunted down anything he’d written before and after that (two last titles to read and I’m caught up) so I dug eagerly into The Final Girl Support Group. A Final Girl…
The Vast of Night (2019) – Andrew Patterson
The Vast of Night is very much my kind of film, part Twilight Zone, part early Spielberg, there’s a vibe to this film that I just totally dig. A lot of the film feels like an homage to old dramas, encouraging the theatre of the mind, but there is a nice payoff at the end…
Millennium (1998) – …Thirteen Years Later, and Skull and Bones
Micheal R. Perry pens the fiftieth episode of Millennium that feels like it riffs a bit on the whole meta horror movie serial killer theme revolutionised a few years earlier by Wes Craven’s film Scream. Airing on 30 October, 1998, the episode was another Halloween episode. This time around, Frank (Lance Henriksen) finds himself mired…
Spaceballs (1987) – Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks is hit and miss with me, I love Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, but Spaceballs, no matter how quotable it is, and how much it delightfully skewers the Star Wars universe (with George Lucas’ blessing, and some special effects by ILM) has never done it for me. There are moments I like, but…
Silverado (1985) – Lawrence Kasdan
Occasionally a film comes along and revitalises the genre. Eastwood would return to the western trough countless times before he revitalised it with his own take on it, Unforgiven, but in the mid-80s, that shake-up was left to Lawrence Kasdan and his brother Mark. Lawrence had his fingers in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and…
Maverick (1994) – Richard Donner
Apparently, I’m still watching more Richard Donner movies, and this one I haven’t seen in years! Based on the television show from the 60s, Maverick comes to the big screen with Mel Gibson in the titular role, while the series original star, James Garner, co-stars as Marshall Zane Cooper. Jodie Foster rounds out the above…
Star Trek: Short Treks (2019) – Q&A, The Trouble with Edward, Ask Not, Ephraim and Dot, and The Girl Who Made the Stars
Captain’s log: 2254 Micheal Chabon pens the first Short Trek of the second season. This short traps Number One (Rebecca Romijn) and Spock (Ethan Peck) in a turbolift, shortly after the young science officer has joined the Enterprise crew – his first day in fact. Trapped together, the two slowly get to know one another….
Scoob! (2020) – Blu-Ray Review
I have been a Scooby-Doo (voiced originally by Don Messick and now by the one and only Frank Welker (who played the original Fred Jones, and transitioned to Scooby in 2002)), fan since I first discovered him in the mid-70s as I spent Saturday mornings (the only time cartoons were on back in the day)…
The Mind Reels 