Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) – Mike Flanagan

Mike Flanagan has quickly become one of my favorite writer/directors and I realized that there were still a number of his titles that I hadn’t written about for the blog. So color me happy as I dig into some other examples of his work. Ouija: Origin of Evil is, in fact, a sequel to a…

The Prisoner (1967) – The Schizoid Man, and The General

Number Six (Patrick McGoohan) suffers a bit of an identity crisis this week in The Schizoid Man. Written by Terence Feely, this episode had an original airdate of 27 October, 1967. There’s yet another new Number Two (Anton Rodgers), and he’s got quite the plan concocted to finally break Number Six… He changes his number,…

Beneath Her Skin (2021) – C.S. Porter

Nimbus Publishing, under its Vagrant Press, brings a new voice, C.S. Porter to the mystery genre, with their first novel, Beneath Her Skin, a lean, brisk, thriller. With the sub-title A Kes Morris File, one can assume that this will be Porter’s first foray into a series around their creation of Kes Morris, a female…

Equal Rites (1987) – Terry Pratchett

I head back to Discworld for this week’s Book Shelf, and delve into the third tale from the Terry Pratchett created universe. This story takes us in a different direction, leaving behind the characters introduced in the previous volumes, but gives us another hilariously magical tale. Young Eskarine is a girl, she is the eighth…

Disney’s Aladdin: The Signature Collection

God I love this movie. This was the first Disney movie that I saw more than once in the theater. When it came out in 1992 I took everyone I could to see it (the only other Disney film I did that with was The Lion King in 1994). I loved everything about it, Howard…

Rocketman (2019) – Blu-Ray Review

The fantasy biopic about musical legend (and one of my favorite artists) Elton John has come home on blu-ray and DVD thanks to Paramount Pictures. Taron Egerton who is bound to be nominated for an Oscar (or should be) IS Elton John in this jukebox musical that tells the musician’s personal history in a fantastical,…

Altered States (1980) – Ken Russell

William Hurt is on the search for the purest truth, and that, in this case, places him squarely in the mad scientist chapter of DK Canada’s very enjoyable Monsters in the Movies book. Eddie Jessup (Hurt) is a scientist seeking the ultimate truth, and finds himself experimenting with isolation chambers and a ritualistic, possibly hallucinogenic…

Ju Dou (1990) – Yimou Zhang and Fengliang Yang

The beautiful, romantic and tragic Ju Dou is the next title on the What Else to Watch list as I continue to work my way through the immensely enjoyable The Movie Book from DK Canada. Following my screening of Raise the Red Lantern, this was one of the book’s recommendations. Starring Li Gong as the…

The Color of Pomegranates (1969) – Sergei Parajanov

The former Soviet Union brings me the next title to watch from DK Canada’s The Movie Book. It recommended the brilliant science fiction film Stalker, and then suggest this one in the What Else to Watch list. The film is a super-stylized retelling of the life of the Armenian poet, Sayat Nova, using lines from…