High Plains Drifter marked the first time Eastwood directed a western. Keeping in line with the work he put in on his spaghetti westerns, the movie is a darker, grittier style western, as opposed to the type of film made prior to them. To illustrate that the Stranger he’s playing is a bad dude, Eastwood…
Tag: mission
Extraction (2020) – Sam Hargrave
Sam Hargrave delivers a kinetic action thriller starring Chris Hemsworth from a story partly created by Joe Russo from the graphic novel, Ciudad. Hemsworth is Tyler Rake a mercenary who seems to be willing to take any mission that pays in the hopes of some day fulfilling a death wish caused by the loss of…
The Guns of Navarone (1961) – J. Lee Thompson
I’m going to go on the record here before I write this one up. This is the first time I have watched The Guns of Navarone. I watched the semi-sequel, Force 10 From Navarone because it was Harrison Ford, sure, but never saw the original. I buckled up and settled in for an incredibly tense,…
Shadow in the Cloud (2020) – Roseanne Liang
Shadow in the Cloud starring Chloe Grace Moretz is a wonderfully over-the-top nod to female pilots in World War II as well as nods to The Twilight Zone (specifically ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’), John Carpenter (the film’s score feels like Carpenter through and through) and allows Moretz to get her Ripley on. Boarding a B-17…
The Equalizer (1989) – Starfire, and Time Present, Time Past
Michael Moriarty returns in a guest role in Starfire, though not as the same character as last time. This time, his character is called Seti, and he claims he’s an alien from another planet. He’s befriended a young girl, Amber (Angela Goethals), who he entrusts with a strange device and tells her if something happens…
The Equalizer (1988) – Something Green, and The Mystery of Manon: Part 1
A very young Macaulay Culkin guest stars in Something Green. Written by Kevin Droney the episode debuted on 10 February, 1988. When Mrs. Gephart’s (Lisa Eichorn) son, Paul (Cuklin) is kidnapped from her house in broad daylight, she suspects her ex-husband, Raymond (Jon DeVries), a Swiss diplomat. She turns to Robert McCall (Edward Woodward) for…
Star Trek: Picard – Second Self (2022) – Una McCormack
Simon & Schuster tapped author Una McCormack to deliver a second Star Trek Picard tale and this time she lets the reader join Raffi Musiker on a diplomatic mission with a secret agenda to bring a war criminal to justice. Set after the events of Picard: Season One and following on the heels of the…
The Expanse (2016) – Back to the Butcher, and Rock Bottom
Dan Nowak pens Back to the Butcher. First airing on 5 January, 2016 the story this week moves back and forth in time a bit, taking us to an event that happened at Anderson Station when some of the workers (including the wonderful Billy MacLellan) staged a protest because the corporation that owned the station…
The Apollo Murders (2021) – Chris Hadfield
Retired astronaut and national treasure Chris Hadfield delivers a fast-paced thriller with The Apollo Murders. It’s a look at an all too believable reality as the story follows the training, launch, and mission of Apollo 18. It’s made all the more believable because Hadfield not only knows his subject matter, emotionally and technically, using an…
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1980) – Olympiad, and A Dream of Jennifer
Buck (Gil Gerard) finds himself in a political mess that probably played pretty well with the folks at the time, considering it’s a story about defectors wanting to escape to a better world. Written by Craig Buck, this episode first debuted on 7 February, 1980, and sees Buck Rogers taking in an in-person look and…
The Mind Reels 