The Dutch film, Moloch, delivers some solid folk horror in this atmospheric tale. Betriek (Sallie Harmsen) lives a quiet life, looking after her daughter, while trying to forget the trauma that scarred her as a child, when her grandmother was murdered. This has caused a bit of conflict between her and her own mother, Elske…
Tag: mystery
The Assassin’s Curse (2017) – Kevin Sands
Simon & Schuster Canada continues to fire my imagination and sense of adventure with the third book in The Blackthorn Key collection which is now available on its own or as part of a gorgeous six-book hardcover collection available now! It’s the tail end of 1665 and the fact that apothecary apprentice Christopher Rowe and…
Mark of the Plague (2016) – Kevin Sands
Simon & Schuster delivers the second book in Kevin Sands’ The Blackthorn Key Series, Mark of the Plague, available on its own or in a hardcover slipcase collection that contains all six books in the series. Picking up a couple of months after the first book, the tale finds apothecary apprentice Christopher Rowe working to…
TAD 2023: Restore Point dir. Robert Hloz
Restore Point fro the Czech Republic has a lot of things going for it, and I ended up having lots of nit-picky questions that suggest to me that I really liked the film and wanted to understand all the things behind it, the logistics of the scenario. But most of all, I loved all the…
Death on the Nile (2022) – Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh continues his exploration of the Agatha Christie creation, the world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells with Death on the Nile. It follows on the tail of Murder on the Orient Express, which Branagh also directed and starred in. I do like the fact that Branagh seems to have taken…
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) – Andre Ovredal
Andre Ovredal’s first English language film is a very well-crafted and viscerally terrifying film starring Biran Cox, Emile Hirsch and Olwen Catherine Kelly. Cox and Hirsch play father and son, Tommy and Austin Tilden who run a morgue and crematorium. Austin has dreams of getting out of the business and town, and taking his girlfriend,…
TIFF ’23: Poolman
Chris Pine stars, directs and co-wrote Poolman, a sun-baked film noir that never quite finds its tone in spite of its best efforts, and feels like the love child of Chinatown and The Big Lewbowski. A pastiche of the eccentricities and lifestyles of LA, Pine populates his film with characters you could only find in…
Dead Again (1991) – Kenneth Branagh
It’s been a couple of decades since I watched Branagh’s Hitchcockian romantic thriller, Dead Again. In fact, it had been so long that I completely forgot about the uncredited appearance by Robin Williams! But from its opening shots, and it’s driving and powerful score by Patrick Doyle, I was taken into the sweeping narrative. In…
Star Trek: Avenger (1997) – William Shatner with Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens
The Reeves-Stevens help William Shatner tell his next Star Trek tale, the third in his Shatner-verse stories. This time out, despite his continued work to make sure that James T. Kirk is still the smartest, bravest, strongest and most desirable man in the room, the story ties together a lot of interesting ideas and melds…
I See You (2019) – Adam Randall
The thriller I See You explores some familiar territory but does it in an interesting way, as we watch the lives of the Harper family as they deal with their internal problems while the town they live in is rocked by a series of child abductions. Jackie Harper (Helen Hunt) is a doctor who is…
The Mind Reels 