Set during Kirk’s original five year mission as portrayed in The Original Series, Heart of the Sun is an interesting exploration of isolationism and its effect, combining two story threads that end up having more in common than you initially realize. The Enterprise has arrived in a remote system, helping restore a planetary database that…
Tag: mystery
The Long Goodbye (1973) – Robert Altman
I’m probably stepping into a minefield here, but I’m not the biggest Robert Altman fan. Who doesn’t love The Player? And as great as M*A*S*H is, I came to it by way of the television series, so it never resonated with me as much as I would have liked. That being said, I really liked…
The Name of the Rose (1986) – Jean-Jacques Annaud
Jean-Jacques Annaud’s adaptation of Umberto Eco’s novel, The Name of the Rose, is an engaging tour-de-force with a fantastic cast, an intriguing mystery, and a fantastic setting. Amazingly, Sean Connery’s career was in a bit of a lull when he lobbied for the part, one which, it seems, much like Bond, and Indy’s father, he…
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Survivors (1989) – Jean Lorrah
The fourth novel in The Next Generation series from Pocket Books is set between the events Arsenal of Freedom and Skin of Evil and gives Tasha Yar more story time than she received in her only season on the show. It also fills out some of her backstory, and while nothing contradicts the established canon,…
Moloch (2022) – Nico Van Den Brink
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…
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,…
