Prisoners (2013) – Denis Villeneuve

Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal star in the emotional thriller, Prisoners, featuring yet another magnetic turn by director Villeneuve. What starts out terrifyingly enough with the abduction of two little girls turns into something horrific as twists reveal true natures, and narratives slowly shift the viewer’s perspective on what they are seeing. As two families…

Five Midnights (2019) – Ann Davila Cardinal

I’ve found myself craving something spooky to read again, and threw that into a google search, and it came back with this title, one I hadn’t heard of, and I promptly went off and found it. It ended up being a young adult novel, never a problem for me, as I love some of the…

Star Trek: The Kobayashi Maru (1989) – Julia Ecklar

With a framing story set after the events of The Motion Picture, but with the uniforms introduced in The Wrath of Khan, so sometime during the second big mission, The Kobayashi Maru is more a collection of short stories as each member in a damaged shuttle tells a tale of their encounter with the famous…

Shazam! (2019) – Blu-Ray Review

The DC Extended Universe (DCEU) has been a little shaky since its launch, but with Wonder Woman, Warner Brothers and DC Comics proved they could do it right, and tell an empowering story. Then there was the fumble that was Justice League. Aquaman showed that they could do a big budget, CGI-filled action set piece…

Seven Fallen Feathers (2017) – Tanya Talaga

Seven Fallen Feathers is a defining book. It is a haunting, distressing and angering discourse on racism and loss in Northern Ontario, and across Canada. Talaga, a dedicated and insightful journalist turns her investigative eye, shining it like a spotlight onto a piece of Canadian life that many of us are loathe to discuss, accept,…

Fake Blood (2017) – Rob Grant

Whether Canadian film-makers Rob Grant and Mike Kovac movie is fact or fiction isn’t the point of their latest cinematic effort. What is important is the film’s subject matter, and the commentary it makes on film, violence in cinema and the responsibility of the film-makers. Opening Friday at the Carlton here in Toronto, Fake Blood,…

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1991) – The Drumhead, and Half a Life

Captain’s log: stardate 44769.2 Jonathan Frakes directs his third episode of the series, from a script by Jeri Taylor. This episode, a bottle show, first aired on 29 April, 1991. Trouble comes aboard the Enterprise when a Klingon exo-biologist, J’Ddan (Henry Woronicz) is being investigated by Riker (Frakes) and Troi (Marina Sirtis) for sabotage, and…

Star Wars: Moving Target (2015) – Cecil Castelucci and Jason Fry

  Oh man… it’s almost time for Star Wars: The Force Awakens! I’ve been rationing the new books, as they’ve come out, and so trying to keep pace with them. We all know I wasn’t the biggest fan of Aftermath (though I’ll no doubt read the sequel when it comes along), that I loved Lost…

Fatal Attraction (1987) – Adrian Lyne

  The final film in the recommendations from my screening of Les Enfants du Paradis for the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book, is this dramatic thriller from the late 80s, that saw Michael Douglas mucking up his marriage to Anne Archer, and Glenn Close boiling a pet bunny. Douglas plays Dan Gallagher,…