When I was a young boy in the late 70s, early 80s, I was devouring books at a variety of reading levels, and was delighted with the blue border hard cover editions of The Hardy Boys, I didn’t have them all, but I had a collection that would grow whenever I lacked anything else to…
Tag: robbery
Magnum Force (1973) – Ted Post
Clint Eastwood returned as Detective ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan for a second outing in 1973’s Magnum Force, despite the fact that he seemed to be quitting at the close of the original film. This time out the gritty, and occasional racist and misogynistic film sees Harry hard at work in his beloved San Francisco, when a…
Dizzy Detectives (1943) – Jules White
I have always enjoyed the Three Stooges shorts. There’s not a time in my memory when they didn’t make me laugh out loud. I can remember Sunday mornings spent watching the marathon on television, or going to the base theatre in Borden to watch collections growing up. So when I saw that they were the…
City On A Hill: Season One – DVD Review
The Showtime series starring the incredibly versatile and always fantastic Kevin Bacon and SAG Award winner Aldis Hodge, City On A Hill: Season One comes home on DVD from Paramount Canada. The ten episodes tell an engrossing tale that follows a corrupt, but hardworking Bureau agent, Jackie Rohr (Bacon) form an uneasy alliance with the…
War of the Worlds (1990) – The True Believer, and The Obelisk
We come to the end of War of the Worlds this week with these final two episodes. While never as completely realized as it could have been, there was a solid idea at the heart of the show, and I would love to see something of its kind produced again… or if the BBC would…
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) -Tony Richardson
The angry young British man films continues with the iconic The Loneliness of the Longd Distance Runner, a title from the What Else to Watch list of DK Canada’s The Movie Book following its recommendation of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Colin Smith (Tom Courtenay) is a young offender, busted for robbing a bakery, ends…
Toronto After Dark 2018
It’s that time of year again, and it seems Toronto always knows what to get me for my birthday – a film festival. Specifically the Toronto After Dark film festival. Running October 11th through to the 19th the genre festival features films from around the globe that highlight horror, action and science fiction films that…
Miami Vice (1985) – Rites of Passage, and The Maze
Rites of Passage was penned by Daniel Pyne and first debuted on 8 February, 1985. The story finds Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Micheal Thomas) rekindling a romance with an old flame, when Valerie Gordon (Pam Grier), a fellow cop from New York, comes down to Miami in search of her sister, Diane (Tery Ferman), to save…
The Twilight Zone (1964) – Caesar and Me, The Jeopardy Room, and Stopover in a Quiet Town
There’s the signpost up ahead, it’s time for another journey into The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series on blu-ray (from Paramount Pictures) as I continue my sojourn through the fifth and final season. Up first is Caesar and Me, Written by Adele T. Strassfield, this episode first aired on 10 April, 1964, and brings back…
The Wild Bunch (1969) – Sam Peckinpah
The next big stop in the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book as I return to the Historical chapter, is Peckinpah’s ultra-violent, wonderfully bloody take on the Hollywood Western. A group of professional outlaws out of step and out of time looking for one last score find themselves fatally wandering the line between…
The Twilight Zone (1961) – Long Distance Call, A Hundred Yards Over the Rim, and The Rip Van Winkle Caper
Paramount Pictures dares me to go deeper into The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series on blu-ray, and I took them up on it. First up this week is Long Distance Call. Written by Charles Beaumont and William Idelson, this episode had its premiere on 31 March, 1961. Young Bill Mumy (making his first of three…
Quantum Leap (1991/1992) – Unchained and The Play’s the Thing
Unchained finds Sam (Scott Bakula) in the body of Chance Cole on 2 November, 1956. The episode was written by Paris Qualles and had an airdate of 27 November, 1991. Sam, as Chance, is part of a chain gang, and he and another convict, Jasper Boone (Basil Wallace) a man, Al (Dean Stockwell) informs him,…
