This one seemed like a surefire winner, you’ve got Spielberg working from a script by Melissa Matheson who wrote E.T. The story is adapted from Roald Dahl’s story, and Mark Rylance brings The Big Friendly Giant to life. But no matter how good, the computer-generated images were, combining the computer characters with live-action ones, specifically,…
Tag: silly
Brainstorm (1983) – Douglas Trumbull
Special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull delivered his last Hollywood movie in 1983. Problems with the production company, and the untimely death of one of the film’s leads, Natalie Wood, impacted his opinion of the Hollywood machine, and he left them behind. The film features a solid cast, Christopher Walken, Louise Fletcher and Cliff Robertson join…
TIFF ’22: Project Wolf Hunting
Project Wolf Hunting, a South Korean entry for TIFF’s ever-popular Midnight Madness series, is sure to be a crowd pleaser for that late-night crowd. Director Kim Hongsun delivers a silly, gory actioner that feels like the messy and violent love child of Con Air and Friday the 13th. After a disastrous convict transport that ended…
Red 2 (2013) – Dean Parisot
Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, and John Malkovich are back in Red 2, a sequel that came hot on the heels of the previous film, and added some more star power to its roster with Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lee Byung-Hun, Steven Berkoff, and David Thewlis. Frank (Willis) gets the band back…
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979) – Planet of the Slave Girls
It’s been forever since I watched this short-lived series, but alongside Star Wars, Star Trek, and Galactica, Buck Rogers was an integral part of my youth. I had previously written about the pilot episode, released theatrically, before airing on network television on 20 September, 1979, so I moved right on to the next episode in…
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) – Jun Fukuda
These stories just get more and more out there! Delightedly so! This Godzilla adventure brings in secret Interpol agents, invading aliens, an imposter Godzilla,a new kaiju to add to the mythos, an Okinawan prophecy and a very rare non-terrestrial element, space titanium! There’s a lot going on in this one, and not a lot of…
Willy’s Wonderland (2021) – Kevin Lewis
Silly, goofy, and wonderfully over-the-top, the horror film, Willy’s Wonderland, is just a romp that doesn’t take itself, or the world it exists in very seriously, and it’s star, Nicholas Cage, doesn’t say a word through the entire film. His character, known only in the credits as The Janitor, is a bad-ass looking guy who’s…
Mortal Kombat (1995) – Paul W.S. Anderson
Paul W.S. Anderson loves his video game properties it seems, and in 1995, he delivered the first version that tried to create a narrative around an incredibly popular fighting game, and his first ‘big’ film. Some would argue that this was incredibly stupid idea, and yet, there are people who love this iteration. While the…
The X-Files (1999) – Terms of Endearment, and The Rain King
Bruce Campbell pops up in The X-Files this week with Terms of Endearment. Written by David Amann, this story first aired on 3 January, 1999, and sees Spender (Chris Owens) blowing off a potential x-files investigation, that Mulder (David Duchovny) recovers, and heads off to Virginia to investigate. While Scully (Gillian Anderson) covers for him,…
Star Wars: Queen of the Empire (1993) – Paul Davids and Hollace Davids
The young adult Star Wars series, christened the Jedi Prince Saga, continues this week in a galaxy far, far away with book five, Queen of the Empire. Not quite as silly as some of the previous entries, this one still has its moments, as well as a bit of an environmental message as Han Solo…
The Mind Reels 