The penultimate episode of Dark Skies has a couple of weaving narrative threats as John Loengard (Eric Close) and Juliet Stewart (Jeri Ryan) are given a new mission by Bach (J.T. Walsh). They have to head into the Soviet Union to investigate what has happened at Majestic’s Russian counterpart. Written by Brad Markowitz, this episode…
Tag: soviet union
K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) – Kathyrn Bigelow
K-19 feels like an underrated Kathryn Bigelow film. She once again dives into the pressures of the armed services and war and she has a fantastic cast including Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson, and Peter Sarsgaard. Set at the height of the Cold War in 1961, when Mutually Assured Destruction seemed to be moments away from…
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Ghost Ship (1988) – Diane Carey
Diane Carey can be forgiven for a lot of the portrayals in Ghost Ship, the first novel in The Next Generation series released by Pocket Books following the novelization of the pilot episode. The book was largely written before there was any casting in place, and she could only rely on the show’s bible to…
The Russia House (1990) – Fred Schepisi
Sean Connery, Michelle Pfeiffer, Roy Scheider, James Fox, John Mahoney, and J.T. Walsh star in the cinematic adaptation of John Le Carre’s novel, The Russia House. Written for the screen by Tom Stoppard, the film was the first, big Western film to be shot on location in the Soviet Union. Featuring a gorgeous score by…
The Color of Pomegranates (1969) – Sergei Parajanov
The former Soviet Union brings me the next title to watch from DK Canada’s The Movie Book. It recommended the brilliant science fiction film Stalker, and then suggest this one in the What Else to Watch list. The film is a super-stylized retelling of the life of the Armenian poet, Sayat Nova, using lines from…
Man with a Movie Camera (1929) – Dziga Vertov
Vertov’s engaging documentary is the next stop in DK Canada’s The Movie Book. It falls solidly and enjoyably in the What Else to Watch list of Battleship Potemkin. A man, Mikhail Kaufman, wanders the city and captures the daily life of the Soviet Union in a brilliantly engaging way, marrying idea to image as only…
The Mind Reels 