Marvel brings their first family into the MCU with The Fantastic Four: First Steps. It’s charming, and has some solid casting, but it never really has the impact that this iconic team deserves. And that may be due to superhero fatigue. Marvel and Disney have upped the audience of dosage of superheroes that everything feels…
Tag: the thing
Stargate SG-1 (2001) – Beast of Burden, and The Tomb
Daniel (Micheal Shanks) has been watching his Unas friend, Chaka (Dion Johnstone) only to discover that he’s been captured and made a slave. Beast of Burden was written by Peter DeLuise, and first aired on 10 August, 2001. Daniel and the rest of SG-1 go to investigate, and discover that Burrock (Larry Drake) and the…
The Hateful Eight (2015) – Quentin Tarantino
Tarantino’s eighth film let him tackle the fringes of the western genre, and features a beautiful score by iconic composer Ennio Morricone. With his sharp ear for dialogue and engaging storytelling, Tarantino pays homage to the Italian Spaghetti Westerns and classic American films of the same genre, as well, apparently, to the 1982 classic Carpenter…
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) – Adam Marcus
New Line Cinema takes over the reins of the Voorhees series for the next three films, and for their first film, the creator of the original film, Sean Cunningham insisted on something different. Adam Marcus, who served as the film’s director, and one of the film’s writers definitely did that, and delivered one of the…
The X-Files (1993) – Ghost in the Machine, and Ice
Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon pen the first kind of ‘iffy’ episode with Ghost in the Machine. First airing on 29 October, 1993, it’s Halloween and Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) find themselves investigating a murder which may have been committed by a smart building. They are called into investigate the case by…
War of the Worlds (1989) – The Raising of Lazarus, and The Angel of Death
This week we come to the conclusion of Season 1 of Paramount Pictures’ War of the Worlds television series, and by my count, I think the morthren are definitely winning. The Raising of Lazarus, the season’s penultimate episode was written by Durnford King, and aired on 8 May, 1989. Team Blackwood may have their hands…
At The Mountains of Madness (1931) – H.P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft’s unnerving novella, At the Mountains of Madness was my next read, and I can’t believe how much I enjoyed it. It’s dark, frightening, and immensely enjoyable. An Antarctic expedition finds something they don’t expect, and from there the tale descends into horror and madness. I feel that the story influenced the short story of…
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) – Sergio Leone
The Great Movies – The 100 Years of Film book returns me to the western genre with this Sergio Leone epic that stars Jason Robards, Chalres Bronson, Henry Fonda and Claudia Cardinale. Playing against type, Fonda is the villain, Frank, who is working for the railroad, and trying to drive a woman, Jill McBain (Cardinale),…
Toronto After Dark 2016: The Void – Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski
Isolationist horror with Lovecraftian overtones and readily apparent influences of both Clive Barker and John Carpenter; coupled with the school of less is more when showing the monster, combine in The Void. Toronto After Dark’s closing night film for 2016 at the Scotiabank Theatre. Let me get two things out of the way, as much…
The Great Digital Film Festival 2016
I love when this time of year rolls around, because every February, Cineplex puts on their Great Digital Film Festival which tends to showcase some wonderful films from my childhood projected on the big screen in wonderful digital clarity, often mixed with some newer popular titles. This year is no different, running from February…
The Mind Reels 