I hadn’t watched this one since it came out, and I don’t remember loving it. That was over twenty years ago, and I watched it anew. And man, I loved it. It’s so funny. The sight gags are great, the cameos are hilarious, and the cast is perfect. Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson lead…
Tag: tropes
Smallville (2004) – Jinx, and Spell
Jinx was written by Mark D. Warshaw and debuted on 3 November, 2004. It introduces another name from the Superman legacy, meet Smallville’s version of Mxyzptlk (Trent Ford). He’s got a way to manipulate things and there are dangerous outcomes because of it, including someone getting hurt by Clark (Tom Welling) during a football game…
War (2007) – Philip G. Atwell
War is a fairly generic action thriller featuring the pairing of Jason Statham and Jet Li. The pair have made five films together! In this one, Statham is Crawford, an FBI agent tracking down a mysterious assassin known as Rogue (Li), who killed his partner. Set in San Francisco (read as Vancouver) the film features…
Get Smart (1967) – That Old Gang of Mine, The Mild Ones, and Classification: Dead
Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) and 99 (Barbara Feldon) arer undercover in foggy London (read as stock footage, and back lot work). They also throw in a quick appearance by Danny Thomas. They are to take care of an American gangster, Scar (done before the opening credits) and deal with a the Scorpion Gang who are…
Clown in a Cornfield (2025) – Eli Craig
I quite enjoyed the Bram Stoker award winning YA novel Clown in a Cornfield, so it made sense that sooner or later I was going to take in the film adaption of the story. It makes me laugh that the book is very much defined as a teen book, but the film itself, because of…
Drug of Choice (1970) – Micheal Crichton
Micheal Crichton writing as his alter-ego John Lange delivers a fast-paced, odd, and occasionally uneven tale with Drug of Choice. I think the biggest problem with the story is that its too short. A number of the sequences could have been expanded on to unnerve the reader and immerse them into the mystery of what…
Get Smart (1966) – The Greatest Spy on Earth, Island of the Darned, and Bronzefinger
Let’s all go to the circus! Agent 86, Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) and 99 (Barbara Feldon) go undercover at the big top in The Greatest Spy on Earth. Written by Dee Caruso and Gerald Gardner, this episode was first broadcast on 19 November 1966. They are assigned to break a KAOS diamond smuggling ring that…
Magpie Murders (2016) – Anthony Horowitz
I’ve always enjoyed Anthony Horowitz’s writing. I dug his young spy novels, the Alex Rider series, and his foray into James Bond territory. But he is not a writer to be confined by genre, and when I came across Magpie Murders in one of the little libraries in a neighbor’s yard, I had to at…
Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025) – Gareth Edwards
It’s lost some of its magic. There is too much green screen and visual effects, and almost no practical work when it comes to the dinosaurs, and it’s glaringly obvious. There’s no majesty when we see the dinosaurs now, because they don’t look real anymore. You can tell they are all done by VFX artists….
Star Trek: The Devil’s Isle of Space (1968)
The second issue of Gold Key’s Star Trek comics hit spinners on June 1968. It once again featured Dick Wood as writer and Nevio Zaccara as the artist. The story ends up being a familiar science fiction trope. The prison planet. The Enterprise arrives in an asteroid field, some of which are glowing. On them…
The Mind Reels 