The final recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of Toy Story is Dreamworks’ Shrek. While funny, skewering fairy tales and Disney characters and motiffs with a sly eye, the film hasn’t aged well. Sure the cast is outstanding Mike Myers in the titular role, Eddie Murphy as…
Tag: tropes
Doctor Who (Matt Smith) – The Bells of Saint John, and The Rings of Akhaten
The Doctor (Smith) encounters the Great Intelligence (Richard E. Grant) again as he continues his search for the Impossible Girl, Clara Oswin Oswald (Jenna- Louise Coleman). Written by Steven Moffat, the episode first debuted on 30 March, 2013. Things are strange from the off, when Clara is given the TARDIS’ phone number by an unknown…
Doctor Who (Matt Smith) – The Curse of the Black Spot, and The Doctor’s Wife
Avast ye maties, it’s The Curse of the Black Spot. This pirate-themed romp let the TARDIS bunch, have a bit of fun after the darker events of the previous pair of episodes. Written by Stephen Thompson this episode first debuted on 7 May, 2011 and featured Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville and model turned actress Lily…
The Great Silence (1968) – Sergio Corbucci
The recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of Once Upon a Time in the West have all been previously covered, except for The Great Silence. Loco (Klaus Kinski) is stirring up lots of trouble in the Utah mountains. He and his band of bounty killers are cruel,…
Doctor Who (David Tennant) – The Unicorn and The Wasp, and Silence in the Library
Gareth Roberts writes the script for The Unicorn and The Wasp which first aired on 17 May, 2008, and sees the Doctor (Tennant) and Donna (Catherine Tate) arriving in 1926 England. They invite themselves along to a party and find amongst the guests, one Agatha Christie (Fenella Woolgar). When a guest ends up dead, the…
Stagecoach (1939) – John Ford
The first recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film is the 1939 John Ford/John Wayne classic, Stagecoach. Wayne plays the Ringo Kid, and he and a number of fellow travellers including Dallas (Claire Trevor) and Lucy Mallory (Louise Platt), a drunk doctor Josiah Boone (Thomas Mitchell), and a dangerous gambler, Hatfield (John…
La La Land (2016) – Damien Chazelle
From its opening, marrying classical screen musical tropes and modern times, Chazelle’s film proves that not only is the big screen musical still alive, it is in fact a vibrant event. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling star as two Hollywood dreamers, Mia and Sebastian. She’s an aspiring actress, he’s a jazz pianist who dreams of…
Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite (2015) -Svyatoslav Podgayevskly
It’s always interesting to see what genre films look like from other countries, and this Friday at select cities across the country, and on VOD on the 19th, we can have a look at Russia’s Queen of Spades. A riff on the Bloody Mary urban legend that is seemingly as old as mankind, the…
Lost In Space (1998) – Stephen Hopkins
The next big adventure in the Sci-Fi Chronicles book is the big-screen reboot of the classic 60s television series, Lost in Space. Boasting an all-star cast, William Hurt, Gary Oldman, Mimi Rogers, Heather Graham, Lacy Chabert, and Matt LeBlanc, the film follows the family Robinson as they leave the dying earth to prepare the…
Doctor Who (Tom Baker) – State of Decay
The second tale in what is known as the E-Space trilogy finds the Doctor (Baker), Romana (Lalla Ward), Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) – though they don’t know he’s stowed away on the TARDIS yet – and K9 taking on vampires! This four part story was penned by Terrance Dicks, and originally ran from 22 November…
The Mind Reels 