With a musical score by Francesco De Masi and an opening credits sequence that feels very much in line with a Sergio Leone western, expectations surrounding Lone Wolf McQuade on my initial viewing went up a little. Despite the fact that I know Chuck Norris isn’t a very good actor. Norris plays the titular McQuade,…
Tag: trouble
The Ministry of Time (2024) – Kaliane Bradley
Simon & Schuster delivers a charming new novel by Kaliane Bradley today, one that is wonderfully funny, heartbreakingly romantic, and all wrapped up in time travel. Set in England, a young British-Cambodian civil servant is promoted and recruited into a top-secret project and is shocked to discover that time travel is real. A number of…
Road House (2024) – Doug Liman
Did we need a Road House re-boot/re-imagining? No, but the locations make for a pretty picture. But that doesn’t mean it has the charm of the original, most of which was because of the casting of Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliott. This time out, Jake Gyllenhaal takes on the lead role of Dalton, a former…
My Heart is a Chainsaw (2021) – Stephen Graham Jones
I won’t lie, it took me a while to completely get into the story, much like the main character I was attempting to use my knowledge of slashers to figure out what was going on, while also trying to rationalize that the story was set in the ‘real world.’ But when things really started to…
Magnum P.I. (2019) – Make It ’til Dawn, and Lie, Cheat, Steal, Kill
Make It ’til Dawn is my least favourite episode of the series to date, it has a lot going on with a number of different narratives but none of them are given their due. Written by Gene Hong and Tera Tolentino this Hallowe’en episode first aired on 25 October, 2019. Magnum (Jay Hernandez) gets paired…
The Long Goodbye (1973) – Robert Altman
I’m probably stepping into a minefield here, but I’m not the biggest Robert Altman fan. Who doesn’t love The Player? And as great as M*A*S*H is, I came to it by way of the television series, so it never resonated with me as much as I would have liked. That being said, I really liked…
A House with Good Bones (2023) – T. Kingfisher
T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon has entertained and creeped me out with each of the books I’ve read by her; three to date, with A House with Good Bones being the latest. Once again she introduces us to a relatable character, in this case entomologist Samantha who, when her summer dig is cancelled, decides to…
TIFF ’23: Chuck Chuck Baby
Chuck Chuck Bay is an ebullient experience. A delightful film about love, life, loss and music which brushes against deeper and heavier themes of community, hurt and acceptance but never loses track of the joy of falling in love and how every song seems to be about you. While not quite a jukebox musical, the…
TIFF ’23: Riddle of Fire
I started my TIFF experience this year with a title that will be featured at this year’s Midnight Madness, the popular venue that explores unique genre titles. Riddle of Fire definitely falls into that category, in conversations with other critics I ended up describing this film in the following manner: it was as if someone…
Family Ties (1983) – Margin of Error, French Lessons, and I Gotta Be Ming
Alex (Michael J. Fox) gets in all manner of trouble in Margin of Error. Written by Michael Russnow it was first broadcast on 9 February, 1983. Alex is playing the stocks on paper every day for a school project, and he’s been making a theoretical killing. When he asks Steven (Michael Gross) and Elyse (Meredith…
The Mind Reels 