Insidious (2010) – James Wan

Director James Wan, and writer Leigh Whannell’s Insidious is a fairly solid ghost story, though it took me forever to come around to it. My first experience seeing it was in the theatre, where I couldn’t get over how a couple in front of me was scared by everything that was happening on the screen….

Mission: Impossible (1970) – The Innocent, and Homecoming

This week, we have a pair of episodes that feature a couple of recognizable guest stars, who went on to become series regulars on M*A*S*H, and The Innocent features a cool new title music arrangement, and it took me a moment to recognize him, but Sam Elliott as IMF agent Doug. Written by Marc Norman…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) – David Yates

This is it. It all led to this film, after seven films, the Harry Potter franchise comes to its close with this, the second part of the adaptation of the seventh and final novel. Picking up where the first film left off with Voldemort’s (Ralph Fiennes) claiming the Elder Wand, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma…

A Good Day To Die Hard (2013) – John Moore

Bruce Willis returns for a fifth time as New York cop John McClane in an instalment which I desperately hope isn’t the final one in the series because it’s so abysmally bad and you don’t want a series like this to go out on a bad note. Directed by John Moore (who’s past films didn’t…

Paul (2011) – Greg Mottola

One tends to forget how funny Paul is. Written by stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, it is a love letter to sci-fi, geek, and pop culture and is the next stop in DK Canada’s Monsters in the Movies. Graeme (Pegg) and Clive (Frost) are huge geeks, and have finally made it to Comic Con…

Chuck (2007) – Versus the Alma Mater, and Versus the Truth

Chuck (Zachary Levi) has some issues with his past this week when Anne Cofell Saunders pens Chuck Versus the Alma Mater. It first debuted on 5 November, 2007. When one of his former professors Fleming (Scott Alan Smith) – a bit of a nod to James Bond’s creator – from Stanford is kidnapped, Chuck must…

Toronto After Dark 2019: Contracts (2019) – Alex Chung

Tonight’s entry in the Toronto After Dark film festival is the one film in this year’s lineup that I find a little dubious. I love that the festival embraces genre films from all over the world, and that they showcase some fantastic films, but Contracts seems like a bit of misstep. In a post-John Wick…

The Conversation (1974) – Francis Ford Coppola

Gene Hackman stars in one of the What Else to Watch list following my screening of The Lives of Others as I work my way through DK Canada’s exceptional The Movie Book. Written and directed by Coppola, the film features some very recognizable names including Harrison Ford (playing the closest he’s ever been to a…

The Hunger (2018) – Alma Katsu

There is a sense of dread and menace that seems to ooze off the pages of Alma Katsu’s retelling of the haunting, and infamous Donner Party expedition. Everyone knows, or thinks they know the story, and Katsu uses that troubling knowledge and lets it hang over every page – you know each of the characters…