Get Smart (1965) – Mr. Big, Diplomat’s Daughter, and School Days

In the 1960s, spies were everywhere! They were in novels, comics, on the big screen, and had spread to television. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, Get Smart debuted on 18 September, 1965 and introduced us to CONTROL’s agent 86, Maxwell Smart (Don Adams). Filled with goofy gadgets, like the shoe phone, Smart is…

Deep Cover (1992) – Bill Duke

Bill Duke directs a gritty, rough and tumble cop film, and does it incredibly well. It’s an entertaining and brutal ride, and lets Laurence Fishburne shine. Fishburne plays Russell Stevens, a cop recruited by Carver (Charles Martin Smith) to go undercover as a drug dealer in order to get close to Barbosa (Gregory Sierra) and…

Hit Man (2023) – Richard Linklater

Glen Powell headlines in Hit Man, a film by Richard Linklater that is based loosely on a true story. It allows Powell to lean both into his dramatic and comedic talents, and be charming the entire way through. Powell plays Gary Johnson, an almost nebbish philosophy professor who also does some work with the local…

Stargate SG-1 (2002) – Summit, and Last Stand

The Tok’ra come to Stargate Command with news of a Goa’uld summit, it seems a number of system lords, including Ba’al (Cliff Simon) Zipacna (Kevin Durand), Kali (Suleka Mathew), and Osiris (Anna-Louise Plowman) are getting together. And the Tok’ra have a plan to take them out. Written by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, this episode…

Invisible Agent (1942) – Edwin L. Marin

The next Universal Monsters movie (that I haven’t previously seen) is Invisible Agent, and honestly, it feels like a huge step up from The Invisible Woman, but too often goes for the comedic angle instead of playing itself as a straight thriller, which I think it could have done brilliantly. This time we are introduced…

Kindergarten Cop (1990) – Ivan Reitman

“It’s not a tumour!” It’s a catchphrase that found its way into the pop culture and has resurfaced over and over. And I never saw it originally. I was never interested in watching Arnold Schwarzenegger be funny. It just didn’t sound like a good time to me. So now, some thirty-plus years on, I finally…

Magnum P.I. (2023) – Appetite for Danger, and Night Has a Thousand Eyes

While Kumu (Amy Hill) documents a dark part of Hawaiian history, doing interviews with Cade (Martin Martinez) as her cameraman, with survivors of the Japanese internment camps in Hawaii following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sab Shimono, the wonderful actor, plays George, and tells his story, something Shimono went through himself. It’s a great story…