This week I dug into one of Agatha Christie’s most iconic novels, Murder on the Orient Express which features that Belgian detective and his little grey cells, Hercule Poirot. Summoned back to London, Poirot must forgo a layover and board the Orient Express to make it to his next assignment. Unfortunately, the train car is…
Tag: vengeance
Looper (2012) – Rian Johnson
Rian Johnson is a fantastic writer/director (no matter what some Star Wars fans may think), and with his science fiction thriller, Looper, he plays with a number of familiar tropes, especially those of the western genre as he explores, and plays with, causality, in this brilliant actioner that stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily…
9th Annual Old School Kung Fu Film Fest: Joseph Kuo Edition – The 18 Bronzemen (1976)
The 9th Annual Old School King Fu Film Fest continues in Queens today at the Museum of the Moving Image in conjunction with in Subway Cinema. Screening at 1pm is writer/director Joseph Kuo’s The 18 Bronzemen, a fast-paced film that delivers a story of vengeance and the wishes of the father carried out by the…
The X-Files (2000) – Orison, and The Amazing Maleeni
The possibly demonic, and definitely evil, Donnie Pfaster (Nick Chinlund), last seen in Irresistible, returns in Orison. Written by Chip Johannessen who had served as showrunner for Millennium’s final season, this episode debuted on 9 January, 2000. Pfaster, serving life in prison, somehow seems to magically walk out of a maximum security instituion, and Mulder…
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) – Danny Steinmann
1985 gave us perhaps the worst entry in the Friday the 13th franchise. The fifth film, in the series, delivers us a Jason movie without Jason in it. The story picks up a half a decade (?) after the previous film as Tommy (played by Corey Feldman in the previous film, and briefly in this…
Sudden Impact (1983) – Clint Eastwood
Lalo Schifrin returns to score Dirty Harry’s next adventure which sees Eastwood not only starring as Dirty Harry Callahan, but serves as the film’s producer and director. After causing more problems for the city brass, and not following the law in his own investigations, Harry is assigned to a homicide case that will get him…
Licence to Kill (1989) – John Gardner
James Bond returns this week in John Gardner’s adaptation of the 1989 film, Licence to Kill. This is probably the most disjointed of his novels as he tries to marry his version of the literary 007 to the big screen version, and it doesn’t always work. In fact, throughout the book Bond thinks he must…
Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) – John McTiernan
Director John McTiernan returns for the third (and arguably the last real) Die Hard film that sees Bruce Willis reprise his role as New York Police Detective John McClane (Michael Kamen returns as well to deliver the score) in a story that, this time, is set in New York. Joining Willis on screen is Jeremy…
Drag Me to Hell (2009) – Sam Raimi
Sam Raimi returned to the horror genre in 2009 with the film Drag Me to Hell, the next title in the section on witches in DK Canada’s highly enjoyable Monsters in the Movies book. Alison Lohman portrays Christine Brown, a loan officer at a bank in California. She’s in competition for the Assistant Manager’s position,…
National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) – John Landis
Ten Bad Dates With De Niro brings me this John Landis comedy classic from the late 70s for my viewing enjoyment. It tops the list of Unlikeliest Films Ever Judged ‘The Best of All Time.’ And while the film is brilliantly funny, boasts an all-star cast and has made the song Louie, Louie iconic, there…
The Mind Reels 