Producer Gale Anne Hurd joins forces with Star Trek alumnus and director Jonathan Frakes to pair up with Nickelodeon Pictures in this family friendly film that is the next stop on the Sci-Fi Chronicles book. Playing to the tween audience, the film is sadly more suited to television movie territory than striving to be a…
Tag: visual effects
Virus (1999) – John Bruno
Gale Anne Hurd serves as the producer on my next stop in the Sci-Fi Chronicles, 1999’s Virus. Once again, the film is packed with a fairly solid cast, Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin, Joanna Pacula, and Marshall Bell, and once again, most of it is poorly executed. Based on the Dark Horse Comic…
The Devil’s Advocate (1997) – Taylor Hackford
The final recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book for my screening of La Belle et La Bete is this 1997 legal thriller with supernatural overtones that lets Keanu Reeves take on a scene-chewing Al Pacino. Charlize Theron co-stars as Reeves’ wife Mary Ann, while Keanu plays Kevin Lomax, a not…
Tron: Legacy (2010) -Joseph Kosinski
Tron was a big part of my childhood. I remember seeing it in the theatre, and I remember my father falling asleep next to my sister while I was enraptured by the film. The use of computer technology, and the blossoming game world that seemed to fascinate every 80s kid was up there on the…
Maximum Ride (2016) -Jay Martin
James Patterson’s young adult novel series, Maximum Ride, takes flight cimematically this week from Paramount Pictures. I read the first book when it came out in 2005. It was fun, engaging. Patterson is a very entertaining and imaginative writer, and Max seemed perfectly suited for exploration in other media. The downside to this big screen…
The Day After Tomorrow (2004) – Roland Emmerich
Happily with this film, my time with Roland Emmerich comes to a close, as I take a look at The Day After Tomorrow for the Sci-Fi Chronicles book. A glossy, A-list star (how does that keep happening in his films?), slick looking piece of filmmaking that renders global warming and catastrophic destruction of our environment into a…
Arrival (2016) – Denis Villeneuve
First contact. The interpretation of words. How we communicate both person to person, and mass media. The very perception of our existence. These are all at work in Canadian director Villeneuve’s latest film. A hard science fiction tale that eschews lasers and space battles for deeper concepts like the way we interact and understand one…
Doctor Strange (2016) – Scott Derrickson
Benedict Cumberbatch settles rather nicely into the Marvel universe, as he dons the cloak and mantle of the MCU’s (Marvel Cinematic Universe) latest superhero. Doctor Strange. Easing into an American accent, as easily as he does Strange’s costume, Cumberbatch fits the role perfectly, bringing to life the doctor’s arrogance, ego, and eventually his humbled, giving…
Blu-Ray Review: Star Trek – Beyond (2016) – Justin Lin
Beaming in on Blu-Ray and DVD today from Paramount Pictures is the latest entry in the reboot or Kelvin-verse Star Trek series. I’d previously reviewed my theatrical experience of the film here, so I was eager to see how my impressions of it changed when viewed at home. I actually found myself enjoying it more. Knowing…
Escape From L.A. (1996) – John Carpenter
I love me some John Carpenter, and his work with Kurt Russell is always enjoyable, but this next stop in the Sci-Fi Chronicles book isn’t as good as it could have been, but I still enjoy parts of it, I mean there’s Kurt as Snake Plissken, again. This time the year is 2013, L.A. has…
The Mind Reels 