Crash (2004) – Paul Haggis

  Walking away with the Academy Awards for Best Picture (controversially – as Brokeback Mountain was the presumptive winner), Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing, writer/director Paul Haggis’ tale of a cross-section of denizens of Los Angeles, tied together by race, loss and redemption come together in Crash, my next recommendation from the Great Movies…

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – Henry Selick

  The final recommendation from The Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of It’s A Wonderful Life is this modern day cult classic, that has found its way into the mainstream consciousness and has been stuck there since the film’s initial release, celebrating Christmas and Halloween in that macabre and…

Stranger Things (2016) – Season 1

  Picture a Stephen King novel directed by Steven Spielberg, with a score by John Carpenter, and a beautifully balanced touch of nostalgia and you have the wondrous, scary, funny, and exciting ride that is Netflix’s latest winner, Stranger Things. Created by Matt and Ross Duffer, the series is set in Indiana in the year,…

Star Trek: The Wounded Sky (1983) – Diane Duane

  Diane Duane takes the helm of the Enterprise in this week’s visit to the 23rd century via The Book Shelf. While heavy on the techno-babble and grounded in factual science, this story garnered an additional worthy note, it was later adapted for the season 1 episode of The Next Generation, Where No One Has…

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) – Robert Wise

  The Sci-Fi Chronicles lets me settle in to enjoy another one of my favorites… featuring one of my favorite film scores, this one by Jerry Goldmsith, the U.S.S. Enterprise leaps from the small screen to the the theatrical one with this first film which isn’t for everyone, but the older I get, the more…

Midnight Special (2016) – Jeff Nichols

  Owing its pedigree to films of the 80s like John Carpenter’s Starman and Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Nichols writes and directs this science fiction road movie that is best viewed with little to no plot knowledge. So suffice to say, I won’t be saying much about story points in my review….

Stargate (1994) – Roland Emmerich

  The adventures continue with the Sci-Fi Chronicles book, as I kcik back and enjoy Kurt Russell and James Spader in this science fiction actioner that seems to be heavily influenced by Chariots of the Gods, and wonderfully marries Egyptian mythology, with action, and space opera. Long before the successful television series, Colonel Jack O’Neil…