Recently, I went to see 28 Years Later in the theater, the first time I have been to the cinema in over a year.  There was the usual block of trailers and advertisements before the feature presentation.  I can’t believe this now adds another half-hour to the time you have to wait for the commencement […]

1943’s Edge of Darkness begins with a Nazi fighter plane flying over Norway in the time they occupied the country.  The pilots notice a building is flying the Norwegian flag and so a small fleet of ships is dispatched to investigate.  On one of the boats, there is a conversation about the lack of smoke […]

There are few truly pure things in the world, so it is a rare and beautiful moment to encounter one.  I include among those things which do exactly what they say they will do.  As the British put it, things that “do what they say on the tin”.  Such is the case with 1974’s made-for-TV […]

Ever notice how nothing positive is ever conveyed when a word is preceded by “premature”?  Premature ejaculation, for example.  Premature death.  Premature aging.  Premature birth.  It is different from “early”, which is why my completion of high school before the last quarter wasn’t described as premature graduation, though it probably should have been. Without knowing […]

Having seen a great deal of Humphrey Bogart’s filmography, I approach any films of his I have not seen before with some apprehension.  I am especially leery of any movies of his I have not even heard of before.  So, I stunned to find how much I enjoyed 1945’s Conflict. What had me even more […]

Neo-Nazism confuses me, especially those in that movement in the US and the UK, given how much those two countries devoted themselves to fighting the first Nazi menace in WWII.  My grandfather was in the Army in WWII.  Even if I didn’t have that separation from the fight by a couple of degrees, I would […]

2024 saw the release of sequel to Joker which alienated most of its audience primarily because it was a musical.  I don’t know if the Alien series should follow suit, but I sure wish it would do something drastically different.  Alas, that same year’s Alien: Romulus hews closely to the established constraints of the series, […]

Given all the zombie fare we’ve had since 2002, did we really need another sequel to 28 Days Later?  I didn’t recall being all that impressed by the first sequel, that being 2007’s 28 Weeks Later.  In the time we waited in vain for 28 Months Later, we’ve seen The Walking Dead (and its many […]

There’s an old saying about how, behind every great man, there’s a great woman.  I always interpreted that as meaning any man would only be where he is because he had the support of an even better woman.  Still, it scans as a bit back-handed.  1941’s The Great Man’s Lady opens with a text that […]

Robert Ryan was one of the most convincing actors of Hollywood’s golden age whenever you needed a psychopath or a staunch bigot.  The irony is, in real life, he was gentle, generous, and very liberal.  He was a strong supporter of civil rights and a vocal opponent to McCarthy’s Community witch-hunt, at the times when […]

For some time now, I have had the nagging feeling we, as a species, are becoming less inspired and are losing our imagination.  It doesn’t help that artificial intelligence could possibly create every potential variation on every story trope known, and do so in a short span of time.  Not that human screenwriters seem capable […]

The most pleasantly surprising thing to happen to me in life so far has been winning a video contest for Brian Wilson’s song “Heroes & Villains”.  I was stunned my stop-motion video won.  In fact, I still can’t believe it.  With the increasing distance of time, I can see how my contest entry actually isn’t […]

As I write these words, there is an unhinged effort to undo diversity, equity and inclusion policies around the U.S., a movement that was collectively known as DEI when it was being used to shape policy under the previous administration.  Despite there being much talk of a change to a “merit-based” leadership, it really comes […]

A long-running trope in fiction, song and movies has been the person who goes to the big city and finds themselves corrupted by it.  Somewhat less popular is a storyline where a girl does that, only for her brother attempt to rescue her, then he gets framed for murder and executed, and the brain from […]