I’ve seen sci-fi horror movies where the threat is animal, and at least one where the threat is vegetable, but 1957’s The Monolith Monsters is the first one I can recall seeing where the threat is mineral.  This sci-fi/horror film opens on a shot of the Earth (well, a fairly crude model of the globe) […]

Wernher von Braun was a rocket scientist without whom it is unlikely the Apollo moon mission would have succeeded.  Alas, his rocket skills which were employed by the United States were developed in the V2 rocket program in Nazi Germany.  I didn’t know much about von Bruan before seeing 1960 biopic I Am at the […]

1937’s Topper was an odd movie that rubbed me the wrong way.  I am a big fan of screwball comedies, especially ones starring Cary Grant, but I found it weird he and Constance Bennett were husband and wife ghosts who decide to do a good deed by screwing up the life of Roland Young, who […]

While watching 2018’s Lifechanger, I was reminded of a passage I read somewhere and I had to look it up afterwards.  I was surprised I did not immediately recall the source, as it is from my all-time favorite book.  Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake contains this passage: “I’ll make you mine, lovers said in old […]

The IMDB listing for 1991’s Dead Again puts it in the genres of crime, drama, mystery and thriller.  The one it leaves out is comedy, which is how I will remember this feature.  It is so slyly a comedy that not even the film itself might realize it is one. I will concede one problem […]

Until I saw 1954’s Sabrina, I didn’t realize there was a bad angle from which Audrey Hepburn could be photographed.  And, yet, there is she, perched in a tree and looking slightly up and to the right of the camera.  There is nothing in her appearance at this point which suggests the glamorous fashion icon […]

I have never found Reefer Madness as funny as a great many seem to think it is.  Maybe it’s because I have never smoked pot, and I never intend to.  I say this even after the state I reside in recently legalized it for recreational use.  I don’t have any specific reasons for my apathy […]

Rape.  When a movie’s lead commits rape in the first few minutes of a picture, it had better be A Clockwork Orange.  I watched 1971’s A Fistful of Dynamite expecting nothing more than dumb fun and a bunch of stuff blowing up.  I don’t think that was too much to ask.  Despite being directed by […]

Most of the output of horror studio Blumhouse does little for me.  There is the occasional high-concept fare, but I find most of their stuff to be the kind of unmarkable fright films I never find scary.  You can keep your twitchy, fast-slow-fast, spider-walking all over the walls and ceilings undead things. So it really […]

Nice seems to often to be used as a derogatory term.  That’s a shame, because sometimes one wants a movie that is simply “nice”. 1938’s Penny Paradise is such a film, an effortless confection that is very easy to watch and which is quite enjoyable.  The plot ties itself into some interesting knots I was […]

If there’s one thing I can say about the sci-fi movies Roger Corman produced in the late 70’s and early 80’s aren’t, it’s that they aren’t boring.  Not that they’re necessarily any good.  At least 1978’s Starcrash is rated PG.  I didn’t care to experience any more gory excess like what filled Forbidden World, or […]

I was too old for it when it was a thing, but I remember Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego? was big thing with kids at one time.  1957’s Pickup Alley is like Where In the World Is Trevor Howard?, which I doubt would be as popular.  Also, Howard plays an international narcotics trafficker, […]

If there’s one thing a movie like 2015’s The Revenant always does for me, is it reminds me I would be completely useless at any moment in history prior to…let’s say the middle of the 20th century.  I am barely a functioning human being as it is, even with all the technological advances we have […]

When I was a really little kid, I thought the front yard of my grandparent’s house was huge.  Admittedly, the house is set further back from the street than any other in that neighborhood, but it didn’t take me long to realize the yard was nowhere near as large as elementary-school-aged me believed. All it […]