After a weekend filled with violence, including two ugly mass shootings and the brutal slayings of Rob Reiner and his wife in their home, I was deliberately throwing myself into an unrelated column I’d been working on for a few days prior, when my sister texted me with news that actor Gil Gerard, star of…
Actor/filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, found dead in their home…
This past weekend felt exceptionally violent. First, a horrific mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island. Then another, even worse mass shooting during a Hanukah celebration at Bondi Beach, in Australia. Closer to home, my wife and I were returning from an evening holiday stroll at downtown Disney in Anaheim Saturday night, when we…
Retro-Musings: The “Daimajin” trilogy (1966)…
******KAIJU-SIZED SPOILERS!****** As a kid, I was (and am) a huge fan of Japanese kaiju-eiga (giant monster) movies, such as the “Godzilla” films, Rodan, Mothra, “War of the Gargantuas,” and many others. It was during a random ‘4:30 Afternoon Movie’ that I caught an English-dubbed Japanese kaiju movie called “Majin, the Monster of Terror,” and…
Revisiting “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ten years later…
******STAR DESTROYER-SIZED SPOILERS!****** I make no secret of the fact that I, my wife, and other Gen Xers we know found writer/director George Lucas’ Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999-2005) disappointing. While they offered some interesting ideas, they lacked the heart, passion and grit of the original trilogy; replacing them with clunky scripting, soulless performances, and…
Netflix’s “A House of Dynamite” (2025) weakens before impact…
******SILOS OF SPOILERS!****** Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”) first came onto my radar with a rural Romeo & Juliet vampire film. No, not the “Twilight” movies; the good one, “Near Dark,” from 1987. Since then, her reputation has grown tremendously, with action films such as “Point Break” (1991), before her Best Director Oscar…
Star Trek TOS: “The Corbomite Maneuver” (1966) put the series on course…
******FESARIUS-SIZED SPOILERS!****** As a kid watching Star Trek out of broadcast order in reruns during the 1970s and 1980s, I could always tell earlier episodes by their ‘growing pains’; uniforms without black collars, different paint/layout scheme for the ship’s interiors, Spock’s makeup tweaks, various terminology differences (“United Earth Space Probe Agency,” “Vulcanian” ), etc. First…
Retro-Musings: “The Thief of Bagdad” (1940) works its magic, 85 years later …
******DJINN-SIZED SPOILERS!****** Even the most ardent movie lovers like myself have ‘blind spots’; major classics and blockbuster movies we’re familiar with through cultural osmosis, yet we’ve never actually seen. Despite my mad love of cinema, I’ve had an embarrassing number of overlooked classics in my lifetime. For example, I’d never seen “It’s a Wonderful Life”…
Guillermo Del Toro’s “Frankenstein” (2025) is stitched together from both faithful and divergent pieces…
******207 YEAR-OLD SPOILERS!****** After impressing critics and audiences with his first independent feature film “Cronos” (1993), future Oscar winning writer-director Guillermo Del Toro quickly rose through the ranks, making his Hollywood debut with “Mimic” (1997) before going on to more mainstream projects such as “Hellboy” (2004). He would return to less commercial films, such as…
The first two episodes of AppleTV’s “Pluribus” give rise to a world of shiny, happy, eerie people…
*****SMILEY-FACED SPOILERS!***** The trailer for AppleTV’s new sci-fi series “Pluribus” (Latin for many) had me hooked for several reasons; creator/producer/director Vince Gilligan (“The X-Files,” “Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul”), lead actress Rhea Seehorn (“Better Call Saul”) and a not-unfamiliar sci-fi idea of a shared human consciousness. The plans to create a unique RNA molecule has…
The “Star Trek: Khan” audio-drama podcast is truly ‘Paradise Lost’…
******PLANET-SIZED SPOILERS!****** “Star Trek: Khan” was conceived as a live-action Paramount+ miniseries that would be written by writer/producer/director Nicholas Meyer (“Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”) which would chronicle the exile of Star Trek antagonist Khan Noonian Singh and his genetically-engineered ‘augment’ loyalists on the doomed planet of…
Making dreams tangible: Drew Struzan, 1947-2025…
Drew Struzan I meant to do this column earlier, but October kept me very busy, and I needed a little extra time and a less frazzled mindset to look back on the career of the late Drew Struzan; the pop artist whose work helped define movie posters for the last fifty years. His work has…
Retro-Musings for Halloween: “Nosferatu” (1922) rises at the historic Mission Inn hotel with a live music score…
******103-YEAR OLD BLOODSUCKING SPOILERS!****** I’m hoping readers aren’t too tired of my Halloween content (my favorite holiday), because this one should be the last one for this season…I think (?). This past weekend, I went to see my first-ever public screening of a silent movie with a live organist supplying the soundtrack! I own a…