*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!!****** A new Star Trek animated series (the first since 1974) has debuted on CBS-All Access this week. Created by Mike McMahan (“Rick and Morty”), “Star Trek: Lower Decks” is a look at the crew members who work at the less glamorous jobs within Star Trek’s fictional Starfleet; the ones who fix replicators,…
The Twilight Zone meets The X-Files in “The Vast of Night” (2020)…
*****FLYING SAUCER SHAPED SPOILERS AHEAD!!**** Despite the COVID-19 semi-quarantine, I haven’t really sampled many of the newer movies currently available for streaming, but there was one curious title that caught my eye; director/cowriter Andrew Patterson’s “The Vast of Night” (2020), a film recently purchased for streaming on Amazon Prime Video. From what I’d heard, the…
That actor you knew from everywhere, John Saxon (1935-2020)…
2020 has been a heavy-hearted year of great loss. Beyond the tragic loss of 652,000 people dead worldwide (to date) from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, or icons such as longtime Civil Rights advocate/congressman John Lewis, we’ve also lost many greats in the entertainment industry. Just this month, we lost the legendary Olivia de Havilland (“Gone With the Wind”), Kelly…
At-home projection: How I learned to love my movie collection all over again…
The Early Years… Viewing movies at home is hardly a new thing; the technology has been commonplace for around 40 years now. But I’m old enough to remember when it wasn’t common at all. In fact, for most of my childhood, up until about age of 16 or so (circa 1983), television was, in my…
“The Galaxy Being” first launched us into …The Outer Limits! (1963-1964)
As a kid I used to love anthology-format shows, with sci-fi/horror anthologies being my favorites. Every episode would feature an all-new cast in all-new settings with a promise of new adventures. It was like being told a different bedtime story every night. While I was a bit too young to catch most of them in…
“Serenity” (2005); the film that briefly resurrected “Firefly” for the big screen…
“Firefly” Felled by the Fox. Continuing the success afforded by his back-to-back TV successes “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1997-2003) and “Angel” (1999-2004), writer/producer/director Joss Whedon (currently of Disney/Marvel “Avengers” cinematic fame) created, along with “Angel” partner Tim Minear (“American Horror Story”), a short-lived TV series (2002-2003) that could be described in broad terms as…
Happy Birthday, “Back to the Future” (1985): Sending us back for 35 years…
“Well, I figured…what the hell?” 1985 saw the release of “Back to the Future”, a pop culture phenomenon that has, in the years since, become more a time capsule of 1980s pop culture than the 1950s culture it romanticized. It is one of the most iconic films of its decade, right along with “Ghostbusters,” “Raiders…
“Cocoon” (1985); a sentimental summer fantasy of seniors and immortality…
Summer of 1985. The summer of 1985 stirs a few memories for me; it was the year I graduated high school, and I was at a very different place than I am now, 35 years later; the back door of life was much further away than it seems now. So it’s not a great surprise…
CBS-AA’s “The Twilight Zone” is slightly more surefooted in its sophomore season…
Season One: Danger Zone. When writer/director/actor Jordan Peele took the reigns of CBS-All Access’ new remake of Rod Serling‘s classic series, “The Twilight Zone”, few were more excited than myself. As a big fan of Peele’s movies (“Get Out” “Us”) I thought he’d bring some of the profundity and gallows’ humor of his films into…
A slice of Soviet-era sci-fi cinema: “Planet Bur” (1962) is three movies in one…
Soviet Sci-Fi Cinema. Russia’s Soviet era (1917-1991) was a difficult time, especially for artists, who worked under heavy state censorship. Many artists during this time were stifled, fined, imprisoned or even executed for daring to challenge the Soviet status quo through their works. That said, Soviet-era science fiction cinema still managed to produce some truly…
Star Trek: Enterprise’s two-parter “Demons” and “Terra Prime” speak to right now…
Earth, Today. The third decade of the 21st century is off to a really rocky start. Political unrest in the United States at its most volatile since the late 1960s, arguably more so, in fact. Severe racial and economic strife, grotesque social injustice, a global pandemic, rampant political corruption, multiple constitutional crises and even murder…
JAWS (1975); the movie that invented the summer blockbuster turns 45…
“This is summer…” June of 1975 was a very different time. Video games were mainly for arcades. Home video wasn’t yet a thing. There was no internet. No 24 hour news cycles (there was the evening news and the morning news, as well as newspapers). Cheap entertainment options for the masses were limited to LP record…
