Hulu’s “No One Will Save You” (2023) is a well-crafted exercise in style over substance…

*****FLYING SAUCER-SIZED SPOILERS!***** Writer-director Brian Duffield has crafted a few sci-fi/horror movies where a protagonist is left to their own resources to deal with with a cataclysm or conspiracy (“Love and Monsters” “The Babysitter”).  That template is used once again with his latest movie, “No One Will Save You,” which stars Kaitlyn Dever (“Last Man…

The Night the Cylons Landed: September 17th, 1978…

Last week marked the 45th anniversary of a show I was absolutely nuts about as a kid. I couldn’t let September 17th, 1978 go unmentioned. Oh, and apologies for borrowing the title of this column from a two-parter of the otherwise sacrilegious “Galactica: 1980,” but it seemed to fit… What’s This? In the second half…

“Meg 2: The Trench” (2023) hits rock bottom, but it’s not such a bad ride…

*****MEGALODON-SIZED SPOILERS!***** Five years ago saw the summer release of “The Meg,” a Chinese-US coproduction based on a 1997 book by Steve Alten (I swear). “The Meg” was a big, silly, check-your-brain-at-the-door action flick that wisely chose not to compete with “JAWS” in terms of direction, innovation, skill, or talent. If anything, “The Meg”’s humble…

Retro-Musings: “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” trilogy (1954-1956) was the last of Universal’s classic monster movie franchises…

******GILL-MAN SIZED SPOILERS!***** When I was a kid, I was all about monsters. In those bygone days before the internet, my very first magazine subscription (at the age of eight) was the late Forry Ackerman’s “Famous Monsters of Filmland” magazine.  The monsters of the classic Universal movies (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, the Wolfman) were…

The unlikely episode that launched Star Trek: “The Man Trap” (1966)…

*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!***** When fans today think of the ‘first’ Star Trek episode, they tend to (not incorrectly) think of the pilot episodes “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” but neither of those pilots were broadcast first. In fact, “The Cage” wasn’t broadcast in full until 1986 (the same year I bought it…

“Barbie” tells a different kind of ‘Toy Story’…

*****DREAMHOUSE-SIZED SPOILERS***** I don’t go to the movies much these days. The COVID pandemic reinforced my natural introvert tendencies, and after buying a digital projector, my wife and I have spoiled ourselves rotten with theatrical-looking movie nights right at home. However, this past Sunday was “National Cinema Day,” where most movie theaters across the US…