I remember catching a matinee showing of yet another ‘buddy-cop’ movie in the fall of 1988 called “Alien Nation.” The movie followed the same general template as “48 HRS,” “Lethal Weapon,” “Red Heat”, and a few dozen others, including the “Rush Hour” movies which came about a decade later. However, “Alien Nation” had a science…
Month: September 2018
This is Halloween: 25 years of “The Nightmare Before Christmas”…
When I was a kid, Halloween was (and still is) the coolest thing ever. It allowed us as kids to cosplay for an entire night (long before the word ‘cosplay’ was ever a thing) and we got paid in candy for our efforts! The thrill of the hunt; going to stranger’s houses, awing at their cool…
Still hungry for “Soylent Green”, 45 years later…
Back in the days before “Star Wars” and superhero movies transformed cinematic science fiction into gleaming toy commercials, science fiction cinema (with occasional exceptions) consisted largely of futuristic dystopias that were more like feature-length episodes of “The Twilight Zone” than today’s largely escapist entertainment. It’s far less common today to see a major studio offer up…
Hulu’s “The First” takes the long road to Mars…
I’ve just seen all 8 episodes of the first season of Hulu’s new streaming series, “The First” starring Sean Penn and Natascha McElhone (not to be confused with “First”, the upcoming Neil Armstrong movie). I have to admit that, while I eventually warmed up to this deeply angsty new series, a part of me initially…
Requiem for a nightmare; James Cameron’s “The Terminator” (1984)…
“What day is it? The date! What year?” October 26th, 1984. I still remember my sister coming home raving about a movie she saw with her then-boyfriend in the fall of 1984. It was a new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and the next day she was telling me all about how truly good and scary it…
War and Remembrance: “The War of the Worlds”…
War Correspondent. It was over 120 years ago that Herbert George Wells first published the seminal alien invasion story, “The War of the Worlds.” Like so many of Wells’ works (“The Time Machine,” “The Invisible Man,” “The Shape of Things To Come”) WOTW became a template for many such alien invasion stories to come, such…
“Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” (1989): God only knows…
I’ve been a Star Trek fan for almost as long as I can remember, and one thing I’ve seen over the years is that there is rarely consensus on what constitutes good Star Trek. Even the best episodes & movies have their detractors, and the worst always have their champions. I myself have quite…