*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!***** This week’s episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” may take its title from the Bard’s “Macbeth,” but the story itself solders together elements from many past Treks, including The Original Series’ “City on the Edge of Forever,” “Space Seed” and Star Trek: Enterprise’s “Carpenter Street.” Fortunately, there…
Month: June 2023
A few words about the unjust cancellation (and removal) of “Star Trek: Prodigy”…
*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS***** Just as I was thankful to my Paramount+ subscription for last Thursday’s sensational episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” ( “Ad Astra Per Aspera” ), I was abruptly blindsided the next day by news that the streaming service was cancelling—and removing—the entirety of “Star Trek: Prodigy” from its platform, despite the fact…
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, S2.2: “Ad Astra Per Aspera” is easily the best modern Star Trek episode to date…
*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!***** Last season of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” ended with the USS Enterprise’s first officer, Commander Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), aka “Number One,” being taken into custody by Captain Batel’s security team, once Starfleet got wind of the fact that she was a genetically-engineered Illyrian masquerading as a human (genetic enhancement is forbidden…
“The Wicker Man” (1973) still burns as brightly as ever…
*****SACRIFICIAL SPOILERS AHEAD!***** “The Wicker Man” (1973) is one of those cult gems that I came to a lot later in life, having first seen the movie sometime in the early 2000s, after years of rumor and curiosity. It did not disappoint. While I find the film more fascinating than frightening, “The Wicker Man” has…
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; “The Broken Circle” warps into the second season…
*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!***** Return to Tomorrow “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” (SNW) returns this week with the first of a ten episode second season. The first season of SNW—save for one or two disappointing installments—was one of the strongest seasons of Trek in awhile. The cast is uniformly excellent, and the return to an episodic format…
CBS/Paramount+’s “True Lies” reboot fails to reach critical mass…
*****TRUE SPOILERS!***** “La Totale!” (1991) Written by Simon Michaël, Didier Kaminka and director Claude Zidi, “La Totale!” was a French action-comedy involving a seemingly dull telecommunications employee, named François Voisin (Thierry Lhermitte) who misses a surprise 40th birthday party from his bored wife Hélène (Miou-Miou), while planting a surveillance device during a dangerous mission. François,…
Retro-Musings: “The Thing With Two Heads” (1972) is a silly exploitation flick with something on its mind(s)…
*****TWO-FACED SPOILERS!****** 1972’s blaxploitation horror-comedy “The Thing With Two Heads” followed the release of earlier double-headed transplant/monster movies, including 1959’s “The Manster,” and 1971’s “The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant.” “Thing…” was created at the 1970s height of the blaxploitation-horror subgenre, which yielded such cult classics as the “Blacula” movies (1972/1973), 1973’s “Blackenstein,” and 1974’s “Abby” (a knockoff…
Soviet-era sci-fi TV: The first adaptation of “Solaris” (1968)…
*****SPOILERS!***** In this column, I’d previously reviewed both cinematic adaptations of noted Polish sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem’s “Solaris” (1972/2002). The book, arguably Lem’s most celebrated novel, tells the story of psychiatrist-cosmonaut Kris Kelvin, who visits a dilapidated space station in orbit over the distant planet Solaris, which is covered by a living ocean. The Solaris…