******STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!****** After seeing “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (TMP) theatrically in the late 1970s at age 13, the last thing I would’ve labeled it was a love story. There are no cute-meets of characters spilling coffee on each other in turbolifts. We don’t even see Captain Kirk romance a single green-haired alien woman. In…
Month: December 2025
Gil Gerard, star of “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,” passes away at age 82…
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…