Angela Cartwright: Star Lite. Penny gets her moment in the sun… or at least, on a planet orbiting a different sun, as she is the focus of this drug-induced episode, where she befriends a disembodied voice in a cave, only to have that voice attack her family via an earthquake through a misunderstanding, and for it to then reconcile with … Read More
LOST IN SPACE – SEASON 1-06: WELCOME STRANGER
The Garbled Gaslighting of Irwin Allen. What the Robinsons thought was a missile heading toward them in the previous episode cliffhanger, turns out to be a spacecraft. It lands, and a regular human man exits. He’s sporting a cowboy hat and a Southern accent. And all the promise that LOST IN SPACE showed in this first Season, as a serious … Read More
LOST IN SPACE – SEASON 1-05: THE HUNGRY SEA
The Plotline That Needn’t Be. I don’t think the writers know how spaceships work: that they insulate the people inside from extremes of cold and heat. Writers Shimon Wincelberg and William Welch want to get the Space Family Robinson into a situation not unlike the Swiss Family Robinson: out on the open sea in a raging tempest… So begins the … Read More
LOST IN SPACE – SEASON 1-04: THERE WERE GIANTS IN THE EARTH
Giant Cyclops, Tiny Science. First of all, that title – There Were Giants In The Earth. This ain’t Earth. And that fact alone should make the Space Family Robinson think twice about any interaction they have with the native fauna or flora… it doesn’t, as they go about eating the flora and killing the fauna, even though the movie year … Read More
LOST IN SPACE – SEASON 1-03: ISLAND IN THE SKY
Bubble-Headed Badboy and Deadly Dr. Smith. Professor John Robinson (Guy Williams) has gone out the airlock of the Jupiter to apparently “fly” down to the planet they are orbiting to scope it out. One would think there are instruments onboard the spaceship that would carry out all that spectroscopy and visual reconnaissance. Nope. The only piece of tech the writers … Read More
LOST IN SPACE – SEASON 1-02: THE DERELICT
Sinister Spaceships and Ferocious Furniture. The Space Family Robinson is pulled into a hulking derelict spaceship and attacked by lounge chairs. LOST IN SPACE Season 1 Episode 2 begins exactly where the last episode left off. Professor John Robinson (Guy Williams) is floating away from the Jupiter 2 after his tow-line has broken, as wife Maureen (June Lockhart) watches helplessly, … Read More
HOUSE OF GUCCI
Yoko Gucci. Lady Gaga stars as Patrizia Reggiani, one of the world’s greatest gold-diggers (alongside Heather Mills, Anna Nicole Smith and Melania Trump). From a poor Italian family, Patrizia manipulates her way into THE HOUSE OF GUCCI in 1972, marrying Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), heir to the Gucci fashion empire. Not content to sit on the sidelines and earn a … Read More
MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE
When Immovable Corruption Meets Unstoppable Corruption. MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE is a clickbait title. It tells us it’s going to push the mainstream narrative that FBI Associate Director William Mark Felt singlehandedly brought down the corrupt Nixon administration in 1974, by leaking anonymously to the press during Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Nicknamed “Deep Throat” by … Read More
THE BATMAN 2022
Knight’s in Black Battin’. A young Batman, in his second year of fighting crime, feels futility mounting in his quest to rid Gotham of corruption. When he is enlisted to help Lieutenant Jim Gordon against a terrorist known as The Riddler who is killing politicians, he begins to question how high up the corruption goes, and is confronted with … Read More
NO TIME TO DIE
First Bond To Die. Daniel Craig’s last ever Bond. Is it too gauche to say he goes out… with a BANG? NO TIME TO DIE is a handsome robust conclusion to the Daniel Craig Bond adventure, something the Bond franchise has never done for its other leading spies. After wrapping SPECTRE (2015), with Daniel’s admission that he would rather eat … Read More
THE POWER OF THE DOG
Dog of a film. A meandering story with no throughlines, no payoffs and no plot, that everyone says we have to love, because it’s gay. And that’s totally gay. THE POWER OF THE DOG is simply boring, pretentious, attempted art-cinema, for faux-sophisticates and LGBTQ to fawn over and tease out psychodrama and social messages. About a ranch-hand in 1925 Montana, … Read More
PALADIN OF THE LOST HOUR | TWILIGHT ZONE | S1E7
Finding time to be greater than itself. A young man rescues a “very old man” from muggers in a cemetery, and is befriended by the old man, whom he discovers is a paladin, a guardian of a timepiece that has stopped ticking, holding in limbo the last hour of the universe. Written by the great Harlan Ellison, and screenplayed by … Read More
MEMO FROM PURGATORY | THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR | S3 E10
Insipid take on an Ellison classic. MEMO FROM PURGATORY is a slice-of-life tale (from the 1961 Harlan Ellison novel Memos From Purgatory) about running with a savage Brooklyn street gang. Memos was written after Ellison actually infiltrated a gang called The Barons when he was 19 – for the research! – adopting the alias Phil Beldone, surviving their initiation, taking … Read More
THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK
Tainted Saints and Sainted Taints. I really wanted to like THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK. Hey, it’s a prequel to THE SOPRANOS, the best television show in the history of television. But it’s not quite a prequel and not quite THE SOPRANOS… … Not quite a prequel because the character that was the blood and bone of THE SOPRANOS – … Read More
COBRA KAI SEASON FOUR
The UnMotivation of Terry Silver. Well, we got the exceptional Season One (The Rebirth of Johnny Lawrence,) the very good Season Two (The Re-emergence of John Kreese), the fan-service Season Three (the Reboot of Kumiko and Chozen and Ali with an I) and now COBRA KAI SEASON FOUR, that re-tools the psychopathic tool from KARATE KID 3. Yes, it’s Terry … Read More
REPLICAS
Movie clone of a clone movie. So it’s not cool enough to call them “clones” anymore? Now we call them REPLICAS. Keanu Reeves fulfils the role of mad scientist in this modern FRANKENSTEIN meets PET SEMATARY tale, where he tragically reconstructs his dead family after a fatal accident. We meet bio-engineer William Foster (Reeves), as he and his team try … Read More
CASINO ROYALE 1954
Baby Bond. When James Bond was American. When the most outlandish gadget was a walking-cane with a gun in it. But when the villains still talked instead of shooting. It’s the first ever James Bond adapted to film from Ian Fleming’s 1953 book, Casino Royale; a black and white TV presentation from CBS, under a series called CLIMAX! Aired in … Read More
COBRA KAI SEASON ONE
Beating us Beautifully with Moral Ambiguity. Well, what a surprise COBRA KAI is! One of the best series reboots of a campy 80s movie franchise, proving old rivalries never die, they just get and sexier and dorkier. The original 1984 KARATE KID was just ROCKY with an Italian Ferret (both movies directed by John G. Avildsen). In that movie, Daniel … Read More
THE MIDNIGHT SKY
Tragedy Insufferably Painted as Redemption. THE MIDNIGHT SKY is indecisive on whether to be a human drama set in space, or a science fiction film loaded with human drama. It ends up sacrificing both genres to George Clooney’s beard. A worldwide catastrophe has made the Earth’s surface uninhabitable – something to do with republiKKKans blocking climate change legislation, I’m guessing … Read More
UNCUT GEMS
A raw gem. I’ve got PTSD from watching UNCUT GEMS. Adam Sandler [phew]… acting – there, I said it! SNATCH meets PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, in a film that showcases what a spectacular “Ac-Tor” Sandler could be when working with the right fiery script, the right marauding directors, and putting more of himself into it than just his right nut. But why … Read More