LITERAL REMAINS

The Crow will forever be overshadowed by the fact that star Brandon Lee died during the last weeks of filming.  That cloud has a tendency to obscure what a wonderful comic adaptation and darkly beautiful noir revenge movie this is.  Brandon Lee’s last performance is spot on, with edge, grit, and tenderness.  Say what you will, [...]

There is a scene about half-way through Near Dark that is the epitome of good movie making.  Every fan of the movie knows the scene I’m talking about; I watched the movie again just a couple of days ago after having not seen it in about ten-plus years, and it was one of only two [...]

Lea wakes up, finding herself in bed.  It’s not her bed.  She doesn’t know where she is, and throwing open the curtains only reveals windows that have been bricked over.  She soon learns she is not alone in this strange house, that nine other people have been abducted only to wake and find themselves in [...]

Pandorum is one of those movies that I was aware of upon its release, and considering the slamming it got by critics, and some people I know who had seen it, I decided I’d let it pass on by.  But, as often is the case, one thing led to another and I finally watched it.  [...]

Reporter John Klein has a good life.  He is well respected at his work, and he and his wife, Mary, have just bought a new house.  Then there is a car accident.  Mary suffers a head injury; though not fatal, the tests show she has a brain tumor.  After she dies, the distraught John discovers [...]

I’m gonna be brief with this so that you can all get back to your holiday festivities.  I’ve never seen the original movie that inspired this remake, but I hear it’s the bee’s knees.  I have it on my list of movies I should eventually watch (I know this past month would have been the [...]

Some movies are merely crazy, but American Psycho is a sophisticated kind of crazy, and that makes it all the more disturbing.  The fact that it is deeply, darkly, pitch black, funny adds to the atmosphere of mental instability. Future Batman Christian Bale plays Manhattan businessman Patrick Bateman.  Patrick is like a lot of us [...]

Why do people hate this movie?  I know it’s not the best flick out there, but come on, it’s pretty groovy in its own grungy way.  Gabriel Byrne plays one mean Satan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger plays…Arnold Schwarzenegger doing his best to play a depressed, conflicted, retired cop turned bodyguard.  Plus the late great Rod Steiger [...]

Hungry for more (money), Warner Bros. put out The Exorcist II: The Hereticin 1977.  It had no involvement from author William Peter Blatty.  Blatty didn’t write a sequel to his novel The Exorcist until 1983, and that book, Legion, was adapted and directed by Blatty himself in 1990 and released as The Exorcist III.  Yes, the [...]

A mining crew on their way home to Earth are awakened from their sleep by the ship’s computer.  Their ship, Nostromo, has received a transmission of unknown origin from a nearby planet.  Sending in an exploration party, it’s discovered that the signal is from a downed alien spacecraft.  Inside they find the remains of a [...]