Disc Reviews

“The time for apologies is behind us.”

While the dubbing of this film leaves something to be desired at times, all in all I’d categorize this as a moderately entertaining thriller. Tailgate can serve as a cautionary tale for us all regarding being careful who you cut off in traffic. You never know; that person could very well be a homicidal maniac with a penchant for using pesticide on his victims. Or at least that is what the killer in this film was all about. Granted, this antagonist doesn’t quite rise to the level of Michael Myers or say Candyman (you got me, I chose those two characters because they both have movies due out in the immediate future), there is something to be said for a killer who believes that he has the moral high ground. And to think all of this could have been resolved with a simple and well-timed apology.

"Once the world was full of wonders, but it belongs to the humans now. We, creatures, have all but disappeared. Daemons ... vampires ... witches ... hiding in plain sight. Ill at ease even with each other. But, as my father used to say, in every ending, there is a new beginning. It begins with absence and desire. It begins with blood and fear. It begins with A Discovery Of Witches."

And that's how it all starts. The ambitious series from Sky is based upon The All Souls Trilogy novels by Deborah Harkness. In the first season of eight episodes, we are introduced to Diana Bishop, played by Teresa Palmer. She a witch who is living in a world where there are three species of creatures: witches, vampires, and daemons (Demons). Diana 's parents were killed when she was young because of their witchcraft, at least that's what she's been brought up to believe by her Aunt Sarah (Kingston) and her lover "Auntie" Em (Pettiford). No, we're not in Kansas anymore. Notice no one is singing Carry On Wayward Son. This isn't Supernatural, after all. Never mind all of that. Diane isn't a very good witch, because her powers appear to be stunted. She doesn't understand why until she becomes a visiting professor at Oxford and requests a book from their antiquities library. The book is called Ashmore 782, otherwise known as The Book Of Life. No one has been able to find it for centuries. But when Diane summons the book, she gets it. What she didn't know was that she was setting in motion a series of events that will cut across each of the creature lines.

1951 was a year that spawned some major classic films. There was An American In Paris, A Streetcar Named Desire, The African Queen, and A Place In The Sun. Of the four mentioned, the one I hadn’t seen and honestly was oblivious to was A Place In The Sun. While I do appreciate many classic films, I don’t have an answer for my ignorance of the film, and with a stacked cast of Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelly Winters, and Raymond Burr, I was more than happy to check out this film and review it on its 70^th anniversary. I went into this film knowing as little as possible, only knowing about the cast and the director George Stevens, a man with an impressive resume as a director as well as a cinematographer. This only flummoxed me further about how this film had managed to escape me for so long.

The film opens up with George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) hitchhiking along the side of a busy highway. Behind him we see a large billboard advertising Eastman swimwear. At the time we don’t know that George’s uncle is the owner of the company, nor do we recognize the significance of the imagery. Before a word is even spoken,, the director has already given us so much and we don’t even realize it. It’s because of this I’m already looking forward to revisiting this film, but I’ll try not to get ahead of myself. George has made this big move to get away from his poor family and hopefully find success in his uncle’s factoryThe uncle does care about family but also doesn’t believe in handouts, and this is how George winds up on the factory floor where he meets Alice Tripp (Shelly Winters). There’s a policy about dating coworkers, but the two budding lovebirds do their best to keep their relationship a secret. Everything is going smoothly, that is until he meets Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor) at a high-society dinner. Is this a romance that simply melds into a story of a man that falls in love with two women? Well, in simple terms, yes, but this film shows just how complicated things can get when you are in love with two people, not to mention struggling to move ahead in society.

“By 2014, hundreds of young women had left Europe to join ISIS. Their journeys began on social media platforms where they found new friends and chose new names.”

Based on the non-fiction novel, In The Skin of a Jihadist, this film tells the story about one reporters journey to create a groundbreaking story and how she nearly lost herself in the process. Valene Kane (The Fall) plays Amy Whittaker, a freelance reporter struggling to make ends meet when she decides to investigate the recruitment of young European women by ISIS. As part of her investigation, Amy creates a fake Facebook profile of a young woman who has recently converted to Islam. Before long, she is contacted by Bilel (Shazad Latif, Star Trek: Discovery), an ISIS fighter from Syria. On the surface, he is charming and he speaks of his chosen cause with great passion and conviction. Amy’s editor is ecstatic about the potential story, and before long, Amy finds herself disguising herself in the garb of a respectable Muslim so that she can engagement in Skype sessions with Bilel. This was a very unique and compelling story that was full of intense and suspenseful moments from the opening scenes. The most unique element of the story was that the entire film is told from the perspective of a computer screen.

"I saw this movie."

When the film Stargate was released in 1994, I had very high hopes for the movie. The concept was rather brilliant, and I anticipated a kind of Star Trek without the ship. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin hit it out of the park with Independence Day two years later, but I was sadly very disappointed in Stargate. I loved the wonderful mythology that combined ancient history and aliens. The concept had so much promise but was bogged down in awkward pacing and some of the worst storytelling I've seen in a big-budget science fiction film. So when the television series debuted on Showtime in 1997, I didn't even bother to check it out. I didn't pay any attention. If I had, I might have given it a try because of the involvement of Richard Dean Anderson, because I loved him in MacGyver, but I intentionally avoided watching the show. Nearly two years later, we had just moved into a new house and I was assembling a metal shelf unit. It was tedious work, so I put on the television for background while I tightened about a thousand small nuts and bolts. The cable box just so happened to be tuned to Showtime, and they were running a string of Stargate SG-1 episodes. I have to admit I was captivated by what I saw. The promise I was so angry had been squandered in the film was very much alive in this television series. The characters/actors were all compelling. Missing out on the show from the beginning was one of the biggest entertainment mistakes I ever made. It's become one of my favorite shows of all time, right up there with Star Trek: The Original Series, Hill Street Blues, The Rockford Files, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is science fiction television at its absolute best. A rare case where the television series blows the film from which it was adapted away. That hadn't happened so dramatically since M*A*S*H.

“How many friends did you have growing up? I just had one.”

A member of the cast has described this film as Mean Girls meets Final Destination. I don’t think I could come up with a better summation of the film if I tried. As I watched, I toyed with the idea that the film evoked Kevin Williamson-like nostalgia, but that was the best I came up with. The film is billed as a horror film, but of course there are elements that cause me to see it as more of a black comedy slasher film, like Happy Death Day. OK, that’s enough comparing it to other films; let’s talk about what Séance is. In a nutshell, Séance was a surprise for me. I hadn’t expected to like it as much as I did. As it started out, I figured it was going to be some run-of-the-mill ghost story, and I was prepared to write the film off, but as the film reached it apex and came with a couple of unexpected twists, I found myself leaning in and completely and utterly intrigued.

“Creeks lead to rivers. Rivers lead to towns.”

With a little more character development, Those Who Wish Me Dead would have been a really intriguing story. The film had a winning recipe: a script written by the man who gave us Hell Or High Water/Sicario (Taylor Sheridan), a cast that include talent like Angelina Jolie, Jon Bernthal, Nicholas Hoult, and Aidan Gillen, as well as a rifle-toting pregnant woman on horseback. What more could you ask for? If only adequate time had been spent fleshing the characters out and answering some of the questions that were posed during the film’s runtime. As it stands, the film never gets past the initial intrigue phase, because despite all the things the film did have, it’s what the film was missing that defines it.