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The Last Voyage of the Demeter -- a review

The Last Voyage of the Demeter literally takes a chapter from Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula . This chapter in the legendary novel that details Dracula’s arrival in England via a sailing ship named the Demeter is pretty scarily effective. It shows the ship beaching itself on the shores of England, with its crew all dead--and, with Dracula apparently on the loose ashore. It creates a dreadful, ominous tone that informs the rest of the story. And I haven’t given anything away by revealing the ending, because the film itself opens on that very same scene: the Demeter beached on the rocks, with the police and locals gathering around the stricken ship and discovering its horrors. This opening serves as a framing device for the rest of the film, which is told in flashback. But while that chapter shows what happened after the voyage, The Last Voyage of the Demeter attempts to fill in the gaps of the voyage itself. Or, at least it tries to. Horror fans--both fa
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The Creator -- a review

The Creator was directed by Gareth Edwards, who also directed the superb Monsters ; the somewhat annoying 2014 Godzilla (which was pretty good--when you could actually SEE the Big G), and the excellent Star Wars film Rogue One . The Creator takes place midway through the 21st century, when the United States suffers a devastating blow when Los Angeles is destroyed by a nuclear weapon that was set off by an Artificial Intelligence. This prompts the US and its western allies to ban all AI worldwide. When New Asia, a newly formed state in Southeast Asia, refuses to cease using AI, along with its robotic constructs, this creates a war between them and the United States. In 2070, Sergeant Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) of the US Army, goes into New Asia with a commando force to destroy a special weapon that had been created by the enemy forces. He’s also looking to see if he can find his wife, whom he thought had died five years before, but is now seen to be alive a

Rebel Moon Part One -- a review

Director Zack Snyder has made enough of my favorite films ( Man of Steel , Zack Snyder’s Justice League , the Dawn of the Dead remake) that I genuinely look forward to his latest project. Of course, he’s also made some real stinkers ( Sucker Punch , Batman Vs Superman ), but everybody has a bad day at the office, right? And I was brightened up considerably when I saw that his latest film, the star-spanning space saga Rebel Moon: Part One: A Child of Fire , would be premiering on my birthday on Netflix. And then I saw the frigging movie. Seriously, WTF did I do to deserve this on my birthday? Rebel Moon first started out life as a pitch for an R-rated Star Wars film that Lucasfilm, the producers of SW, had turned down. Undaunted, Snyder then brought the project to Netflix, and traces of its Star Wars inspiration still remain: the space Nazis, a scene in a cantina, the laser swords that one of the characters uses. But even if a film is

Fire and Ice -- a review

I was watching a video on YouTube about the "wacky" animated fantasy films of the 80s, and it made me realize that this year marks the fortieth anniversary of Fire And Ice . Unlike the other fantasy films (both animated and live-action) that were released in the 1980s, Fire And Ice was notable because it was a collaboration between animated film director Ralph Bakshi ( Fritz the Cat , Wizards ) and noted fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta. Fire And Ice takes its inspiration more from the Conan the Barbarian stories (which Frazetta became first known for, having drawn the covers for them) rather than the Lord of the Rings . Bakshi was no stranger to J.R.R. Tolken’s works, having produced his own animated version of LOTR a few years prior. Bakshi re-used his favorite form of animation, called rotoscoping, where actors are filmed onstage, and their actions on film are then hand-drawn, frame by frame, by an animator onto cells. This provides a far more reali

Wilderness -- a review

I was a huge fan of Jenna Coleman when she played Clara Osborn, the companion to the eleventh and twelfth Doctor Who (played by Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi, respectively). Doctor Who, a sort of mad magician who literally travels through space and time, can be an intimidating character, but Coleman more than held her own, plying an engaging performance that was self-assured without being too arrogant. Her time on the program, stretched across the better episodes of two of the Doctors, was extremely memorable for me. So when I heard that Coleman was starring in Wilderness, a mini-series for the Amazon Prime streaming service, I was more than happy to give it a shot. Of course, I waited until all of the episodes were up. I hate the trend with some streamers reverting to the old ’one episode per week’ tactic; I’d rather binge-watch the whole thing over a day or two, which was easy to do with Wilderness, seeing how it only had six episodes, overall. But the fi

Batbike

I was a toddler when the Adam West Batman series first aired in the late 1960s, and I just ate it all up. My father originally built this model kit of the Batbike that was seen on the show. They re-released this model kit back in 2003, and after recently finding the unbuilt kit in my stash, I decided to build this myself. The pictures you see here are of my build of the 2003 re-release of the Batbike. I don't know what happened to the original that my father built; it was lost to time. I just finished building this Batbike just a couple of days ago. The kit was a complete replica of the original 1960s kit, and it was pretty easy to build. I always loved the sidecar with Robin on this design. Just like

Operation Fortune -- a review

Director Guy Ritchie is making a lot of movies, lately. Ritchie will make a big-league film--like Aladdin , for Disney--and then go off and make a mid-budget movie immediately afterward. And this is a good thing. Because the more Guy Ritchie films, the merrier. His latest, Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre , stars Jason Statham as Orson Fortune, a cool, suave, James Bond-type agent who does special missions for the British government. Cary Elwes plays Nathan, his long suffering handler, who constantly has to explain Fortune’s maverick antics to Knighton, their tedious boss at MI6 (well-played by long-time Ritchie collaborator Eddie Marsan). Fortune is called upon once more when an experimental weapon known only as “the Handle” has been stolen from a secret lab. Tracking the theft to international arms dealer Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant, who seems to be having a lot of fun here), Fortune must stop Simmonds before he can sell the Handle to a buyer. Fortune is