There is a sameness in the way horror movies begin. A group of friends load up their car and head into the country for a binge of sex and booze. Or a family moves into a new town, a new house, to help recover from some tragedy, usually the lost of a child. Or...
Though an atheist, I love the story of Jesus. One man sacrificing himself for the salvation of all–there’s poetry in that. As a writer, I want to write that story, and many writers, especially in Western Literature, revisited this story in there own works. Some very directly, like Nikos Kazantzakis in The Last Temptation...
I have written about my love of horror movies but of my frustrations to find movies that really scare me. What scares us have been filmed so many times in so many ways that it is almost impossible for moviemakers to be scary. Almost impossible, but not entirely. Starry Eyes, financed in part from...
Yes, I saw Age of Tomorrow. I’m not proud of it, but I saw it. I don’t want to admit to you that I saw it, but since I saw this movie as part of my Netflix Now series, I must confess it. In truth, if I hadn’t planned on reviewing this movie, I...
Everyday on a commuter train, Rachel travels between her home in Ashbury to London. As the train passes through Witney, she can see her old home through the window. Her exhusband still lives in the house, with his current wife, Anna, and their infant daughter. A few houses down, she also spies on the...
Though I’ve never read J.G. Ballard before, I discovered as I researched his biography that he’s been in my life for a long time. At least since the 80s, when I saw Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. This movie was an adaptation from Ballard’s book by the same name, which was an autobiographical...
The movie poster for The Ward caught my eye. It showed a beautiful blond, dressed in a flimsy white gown, and struggling against unseen forces. Sex and violence all in one image! When I saw that John Carpenter, of Halloween and The Thing fame, directed this movie, I was sold. Carpenter is clearly one...
When three roommates decide to compete to win a prize for proving a supernatural event, they purchased a cursed mirror on eBay and hang it in their living room. Armed with movie and video cameras, they set up round-the-clock video surveillance. It is a case of being careful of what you wish for, because the...
Are you ready for a taste of sin? Perhaps you’re a goody two shoes who fear your straight life makes your a bore. Or perhaps you suffer repressed urges that makes you tense and irritable. Or perhaps you’ve hidden away decadent traits so long that you know they’re about the burst free, at the...
Every since Mary Shelley penned Frankenstein, writers and moviemakers explored the idea of humans creating another humanoid life form. Many of the movies inspired by this theme are works of genius. I’m thinking Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) or Chris Columbus’ Bicentennial Man (1999). These movies allow us to explore questions like: What does...
