I've always been more of a Star Wars fan than a Star Trek fan, but I've enjoyed much of the original series, and a number of the films with the original series cast. But based on its reputation, I had never sat down to watch  Star Trek: The Motion Picture in its entirety. Oddly enough, as a fan of Jerry Goldsmith's wonderful score (which forever redefined the Star Trek theme), I had sat through the opening overture a dozen times or more through the years on different formats. When a Director's Edition was released on DVD in 2000, I picked it up thinking that I would finally sit down to watch it. But I never got around to it. So my patience worked in my favor, as 22 years later, the Director's Edition was remastered for 4K with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack.  While no amount of revisionism was going to make this more entertaining than  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , it does feel like a film that was trying to appeal to the fans of the original series. But in a post...

We officially close out this series with David Fincher's Zodiac . He assembled quite a cast to tell the story of the serial killer who haunted the Bay Area for several years from the late 60s to early 70s. I recall reading Robert Graysmith's book (on which the film is based) when I worked at the bookstore back in the late 80s, but had forgotten most of the details of the case since then. What I did know was that the case inspired Scorpio, the killer Clint Eastwood took out in the original Dirty Harry  (1971). Jake Gyllenhall plays Robert Graysmith, who was an editorial cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle at the time. Robert Downey Jr. plays Paul Avery, a writer at the Chronicle . And Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards play SF PD Inspectors Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong. (Inspector Toschi was also the inspiration for Steve McQueen's Frank Bullitt in 1968.) Other notable performers include Brian Cox as Melvin Belli, Dermot Mulroney, Chloë Sevigny, Elias Koteas, Adam Go...

One of the greatest things about this series has been the opportunity to make time for classic films that we've had in the library for years, and have never gotten around to watching. Akira Kurosawa's  Yojimbo is one such film. I've long been a fan of Toshiro Mifune (who we saw most recently in our screening of Steven Spielberg's 1941 ), and A Fistful of Dollars — Sergio Leone's take on the film with Clint Eastwood in the lead role. Earlier in this series, we watched Walter Hill's lesser adaptation, Last Man Standing , starring Bruce Willis. While the Eastwood film will always hold a special place in my heart as the first version of the story I experienced, Akira Kurosawa's original film is a close second.  The basic story is of a lone samurai, Sanjuro, who arrives in a small town and sets out to play two warring factions off one another as a bodyguard (the translation of the title — yojimbo ). Now, there's something about Eastwood gunning down bad guy...

Had things gone as originally planned, our 'X' movie would have been Ti West's X  — which we were scheduled to run as part of our year-end wrap-up marathon in The Slaughtered Lamb Cinema this week. Unfortunately, a positive Covid test put those plans to rest, and in the hope that we might be able to salvage some of that event at a future date, I opted to go with a different 'X' title — one that I hadn't watched since renting the original Thorn EMI videotape nearly 40 years ago. My recollection of Xtro was that of a sleazy sci-fi/horror hybrid, with the feel of an 80s Italian horror film, containing an unforgettable scene of a woman giving birth to a fully grown man after being impregnated by an inelegantly designed alien creature. In addition to reviewing trailers of several possible 'X' films, I watched Siskel and Ebert's review of Xtro to see what they said about it at the time, which I've inserted below in case you're interested in their...

Growing up, Doug McClure was a staple of weekday afternoon television thanks to three Amicus Studios fantasy films he starred in based on the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs ( The Land That Time Forgot , The People That Time Forgot , and my favorite,  At the Earth's Core , in which he starred opposite Peter Cushing and Caroline Munro). I was surprised years later to discover that he did a fourth fantasy film (not for Amicus, and from an original screenplay), Warlords of Atlantis . I've had a copy in the library for years, but after showing Vonna the trailer (which showcases several of the films interesting creatures), we selected this one for our 'W' film. McClure is the creator of a diving bell helping a scientist and his son interested in finding the lost city of Atlantis. On their first dive, they're attacked by a sea creature, and after a narrow escape they find a golden statue — an artifact of Atlantis. The ship is attacked by a giant octopus, and several of the ...

The all-star cast of The Vanishing (a remake of a French film from a few years prior) convinced us to select this title (we could probably write a blog just detailing the weekly process of elimination when it comes to picking what to watch!).  Kiefer Sutherland plays a writer who's girlfriend (Sandra Bullock in an early film role) mysteriously disappears while they're stopped at a gas station while on vacation. He doesn't realize that she's been kidnapped by an eccentric man played by Jeff Bridges. He spends years searching for any information about her disappearance, when he meets and falls in love with a waitress played by Nancy Travis. After a few years, the abductor reaches out to the still obsessed boyfriend and offers to show him what happened to his girlfriend, step-by-step, and he can't help but agree to go along with it. While one might worry this would ultimately lead to his own death, his girlfriend is clued in to what's going on and takes matters in...

Despite what you may be thinking, 'U' is not for Ursula Andress, although that wouldn't be a bad reason to pick this film. Our feature selection for this week was the Philippe Broca film starring Jean-Paul Belmondo,  Up To His Ears (aka Les tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine ). I acquired the film (in a double-feature paired with Broca's That Man from Rio , which we have yet to watch) in part because both films were referenced as inspirations for the Indiana Jones films. And while it's not like  an Indiana Jones film, per se , it's not difficult to see the elements that justify the statement.  Up To His Ears is the story of Arthur, a rich but despondent individual dead-set on committing suicide. His fiancee's family isn't too troubled by the idea, provided that their daughter be set to receive his wealth. When his financial manager explains that due to volatility in the market, he's now broke, Arthur tries once more to kill himself, only to be st...