Adam Selvidge's Website Blog
Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, where conditions are just right for human habitation. It’s humanity’s last hope for survival, and Naomi, Valerie’s surrogate daughter and the ship’s botanist, has been waiting her whole life for an opportunity like this – to step out of Valerie’s shadow and really make a difference. But when things start going wrong on the ship, Naomi starts to suspect that someone on board is concealing a terrible secret – and realises time for life on...
Cruel Jaws: Directed by Bruno Mattei. With David Luther, George Barnes Jr., Scott Silveria, Kirsten Urso. A huge shark terrorizes a beach in Florida, and the locals try everything to kill it. This is a pretty terrible film and feels exactly like something I would make with buddies of mine, with all the terrible camera angles, terrible lines, terrible delivery, and utterly terrible special effects. It’s not a JAWS film, but boy howdy do they pay a lot of homages to the source franchises, bordering on theft. Buy On Amazon!
Jaws: The Revenge: Directed by Joseph Sargent. With Lorraine Gary, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles, Karen Young. Chief Brody’s widow believes that her family is deliberately being targeted by another shark in search of revenge. It’s Jaws 4, but you can call it “THE REVENGE”, because the original shark is back and it’s hungry for VENGENCE. I honestly feel this is a step up from the 3d movie that came before it. The original actress that played the wife in the first 2 movies is back and she (and her son) realize that they have a supernatural connection to the...
Jaws 3-D: Directed by Joe Alves. With Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale, Louis Gossett Jr.. A giant thirty-five-foot shark becomes trapped in a SeaWorld theme park and it’s up to the sons of police chief Brody to rescue everyone. A very young Dennis quaid costars with an equally young Lea Thompson in this movie that was designed to trill in 3d, but in normal flatscreen-o-vision, is more of a b-rated made for tv movie that doesn’t have the emotional punch of the first two films. I’m honestly not even sure how SeaWorld approved having their name associated with this...
Twister: Directed by Jan de Bont. With Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, Cary Elwes. Two storm chasers on the brink of divorce must work together to create an advanced weather alert system by putting themselves in the cross-hairs of extremely violent tornadoes. There’s a new twister movie out, so obviously we had to watch the first one to refresh our memory, though I think at this point my wife can recite the entire thing line by line from beginning to end. Buy On Amazon!
Jaws 2: Directed by Jeannot Szwarc. With Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Joseph Mascolo. Police chief Brody must protect the citizens of Amity after a second monstrous shark begins terrorizing the waters. Spielberg is out, but Roy Scheider is back as the chief of police who clearly has PTSD from events of first movie and is dealing with it the best way a guy in the late ’70’s can: shooting his gun at a seaweed patch in the middle of a crowded beach. The mayor is way too lackadaisical about the shark attacks and I honestly wish he would...
Jaws: Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary. When a massive killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Long Island, it’s up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down. The pinnacle of Steven Spielberg’s short (at the time) directing career, has he done anything since then that’s as raw as this? Every year I pick a horror franchise to check out (or in this case sorta re-check) and this year, we’re watching JAWS, all four (five?) of them. The first one is the...
Space: Above and Beyond: Created by Glen Morgan, James Wong. With Morgan Weisser, Kristen Cloke, Rodney Rowland, Joel de la Fuente. The Earth is embroiled in a desperate war against alien invaders, and this series focuses on one squadron of Marine pilots involved in it. I had a strong memory of really liking this show, but I knew that it was military science fiction from a time when scifi on TV was pretty hokey at times, so I was happy to see that the first episode opened so strongly with the drill sergeant from “Full Metal Jacket” making an appearance. ...
The Intern: Directed by Nancy Meyers. With Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, Rene Russo, Anders Holm. Seventy-year-old widower Ben Whittaker has discovered that retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Seizing an opportunity to get back in the game, he becomes a senior intern at an online fashion site, founded and run by Jules Ostin. I’ve seen this before, but the tiktok algorithm thew a couple scenes from it my way and I wanted to check it out. It still holds up, but I’m still unhappy with the ending which didn’t involve asking the older intern to be a...
Patient Zero: Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. With Matt Smith, Natalie Dormer, John Bradley, Clive Standen. After an unprecedented global pandemic turns the majority of humankind into violent “Infected,” a man gifted with the ability to speak the Infected’s new language leads the last survivors on a hunt for Patient Zero and a cure. There are some seriously good ideas here, but they’re hidden behind the low production quality and odd framing devices used throughout the film. It also doesn’t hurt for great actors with Stanley Tucci being a great actor in a weird role that’s completely out of the norm...
