Dune: Directed by Denis Villeneuve. With Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa. Feature adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel, about the son of a noble family entrusted with the protection of the most valuable asset and most vital element in the galaxy. This is my no means a slight against it, but this is half the movie I was expecting it to be. The obvious comparison is to the movie that was released in 1984, nearly 40 years ago, but it’s better to forget what you knew from that adaptation and compare it to the source. There’s...

Hellraiser: Deader: Directed by Rick Bota. With Kari Wuhrer, Ionut Chermenski, Hugh Jorgin, Linda Marlowe. A journalist uncovers an underground group who can bring back the dead and slowly becomes drawn into their world. Another direct to VHS installment of a franchise that at this point should have just been left to die somewhere in the Romanian alleys that the film was constructed from. Oddly, this is a somewhat solid film and would be a fine additional to a “Best of the Worst” style movie marathon, but the attempt to shove Pin Head in at the very end felt weird,...

Hellraiser: Hellseeker: Directed by Rick Bota. With Dean Winters, Ashley Laurence, Doug Bradley, Rachel Hayward. A shady businessman attempts to piece together the details of the car crash that killed his wife, rendered him an amnesiac, and left him in possession of a sinister puzzle box that summons monsters. A movie that opens with a cute couple tickling, horsing around, then making out in their car, all while going 50 miles per hour on a split lane highway, with predictable results. This was the opening scene and it completely took me out of the film because of how absolutely stupid...

STARFLEET’S FINEST FACES A CHALLENGE UNLIKE ANY OTHER TOMORROW IS DOOMED Time is coming apart. Countless alternate and parallel realities are under attack, weakening and collapsing from relentless … It’s the end of the Star Trek Extended Universe as we know it, but luckily it’s not going out the way the Star Wars EU did, just being shoveled into a trash heap and fans told “that stuff never really happened”. Star Trek has a built in safety valve for that sort of thing with how it’s traditionally dealt with alternative realities, going all the way back to the original series’s...

Puddle Cruiser: Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar. With Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter. A student falls in love with a fellow student who is defending his buddies in university court. He “proves his love” (more like his masculinity) to her by playing rugby against her ex-boyfriend. It’s Broken Lizard, but super dooper young and in their very first film, so really this movie is only for fans of the group and want to see everything they’ve done. It’s a fun movie that takes a look at what “modern” college students were doing in the dating scene, circa 1996,...

Queenpins: Directed by Aron Gaudet, Gita Pullapilly. With Kristen Bell, Lidia Porto, Joel McHale, Kirby Howell-Baptiste. A pair of housewives create a $40 million coupon scam. Apparently, based on a true story, I see many flaws in their schemes, mostly that they immediately started spending the money as soon as they could in a truly reckless manner. Having watched a couple seasons of Breaking Bad, I know you gotta wash your money somehow and the best way of doing that is starting a couple cash based businesses, like a hot dog stand or car wash or even a website that...

Hellraiser: Inferno: Directed by Scott Derrickson. With Craig Sheffer, Nicholas Turturro, James Remar, Doug Bradley. A shady police detective becomes embroiled in a strange world of murder, sadism and madness after being assigned a murder investigation against a madman known only as “The Engineer”. Released in the year 2000 in that awkward time of technological change from vhs physical media and flip phones, this is just barely a Hellraiser film, taking a full hour and twenty minutes for Pinhead to show up and start tearing people apart. This definitely has a ‘movie of the week” feel and I think would...

Stranger Than Fiction: Directed by Marc Forster. With Will Ferrell, William Dick, Guy Massey, Martha Espinoza. I.R.S. auditor Harold Crick suddenly finds his mundane Chicago life to be the subject of narration only he can hear: narration that begins to affect his entire existence, from his work to his love life to his death. Will Ferrell during his prime, Maggie Gyllennaal during hers, with some great acting by the supporting cast of Hoffman, Latifah, and Thompson. I’ve seen it in the before times back when I wasn’t reviewing every film that came across my television in a desperate attempt to...

Woman in Motion: Directed by Todd Thompson. With Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Michael Dorn. Nichelle Nichols’ daunting task to launch a national blitz for NASA, recruiting 8,000 of the nation’s best and brightest, including the trailblazing astronauts who became the first Black, Asian and Latino men and women to fly in space. Opening with a brief history lesson of who Nichelle Nichols was before she got to Star Trek, namely a beautiful singer and dancer born and raised in Chicago, and then went on to do work with Duke Ellington. The majority of this movie has less to...

Best Sellers: Directed by Lina Roessler. With Michael Caine, Aubrey Plaza, Scott Speedman, Ellen Wong. A cranky, retired author reluctantly embarks on a final book tour to help out a young publisher. The daughter of a now passed book publisher has taken over the company and needs to find a book to publish to save her company, invades the home and privacy of an elderly author that wrote one published book and has turned into a one cat man who drinks, smokes, and writes all day. She convinces him that he owes her company a book and further convinces him...