Adam Selvidge's Website Blog
Rat Race: Directed by Jerry Zucker. With Breckin Meyer, Jenica Bergere, Cuba Gooding Jr., Carrie Diamond. A Las Vegas casino magnate, determined to find a new avenue for wagering, sets up a race for money. This was free on one of the 70 streaming services I have on my roku and I just can’t remember which one it was. I only put it on because I had fond memories of how wacky it was, and truly, it’s a wacky movie about people in a race to get some dollars, all while the obscenely rich bet on various aspects of their...
Dear Dead Delilah: Directed by John Farris. With Agnes Moorehead, Will Geer, Michael Ansara, Dennis Patrick. A sickly matriarch of a dysfunctional family living in an old Southern mansion teases her siblings about finding a long lost treasure hidden in the premises, little did she know that there is someone ready to kill to get their hands on it. It’s a low budget slasher with a nice story element to it, I appreciated the minor twist towards the end, which really subverted my expectations from the genre. Buy On Amazon!
Tulsa King: Created by Taylor Sheridan. With Sylvester Stallone, Andrea Savage, Martin Starr, Jay Will. Following his release from prison, Mafia capo Dwight “The General” Manfredi is exiled to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he builds a new criminal empire with a group of unlikely characters. All the big movie stars are moving from the silver screen to the boob tube and Sly’s move has been one of the better ones. It’s essentially a wise guy fish out of water type of story, just that this wise guy isn’t really all that fishy at all and is actually pretty smart about the...
Delve deeper into the world of Star Trek with special one-shot stories focusing on the memorable alien species! At no point in any of the solicitations for this book did they mention it was a reprint of three books: Star Trek: Klingons Star Trek: Trill Star Trek: Ferengi All three of these are great stories that I haven’t read before, but I think I would have preferred reading them in floppy form instead of a omnibus collection. None of the stories are related to each other in any way, with different writers, story styles, art styles, or even story purpose....
Night Train: Directed by Shane Stanley. With Danielle C. Ryan, Reggie Austin, Brent Bailey, Diora Baird. A single mom struggling to make ends meet as a Hollywood teamster evades capture by a ruthless FBI Agent while running black market medical supplies in her legendary souped-up pickup truck. You’d think this was a pure action film from the poster alone, but it’s actually about a mother’s struggle to find enough money and medicines to help her sick kid not die. Sure there’s action here with some decently framed racing, but there’s an emotional core to the film that you don’t see...
Trees Lounge: Directed by Steve Buscemi. With Carol Kane, Mark Boone Junior, Steve Buscemi, Bronson Dudley. Tommy is an unemployed mechanic who spends most of his time in a bar (Trees Lounge) in a small blue collar town. He seems to always be thinking, “If only X then I could stop drinking”. Written and directed by Buscemi, this movie has no plot or moral at the end of the story, but it does join other films that let the lens linger slightly longer than usual after the final scene, ala ‘The Graduate’. There’s a ton of big names in this...
John Wick: Chapter 4: Directed by Chad Stahelski. With Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, George Georgiou, Lance Reddick. John Wick uncovers a path to defeating The High Table. But before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes. The fourth film in a series about a hit-man returned from the dead to seek his vengenance against all that wronged him (and his puppy). It’s a great movie, it’s too long, all the stunts are fantastic, it’s about 4 hours long, they left...
What?: Directed by Roman Polanski. With Marcello Mastroianni, Sydne Rome, Hugh Griffith, Romolo Valli. During her Italian vacation, a young and beautiful American tourist finds herself as a guest in a coastal villa inhabited by a bunch of odd people. I got suckered into watching this because the poster that Kino shows on their app is of a naked lady, and boy do I like ladies that are naked. There are two naked ladies in this film, but neither are naked in a sexual sense and the story is an absurdist surreal comedy that I just couldn’t find any connection...
Knock at the Cabin: Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. With Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird. While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse. M. Night Shyamalan has rightfully gotten a reputation for doing movies with twists, but sometimes the twist is that there’s no twist, just a super weird premise that turns out to be true in an alarming way. In “Knock at the Cabin” the premise is that a sacrifice needs to be made to save the planet from...
Shotgun Wedding: Directed by Jason Moore. With Jennifer Lopez, Josh Duhamel, Lenny Kravitz, Jennifer Coolidge. Darcy and Tom gather their families for the ultimate destination wedding but when the entire wedding party is taken hostage the bride and groom must save their loved ones–if they don’t kill each other first. It’s everything you thought it would be, with nearly no surprise moments or shocking plot points. In it’s defense, I’m happy with a nice safe film like this and it was exactly what I was looking for after a long day. Buy On Amazon!
