Shameless Self Expression

Stacy Keach plays a truck driver named Quid, who is transporting dead pigs from Melbourne to Perth, when he sees a van driver doing something rather suspicious. He also hears on the radio about a series of killings of hitchhikers. Wait, is that the hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis, whose character is nicknamed ‘Hitch’) he had given a lift to earlier? Is she about to get into the mystery man’s van? Keach becomes obsessed with following the van, facing potential danger himself if his suspicions prove correct. Or is Keach’s mind simply playing tricks on him, after an arduous haul on the lonely road with just his pet dingo (who may not be a real dingo) to talk to?   Sure to piss off Hitchcock purists, this 1981 genre flick from Aussie filmmaker and Hitchcock admirer Richard Franklin ( “Patrick” , “F/X 2” , and “Psycho II” ) plays out like “Rear Window” on the open road with a helping of Steven Spielberg’s “Duel” . Also sure to piss off Hitchcock purists, I liked this film much more t...

An elite squad of American operatives (Jorge Rivero, Andrew Stevens, Isaac Hayes, Kevin Bernhardt) are sent to the Middle East to protect a progressive politician (Louis Jourdan) currently under threat by an extremist Dictator (Robert Forster). Kabir Bedi is a relative of the Dictator, who is deployed to handle things on the ground, with Hugo Stiglitz playing a creepy assassin in an Iron Maiden shirt. George Kennedy turns up as the superior officer of our protagonists.   Low-rent 1988 mixture of “The A-Team” and “The Delta Force” , this Jose Antonio De Lama ( “Killing Machine” with Lee Van Cleef, Richard Jaeckel, and Jorge Rivero) cheapie even features two of the latter film’s co-stars, George Kennedy and Robert Forster. The results aren’t any good, but they’re probably slightly better than you expect. You’d swear this was another Cannon film, recycling one of their own films and featuring two of the same actors, one in essentially the same role. We even get one of the worst s...

Set in a genetically engineered future where you can eliminate all sorts of impurities, Ethan Hawke plays one of the few to have been born ‘naturally’. Thus in a society where genetic perfection is given privileged status, his station in life is relegated to boring menial professions like cleaning toilets (hello, Ernest Borgnine as Hawke’s boss). Being higher-minded than that, Hawke decides to look for an alternative, no matter how underhanded. He enlists the aid of cynical Jude Law, a genetically superior being who unfortunately is rendered physically disabled due to an accident. Hawke will impersonate Law, who in turn supplies Hawke with necessary blood and urine samples for him to pass security checks at the space institute. Now Hawke’s dream of space travel can become a reality…that is until there’s a murder at work. Enter hard-nosed detectives Alan Arkin and Loren Dean who look into matters, matters which seem to be pointing in Hawke’s direction. Uma Thurman plays co-worker, Gore ...

After a long ago Themyscira-set prologue, we flash-forward to 1984 America, with Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), AKA Wonder Woman working at the Smithsonian as a cultural anthropologist where she and mousy, awkward gem specialist Barbara (Kristen Wiig) make fast friends. There’s a new supposed ‘dreamstone’ Barbara has been looking into, one that as the name suggests grants wishes. Diana wishes to be reunited with her WWI soldier love Steve (Chris Pine), Barbara wishes to be confident and powerful…just like Diana. Then there’s sleazy loser businessman Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) who has been snooping around the stone and wants it for nefarious purposes. You see, while Diana and Barbara assume the stone’s powers are fiction (why would a superhero not believe in a mystically powerful stone?), Max Lord knows differently…and benefits from its powers greatly. Wonder Woman’s gonna have her hands full here, which is unfortunate because while Max and Barbara become more powerful, she seems to become weak...

A paleontological expedition up the Amazon hopes to find the source of a fossilised claw dated somewhere between early aquatic and land-based life. And they certainly do just that, only that the creature that the fossilised claw belongs to…is still very much alive. Richard Carlson and Richard Denning are rival doctors, whilst Julie Adams, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell form the other major members of the expedition. It’s Adams to whom the creature seems to take a fascination in particular.   One of the landmark ‘Creature Features’ and one of the films in the Universal cycle of horror films, this 1954 film from director Jack Arnold ( “The Incredible Shrinking Man” , the blaxploitation western “Boss” ) and writers Harry Essex ( “It Came From Outer Space” , the dreadful “Octaman” ) and Arthur Ross ( “The Great Race” and a lot of TV work) kinda gets forgotten about in favour of “Dracula” , the “Frankenstein” films and so on. That’s a shame because it’s terrific fun and frankly ...