Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning (2012)

Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning (2012) might be a sequel but it’s also a resetting. Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren are the game pieces but the board has changed (even Andrei Arlovski from the previous sequel is another refashioned game piece). After making an impressively gritty, muscular action film out of a DTV franchise […]

Of Unknown Origin (1983)

Peter Weller is such an interesting actor and it’s shame his most iconic role, Robocop, basically had most of his face and body covered up. Watching him act, particularly in the early 1980s, there’s such a loose, wired energy to his physicality, complimented by his sonorous voice. The film, Of Unknown Origin (1983), is marketed […]

Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971)

I do like the exchange between monthly Criterion Channel programming and people I follow on Letterboxd tending to watch the same stuff, like a slowly crawling communal experience. I’d heard the title Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971) but didn’t really have any idea what it was like, assuming it was a tongue in cheek […]

Guilty As Sin (1993)

Next to the 90s erotic thriller is the sexy courtroom thriller, all of which tends to be coated in references to Hitchcock. Guilty As Sin (1993) is scripted by genre stalwart Larry Cohen (The Stuff, Phone Booth) and directed by Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon), and I remember commercials for it at the time, […]

A Return To Salem’s Lot (1987)

This was a wacky one. Part of the wave of Stephen King adaptations that were only tangentially related to their source material and clogged up the video shelves in the late 80s and early 90s, A Return To Salem’s Lot (1987) is a sequel to Stephen King’s novel and the TV miniseries, which is directed […]