Dinner and a Movie with Moxie

 Lupin III: Castle Of Cagliostro (1979) Anime film director Hayao Miyazaki has become a household name with films like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle with his studio, Studio Ghibli.  Before he started Studio Ghibli he was an animator, his feature film directorial debut came in 1979 with Lupin III: The Castle Of Cagliostro, based on the popular Lupin the Third manga and anime series by Monkey Punch.  Some of the style elements of The Castle of Cagliostro would help to define the style that would be recognized as Hayao Miyazaki's.  The Castle Of Cagliostro, would go on to be one of the most well-loved anime films of all-time, however it didn't begin as such.  When The Castle Of Cagliostro was released, many felt that it changed too much of the manga and anime, and made Lupin III a more heroic character, rather than the ruthless scoundrel that he was in the anime and manga.  In the words of Lupin III creato...

  Sometimes They Come Back... For More (1998) So there is a trend in low-budget b-horror films, to take a name of a film that was either successful or popular, and then to make "sequels" that really have nothing to do with the original film.  Some great examples of this would be the endless sequels to Stephen King's Children Of The Corn, the sequels to the film Troll, and 1998's Sometimes They Come Back... For More, which has nothing to do with, or even in common with the 1991 television film adaptation of Stephen King's short story, Sometimes They Come Back.   There is one tiny mention of the character Jim Norman, when his name is on a map in Dr. Schilling's room, but they name him as being from Bangor Maine, which is an inconsistency with the 1991 film, as well as the Stephen King's short story. Sometimes They Come Back... For More is not so much a sequel of Sometimes They Come Back, as it is a rip-off/knock off of John Carpenter's The Thing.   The s...

  Sometimes They Come Back (1991) Stephen King's stories often found themselves being turned into made for television films and miniseries, some of those like 'Salem's Lot, It, Storm Of The Century, and Rose Red have become some of King's beloved film adaptations.  Sometimes They Come Back, an early Stephen King short story from 1974, later printed in his 1978 short story collection Night Shift, was originally optioned to be part of the horror anthology film Cat's Eye, but wasn't ended up being used.  Then in 1991 Dino De Laurentiis produced a made for television film, that was aired on CBS.   Sometimes They Come Back, tells the story of Jim Norman, who witnesses the murder of his brother when he was a kid, and the murderers died in front him when a train hit their car, and his family left town.   Later as an adult, he gets a job at the school in his childhood small town, as a last resort after an incident at the school he was teaching at in Chicago....

Big Driver (2014)   Content Warning: The film that I am reviewing deals with the subject of sexual assault, so there will be discussion of that in this review, so if that is a subject that causes you discomfort or triggers strong emotional or even PTSD based responses then please for your own well-being do not read further, nor should you watch this film, and if you choose to, then be forewarned so that you can prepare for the topics that will be discussed.   You my dear reader, matter to me, and I want you to be safe.  I am a survivor of this kind of abuse, so I understand how triggering this subject can be if you are too, so please only read on if you are comfortable.  I love and appreciate you my dear reader, you mater, and you are valid.  The Lifetime television channel seems to have earned a reputation as a "man-hating" channel with films that seem to focus on women as victims to crimes committed by men, and they getting their justice or revenge on the...

  Trucks (1997) Many people weren't happy with Stephen King's adaptation of his own short story Trucks in 1986 when he wrote, and directed Maximum Overdrive.  So USA television network aired a made for television version of stephen King's short story Trucks, and called their version Trucks.   Usually the point of remaking a film is to make it better...okay sadly it seems like the trend ends up being like Trucks where remakes are in fact worse than the original, which is the reason I tend to not appreciate remakes of films.  Like why did they remake Pet Sematary in a terrible way, why did they remake It and not make it better than the original, why do people think that remakes are ever a good idea, unless you have the ability to actually fix something that didn't work and make it better.   That brings us to Trucks, it looks worse than Maximum Overdrive, it just has a much cheaper looking production value, the acting is subpar compared to Maximum Overdri...

  Pork And Bean Soup On a nice cold winter day, what could possibly be better than a nice soul warming bowl of soup.  So last night during the Nor'easter that dropped several inches of snow on our quiet cabin in the woods, I decided to run to the market and get supplies to make a nice Pork and Bean Soup.  My roommate had started soaking three different kinds of beans the night before, and I knew we had some celery in the fridge and some onion, garlic, and shallot, so I needed to run and get some pork, carrots, and parsley from the store.   My original intention was to get some ham hocks, but the store was sold out, and I called to another local store, which was also sold out.   So, time to get creative!  I saw some salt pork, I had bacon at home, and I figured that would be a nice base to start with, then I got a nice large bone in slice of ham, and there were some pork ribs with bones on sale, so I figured that would work for the pork, and I came...

  Maximum Overdrive (1986) I think as a kid the reason I got into Stephen King, is because of  watching his 1986 film directorial debut, Maximum Overdrive.   I remember as a kid absolutely loving everything about this film, and to this day it still holds a very special place in my heart, and it is one of my all-time favourite films.  As far as Stephen King films I would place it as my second favourite, with Pet Sematary being my favourite.  Maximum Overdrive is based on King's 1973 short story called Trucks, which was published in his first short story collection, Night Shift.  The film tells the story of the earth passing through the trail of a comet, which results in all of the machines of the earth coming to life and killing people.  The story focuses on a group of people who are held captive at the Dixie Boy truck stop in North Carolina by a group of trucks led, by a truck with the Green Goblin face on the front of it.   Maximum Over...

 Apt Pupil (1998) There was one novella by Stephen King, that truly disturbed me, it isn't a horror story in the way that one might think, no supernatural monsters, or demons, in this story the true monster is a teenage boy.   The story I am referring to is Apt Pupil from Stephen King's 1983 collection of novellas, Different Seasons.   The story tells the events that happen when a teenage boy named Todd Bowden discovers that an old man in his neighborhood named Arthur Denker, is in fact a Nazi in hiding named Kurt Dussander.   Todd confronts him, and threatens to expose him, unless he tells him stories about the concentration camps that he operated in World War 2.   Denker/Dussander, just wants to forget his past, and live out the rest of his years in peace, and is unwilling to tell Todd what he wants to here, but when Todd threatens to expose him, and holds the fact that he has evidence, even his fingerprints that prove who he his, Denker/Du...

  Sleepwalkers (1992) It is no secret that I am a big fan of Stephen King's books and films, he is a prolific writer, and has written some of my favourite books.   It is rare though when Stephen King writes a work specifically for the screen, and not based on one of his books, the first full feature film that he wrote for the big screen, not originally based on one of his books was Sleepwalkers in 1992.  This is an interesting film, and sadly one that was hated by the critics, and still today is a film that doesn't receive much love.         Sleepwalkers is a story about nomadic shapeshifting vampiric creatures that feed off of people's energy, buy sucking it out of their mouths.   The story centers on what may possibly be the last two remaining members of this species, a mother and son Mary and Charles Brady.  Okay, to just add a level of weirdness, the son must feed on a young innocent woman, and then feed his mother through ...

  Christine (1983) 1983 saw horror legends John Carpenter and Stephen King coming together to bring Stephen King's 1983 novel Christine to life.   Christine was an interesting film, in that the rights to making the film were obtained before the book was actually published, based on Stephen King's manuscript of the novel, and filming began within days of the books release.  Stephen King offered the option to producer Richard Kobritz after his work on the television adaptation of King's 'Salem's Lot, he offered him a choice of Christine or Cujo.   John Carpenter took the directorial job as just a "job", and not because he was particularly interested in the project.   Christine tells the story of a high school kid who buys beat up 1958 Plymouth Fury, that happens to be haunted by its original owner, and the car changes him into the mean angry person that the previous owner was, and he falls in love with Christine, and together they rage get revenge o...

  Bag Of Bones (2011) Without a doubt Stephen King can pen a great ghost story, I think one that has always been one of my favourites is his 1998 novel Bag Of Bones.  I know that many disagree with me on that, but I always felt like the way that he constructed that story, that I felt strongly touched emotionally by this novel.  In 2011 television channel A&E made a two part miniseries of King's novel, and I felt like they captured the feeling of the book quite well, and actually followed the original novel pretty faithfully.  Though not everyone agrees on that, many cite that the film is too slow going, and comes off hokey, but I felt that it was quite a sincere film, and that with the choice of casting, I could really feel the emotional struggle that the characters were dealing with.  Bag Of Bones is about an author, Mike Noonan whose wife dies in a tragic accident in the street outside of a book signing that he is doing in New York City.   After ...