2023 - November (TV)
List activity
14 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
76 titles
- DirectorJoe NapolitanoStarsDavid DuchovnyGillian AndersonClaire StansfieldMulder and Scully track a legendary creature that has roamed the New Jersey countryside for over 40 years.01-11-2023
- DirectorRobert MandelStarsDavid DuchovnyGillian AndersonCharles CioffiAgent Dana Scully is instructed to debunk an FBI project dubbed "The X-Files," paranormal cases that have been reopened by Agent Fox Mulder.02-11-2023
- DirectorDaniel SackheimStarsDavid DuchovnyGillian AndersonJerry HardinMulder and Scully investigate the mysterious case of a military test pilot who disappeared after experiencing strange psychotic behaviour.02-11-2023
- DirectorJohn Llewellyn MoxeyStarsAngela LansburyEileen BrennanCindy FisherJessica visits a convent to see a former sorority sister and winds up searching for a nun's killer.02-11-2023
- DirectorHarry LongstreetStarsDavid DuchovnyGillian AndersonDoug HutchisonMulder and Scully search for a humanoid killer whose savage murder spree reoccurs every 30 years.03-11-2023
- DirectorDaniel SackheimStarsDavid DuchovnyGillian AndersonCarrie SnodgressMulder becomes obsessed with solving a case that closely parallels an "encounter" he experienced as a child.04-11-2023
- DirectorMichael KatlemanStarsDavid DuchovnyGillian AndersonBarry PrimusMulder and Scully investigate the deaths of two men believed to have been killed by a powerful psychokinetic force.04-11-2023
- DirectorJerrold FreedmanStarsDavid DuchovnyGillian AndersonJerry HardinOn Halloween, Mulder and Scully investigate the death of a corporate executive who may have been murdered by a thinking computer.05-11-2023
- DirectorDavid NutterStarsDavid DuchovnyGillian AndersonXander BerkeleyMulder and Scully are sent to investigate when a team of geophysicists stationed at a remote Alaskan outpost are killed by a parasitic alien life form.06-11-2023
- DirectorWilliam A. GrahamStarsDavid DuchovnyGillian AndersonEd LauterWhen a space shuttle mission is sabotaged, Mulder suspects it may be the work of an alien spirit that inhabits the body of a former Gemini astronaut.06-11-2023
- DirectorSean S. CunninghamStarsBruce CampbellChase MastersonC. David JohnsonAliens in human disguise commandeer a rural airport during a snowstorm. To survive, the people trapped inside must determine which of their own is not of this Earth.06-11-2023
What if "The Thing" took place in a snowed-in airport and had Riddick as its protagonist? This question has been asked by no one ever except Lewis Abernathy, writer of "DeepStarSix". The answer is "Terminal Invasion", a terminally corny Sci-Fi Channel Original which is the blend of "The Thing", "Langoliers", and "Pitch Black" you never knew you didn't need.
The quality of the film is exactly on par with a third feature in a drive-in cinema. It runs on that B-movie logic where everything is possible as long as it shocks the audience. The budget is as low as it could possibly go while staying within legal limitations. Still, it is reasonably diverting when it isn't spinning its wheel and padding out its runtime with awful dialogue scenes.
The plot follows a group of nervy travellers - the kind you don't want to find yourselves sitting next to - trapped at a small rural airport during a snowstorm. One character is a businessman in a rush to get to a meeting, there's a constantly bickering married couple, and a murderer being transferred (Bruce Campbell). Despite the fact that the airport is also inhabited by shape-shifting aliens, our characters still seem to be most irked by the fact they'll be late coming home. One of the first people to die is killed not by the aliens but by an irritated passenger. This is to say that all the characters act like absolute imbeciles, obsessing over missed meetings, timetables, and infidelities even though they've just witnessed a shape-shifting priest kung-fu fight a cop.
Similar bizarrities continue all throughout the film. A woman who's just seen her husband get torn to pieces by a rabid alien flirts with another guy while standing over his mangled corpse. Our female protagonist, the local pilot (Chase Masterson), asks the convicted murderer who's just escaped custody to give his word. Apparently, she trusts his scout's honour.
At a certain point, I started wondering whether writer Lewis Abernathy is actually an alien himself but then I realized that the aliens don't make much sense either. Their plan, once revealed, is bizarre and stupid. Despite the fact that they can easily overpower and kill the humans, they still continue this charade, hiding among us, for no good reason. It's not like they can infect anyone like the creature in "The Thing" nor do they have any ulterior motive which would require the humans to remain alive. Maybe they're just having too much fun playacting.
The film's cast gamely put their all into this silly script. Masterson makes for a reasonably likeable authority figure even when she has to utter such cringeworthy lines as "I am the alpha female" with a completely straight face. Campbell delivers a more subdued performance than usual and is effective as the convict but to what end? It's not like he's a terribly likeable character. After all, he is a murderer. There's no big twist where it's revealed that he was innocent all along. No! He's a straight-up killer and the film treats him as our hero. We don't even get the obligatory backstory about how the person he killed was a paedophile or something.
Sean S. Cunningham's direction is serviceable and reasonably competent but he doesn't manage to create much atmosphere or tension. OK, there are a few well-executed jump scares but Cunningham is a pretty bad action director. For some reason, every so often, he'll have a fight scene play out as a series of freeze-frames. At other times, he has animated scene transitions which kept making me think characters literally exploded on screen. His usual crew is rounded out by composer Harry Manfredini whose score is so generic it might as well have been credited to the stock library.
"Terminal Invasion" is basically what I imagine when I hear the phrase Sci-Fi Original. It's cheap, silly, poorly thought-out, and entirely derivative but still entertaining enough for a late-night watch. There's a campy charm to these films which I would compare to 1950s B-movies or Stephen King mini-series. They're not necessarily good but they feel oddly comfortable and familiar. I didn't like one bit of "Terminal Invasion" but I did enjoy watching it.
1/4 - DirectorDavid NutterStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherBill SmitrovichFrank, Peter Watts from the Millennium Group and Lt. Bletcher and Det. Giebelhouse from the Seattle P.D. are after "The Frenchman", a sexually confused serial killer obsessed with prophecies, who targets strippers and gay male hookers.08-11-2023
- DirectorDavid NutterStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherBrittany TipladyDiscovery of cremated human remains in a public park, leads Frank, his mentor Mike Atkins and Peter Watts from the Millennium Group to a doomsday cult of teenage telemarketers brainwashed by their mysterious monstrous leader.08-11-2023
- DirectorThomas J. WrightStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherBrittany TipladyFrank teams up with Jim Horn, a troubled profiler and candidate for the Millennium Group, in order to catch a deranged serial killer, but Horn's psyche starts to crack under pressure.09-11-2023
- DirectorRandy ZiskStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherBrittany TipladyFrank Black is called in to catch a bizarre serial killer who mails his victims' body parts to seemingly random addresses. However, Frank senses that the killer may just be someone's puppet.09-11-2023
- DirectorDavid NutterStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherTerry O'QuinnFrank and Peter head to Washington in order to help the FBI investigate a serial bomber.10-11-2023
- DirectorWinrich KolbeStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherBrittany TipladyFrank investigates a serial killer who seems to be targeting the clergy.10-11-2023
- DirectorJim CharlestonStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherBrittany TipladyFrank tries to catch a troubled young pretender who is the main suspect in a string of brutal murders at funerals.10-11-2023
- DirectorRalph HemeckerStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherBrittany TipladyCatherine tries to help a now adult traumatized victim of incest take her influential father to criminal court before he does the same thing to her young sister.11-11-2023
- DirectorJim CharlestonStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherBrittany TipladyFrank tries to catch a killer who is targeting families with expensive security systems. Catherine tries to help the traumatized little daughter of two of his victims.11-11-2023
- DirectorThomas J. WrightStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherTerry O'QuinnFrank is brought in to help the sheriff's office catch a troubled girl and her murderous boyfriend who are seemingly on a killing spree, but Frank suspects that they may actually be searching for someone.11-11-2023
- DirectorMichael PattinsonStarsLance HenriksenMegan GallagherRyan CutronaFrank investigates a series of abductions of teen boys in a small gated community. After one of them is found dead and a cryptic message is found, Frank tries to figure out the killer's motives before more kids end up dead.11-11-2023
- DirectorRobert ButlerStarsCybill ShepherdBruce WillisAllyce BeasleyMaddie Hayes wakes up to find her staff have quit and all her money has been stolen. One of her few remaining assets is a loss-making investigation agency run by David Addison. She sacks the staff but David is determined to keep it going.12-11-2023
It's a shame that screwball comedy moved to television because "Moonlighting", the feature-length pilot of the cult TV show, is good enough that it could have and should have been a hit in the cinemas. It's a clever, witty, relentlessly paced piece of writing by Glenn Gordon Caron executed with memorable zest by its perfectly cast stars. It is also well above the average of crime comedies which did get a theatrical release at the time such as "Nadine" or "Bird on a Wire". "Moonlighting" is just a class all of its own.
It's a delightful revival of the pictures Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant used to make in the 1930s. The kind in which love affairs always grew from spiteful bickering, murders were the perfect excuse for adventure, and everyone spoke in aphorisms and elegant turns of phrase. Our Hepburn and Tracy for the 1980s are Cybill Shepherd at the end of her movie career and Bruce Willis before the beginning of his. Shepherd plays Maddie Hayes, a penniless fashion model who finds herself the owner of a down-and-out detective agency run by David Addison, the kind of charming, wisecracking, urbane rascal that Bruce Willis would make a career of playing.
Before long, Maddie and David have to join forces when they're plunged into a byzantine plot involving a mysterious watch with no mechanism, a dead punk hitman, a kindly grandfather toting a Luger, and a cache of diamonds worth four million dollars. The plot is wild and nonsensical because it ultimately doesn't matter. Just like the plots of those wonderful screwball comedies from the 1930s and 1940s, it's just an excuse to get our protagonists into a series of ludicrous situations which will force them to work through their wisecracking bickering towards the inevitable love affair.
And what fun it all is! Especially in the scenes in which Shepherd and Willis get a chance to trade barbs so sharply written by Glenn Gordon Caron. A wonderfully witty monologue which exemplifies the type of dialogue "Moonlighting" is all about has Maddie deliver a pitch-perfect description of David to his face. "People fire you and you make googly eyes at them. Men try and fry your face and you make jokes. You seek out the expert advice of pawnbrokers. You talk with your mouth full, don't signal when you turn and you don't even have a plan."
All of this is delivered at a rat-a-tat rapid-fire pace and, in fact, the whole film moves quickly and with style. Robert Butler's direction is workmanlike but ruthlessly efficient, especially in the few very effective moments when "Moonlighting" moves into out-and-out thriller territory. There is a superbly orchestrated chase scene in which the hunter and the prey are in separate scenic elevators. The hunter is played by Dennis Lipscomb who is genuinely creepy and menacing as a ruthless hitman and when the camera showed him glaring at his target through the glass wall of the lift, my skin began to crawl.
Shepherd and Willis are the stars of the show but they're by no means its only shining parts. Allyce Beasley absolutely steals every scene she's in as David's rhyming secretary. There is a scene between them when they think the agency is being shut down, which brought a tear to my eye. Her character will continue to grow throughout the ensuing series to become my personal favourite but she is already delightful and funny in this pilot.
With a pounding electronic score by Lee Holdridge and some atmospheric photography of nighttime Los Angeles from Michael D. Margulies, I could easily see "Moonlighting" as one of the best theatrical comedies of the 1980s. It's sharp, clever, consistently hilarious, and, at times, genuinely exciting. It has the charm of "Romancing the Stone" and all the verve and zest of "Lethal Weapon". And when the ending credits rolled over footage of the best scenes from the movie, I stayed to watch them and laughed all over again remembering the zingers and the gags. If that's not a sign of a great comedy, I don't know what is.
3.5/4 - 1982–198750mTV-PG7.5 (194)TV EpisodeDirectorDon WeisStarsStephanie ZimbalistPierce BrosnanJames ReadA woman from Murphy Michaels' college days seeks his help solving the mystery disappearance of a mutual friend. It appears a poltergeist is murdering former members of her 1970's anti-war group.13-11-2023
- DirectorMark HaberStarsAngie HarmonSasha AlexanderBrian GoodmanDr. Isles becomes the suspect in the murder of a mysterious guest of a charitable fund-raiser.13-11-2023