On reading speed and retention

You know how in sci fi, a character gets some alien implant that dramatically increases their reading speed, and then they can blitz through a book about some subject they’ve never encountered before, and can instantly sum up the book’s argument and...

Total Recall (dir. Paul Verhoeven)

Boy, Total Recall (1990) is actually a lot weirder than I remember it. This is probably because, as a kid, I often caught bits and pieces of it on TV, so I rarely (if ever) watched it straight through, and whatever I did watch was an edited-for-TV version. The mixture...

The Grey (dir. Joe Carnahan)

The Grey (2012) is far better than I would have thought. The quote on the DVD box — “Terrifically exciting! Hold on tight! It’s a true call of the wild!” — really doesn’t do justice to the film. You know how when you finally get...

Five Scary Things

Here are the five scariest things any human being has eve imagined: Sam Neill with no eyeballs. Sam Neill with eyeballs made of hellfire. Sam Neill with his face all scratched up, and also he is saying ominous things; A hole in space-time with Sam Neill in it;...