Michael Prescott's Blog
Archived blog focusing on the paranormal
Category: Film
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The myth of the vampire has been around since ancient times in one form or another, but it didn't become a popular entertainment trope until the 19th century. Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker gives us the vampire we all remember, but he was preceded by others. First came Sir Francis Varney, the blood-sucking villain in a…
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Since I never go to movie theaters anymore, I didn't watch the highly acclaimed science-fiction drama Arrival until last night, after I rented it from one of those supermarket vending machines. It's a good movie, with strong performances and a compelling storyline – though I thought the method selected for establishing communication with the aliens was a bit…
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In a recent comments thread, Ray G. suggested I check out the Brazilian film Astral City: A Spiritual Journey (Brazilian title: Nosso Lar, meaning Our Home). I’d heard of the movie, which boasted an unusually large budget for a Brazilian project ($12 million, according to IMDB.com) and went on to become one of the…
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The Devil Commands is a 1941 B-picture starring Boris Karloff and a supporting cast of no-name players. Clocking in at a brisk 65 minutes, it tells the story of a grief-stricken scientist seeking to communicate with his dead wife, whose experiments take a gruesome turn ending in multiple deaths. It’s not a bad movie,…
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I never go to the movies anymore, so I didn't see Gravity until it came out on pay-per-view yesterday. I was tremendously impressed with this film. It's a bravura tour de force of technical skill and dramatic tension. But beyond all that, I felt it had a strongly spiritual – even mystical – message, which…
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There's a notion, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, that if someone puts in ten thousand hours of practice, he or she can master almost any cognitively demanding field. The theory has been disputed, but a lot of people have heard about it and seem to subscribe to it. David Brooks even used the theory to claim…
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After a long life and a marvelous career, Ray Harryhausen has passed on to whatever awaits us in the next phase of existence. He was one of my heroes when I was growing up, and even in this CGI age, I still enjoy his hand-crafted special effects. The list of his creations is amazing: the…
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If you use Netflix streaming video, you may be interested in watching 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I just noticed that this is available for streaming. Usually the availability of streaming videos lasts for only a limited time. Though overshadowed by its groundbreaking predecessor, 2010 is an…
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Speaking of movies, as I was in the last post, here's a very funny and all-too-true assessment of contemporary Hollywood from Mark Harris of GQ. An excerpt: We can all acknowledge that the world of American movies is an infinitely richer place because of Pixar and that the very best comic-book movies, from Iron…
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I picked up the Angelina Jolie spy thriller Salt at a Redbox machine this evening, not expecting much. But it turned out to be a lot of fun – a smart, fast-paced, action-packed movie loaded with amazing stunts, most of which seem to have been performed for real, not generated in the hard drive of…