Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

November 1990: The Month of Much-Maligned Sequels

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Tom Jolliffe goes back 30 years to November 1990 and visits a string of maligned sequel releases… 1990 brought to a close a decade of popular entertainment and blockbuster success. The era really changed the face of cinema and audience tastes. Gone were the days of unflinching and gritty cinema being the predominant driving market, […]

Movie Review – Vanguard (2020)

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Vanguard, 2020. Directed by Stanley Tong. Starring Jackie Chan, Yang Yang, Allen Ai Lun, Miya Muqi, Zhu Zhengting, Desmond Aldridge, Can Aydin, Sayed Badreya, Ruohan Xu, Barret Coates, and Fady Zaky. SYNOPSIS: Covert security company Vanguard is the last hope of survival for an accountant after he is targeted by the world’s deadliest mercenary organization. […]

Movie Review – Jiu Jitsu (2020)

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Jiu Jitsu, 2020. Directed by Dimitri Logothetis. Starring Alain Moussi, Frank Grillo, Marie Avgeropoulos, JuJu Chan, Tony Jaa, Rick Yune and Nicolas Cage. SYNOPSIS Every six years, an ancient order of expert Jiu Jitsu fighters face a fearsome alien invader in a battle for Earth. For thousands of years, the fighters that protect Earth have […]

Never Mind Bond, Is It Time To Resurrect Harry Palmer?

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Tom Jolliffe on why the iconic spy character Harry Palmer could be perfect material for a reboot… With Daniel Craig’s final Bond film No Time To Die seeming as distant from release as it’s ever been, talk still bubbles away about who will replace Craig for a character who’s rapidly becoming outdated, and almost too […]

He’s Dynamite, but Michael Jai White is still hugely underrated

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Tom Jolliffe looks at action star Michael Jai White, who has never quite got the attention he deserves… For whatever reasons, some stars never quite reach the level their ability deserves. It can be a variety of reasons holding some back, and generally many stars tend to get that one shot at the big league. […]

The Pain of An Axed TV Show That Has More Story to Tell

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Tom Jolliffe on that hollow feeling fans experience when a TV show you’re emotionally invested in is canned by the network… A good TV series. You park your derriere down for that first episode. Does it hook you in immediately? Then every subsequent episode you see, particularly on a continued drama with a long overriding […]

Hazy Childhood Movie Memories

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Tom Jolliffe on those hazy memories from childhood for movies that may or may not actually exist… When you think back to childhood, some memories remain vividly clear. This can extend to movies of memories that lock themselves into your memory banks without much being re-imagined by your mind. Certain films, like Star Wars always […]

From Hard Boiled to Soft Boiled: Why John Woo’s masterpiece will never be matched again

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Tom Jolliffe revisits John Woo’s action masterpiece Hard Boiled… John Woo had already made quite a name for himself in China, thanks to hit action classics such as A Better Tomorrow and The Killer. In 1992 he released the film which would see him transition from Hong Kong director, to Hollywood. The film was Hard […]

Nikita vs Anna: When Luc Besson Retraced His Steps

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Tom Jolliffe looks back at the film which broke Luc Besson out to the world, and his more recent and pale imitator, Anna… Cinema is almost bereft of an original idea these days. There are very few that arrive which feel like something unique, and even then, the smart-arses among us might start pinpointing similarities […]