“Overcomer” is a Christian drama film which is the latest offering from the Kendrick Brothers.  Alex Kendrick stars and directs and also is a co-writer with his brother, Stephen.  Priscilla Shirer, Shari Rigby, and Aryn Wright-Thompson are also part of the cast.  The Kendrick Brothers have had some success in prior Christian cinematic efforts such “Facing the Giants” and “War Room”.

Kendrick plays a basketball coach and teacher in a town facing an economic crisis causing people to move away.  Circumstances conspire to have him coach a young girl in a cross country running.  Of course, the girl is asthmatic and apparently an orphan.  She also has a bit of the sticky fingers.

Shirer plays the noble high school principal and does fine.  She is known as a writer and Christian evangelist and has acted in a couple of films.  She does well enough as an actress, but check out her speeches on YouTube. She is phenomenal in her evangelism.

The young runner played by Wright-Thompson is an interesting character as well.

The film is a little on the cheesy side in some areas, but the message is moving. It deals with how one can define themselves in regard to their faith in God.  Amazing revelations come forth when the coach meets a bed-ridden man at the hospital who was forced to give himself over to God after the breaking of his body.

Some of the supposed twists are somewhat predictable, however the film does depict some fairly complex characters and relationships quite effectively.

The Kendricks are not genius writers, but they’re competent enough to make an enjoyable movie.  Of course, this time the message and intent is far more important that the plot.

“The People Against O’Hara” is a film released in 1951 and stars Spencer Tracy, Pat O’Brien, and James Arness.  John Sturges directed the piece which was adapted from a novel Eleazar Lipsky by screenwriter John Monks Jr.

Tracy plays an alcoholic attorney named James Curtayne who is asked to defend a young man from the neighborhood accused of murder.  Arness plays the hapless defendant who is not as forthcoming with his attorney as hoped.

This film isn’t bad, but it does seem to drag quite a bit for something that still doesn’t hit the two hour mark.

Spencer Tracy himself was fine, but I had some trouble staying with the film overall.  The performances from the other actors was fine, but the film just felt kind of just there, which is a shame.

Very young actors Charles Bronson and Richard Anderson were also in the cast, but as amusing as it was to recognize them, it was not quite enough to keep me consistently engaged in the movie as a whole.

“Downton Abbey” is a big screen episode of one of the most rabidly popular British series.  Creator Julian Fellowes writes the script which ended up being directed by Michael Engler.  Hugh Bonneville, Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery, and all sorts of other British actors return to the Yorkshire countryside as the family and staff receive notice of King George and Queen Mary are coming in for a visit in 1927.

So I have yet to watch the television series, but this movie just felt like a super long episode.  It is a super long episode that is well presented though.  There wasn’t much time spent on the background of the characters for the sake of new viewers, but that was a good decision.  This is a lot of great Britishness as expected.  My favorite character is one of the kitchen staff, Daisy, played by Sophie McShera.  I could see why this show was such a hit.  All of the main characters were amusing and intriguing.

The plot felt a little standard, even for someone who has yet to watch the show, however it was still quite engaging.  Fellowes is a pretty witty scribe.

The scenery was often pretty breathtaking.  The Abbey looked gorgeous during the long shots.

It’s a film that offers a pretty good continuation and yet a decent introduction for those who missed out on the series in the first airing.  Anyway, any newcomers to the show should still get some enjoyment out of it, and I imagine long-time fans were quite pleased with the end result.

“Rambo: Last Blood” is directed by Adrian Grunberg and stars  Sylvester Stallone, who also co-wrote the script with Matthew Cirulnick.  Vietnam War veteran John Rambo has been running his father’s old horse ranch with an old friend and her granddaughter.  The granddaughter runs off to Mexico to confront her deadbeat dad and gets herself captured by a Mexican cartel.

The film also stars Paz Beltran, Adriana Barraza, and Yvette Monreal alongside all kinds of other people.

If this does end up being the last film, it’s not a bad way to wrap up the franchise.  It’s a very different setting for the usually nomadic Rambo.  I sort of .like the idea of him settling down and finding a threat to his adopted family to rouse that vengeful streak fans love so much.

It’s a pretty gruesome film.  Stallone has entered his seventies, but he almost pulls off the action scenes as convincingly as if he were a younger man.  Stallone probably waited a little too long to do this film, but it wasn’t overly overdue.

There are enough interesting character moments to keep this from seeming too goofy.  But it does have some fairly ludicrous moments nonetheless.  There was just enough sentimental moments and competent action scenes to make it worthwhile.

Well, the film works as a decent send-off to a popular cinematic presence, but not  much more than that.

“The Rings of Ikiria” is a Doctor Who audio drama from Big Finish Productions and is one of the episodes in the range known as The Companion Chronicles.  Richard Dinnick is the writer here who provides the prose and dialogue to be performed by Richard Franklin and Felicity Duncan.  Franklin relates the tale as Captain Mike Yates as UNIT during the time when the Third Doctor was exiled to Earth.  Duncan voices the enigmatic and alluring Ikiria and a couple of other female characters who appear and she was pretty engaging.

This particular installment felt a bit bland and familiar, although that it is not the fault of the performers.  I like Franklin’s delivery and performance in these things when he participates, and he certainly does not fail in anyway to help lift the story.  The reason it feels familiar is that there is already a television story from the Third Doctor era where some seemingly benevolent visitor from the stars turns out to have more dastardly motives.  There are these rings being passed out that end up controlling the minds of the wearer.  The Doctor ends up disappearing for a time and is thought by Yates to be dead.  Anyway, it does not completely fall apart, but it does not leave much of an impression either.

So the cast and performances were enough to get some level of enjoyment, but the story ended up feeling too overused.

“The Goldfinch” is a film directed by John Crowley with screenwriter Peter Straughan adapting the novel written by Donna Tartt.  The story centers on a young man named Theodore Decker, played by Ansel Elgort, whose mother was killed in a bombing Metropolitan Museum of Art when he was thirteen years-old.  A much younger actor with the distinctive name of Oakes Fegley takes on the younger Theo.  The film also stars Jeffrey Wright, Nicole Kidman, and Luke Wilson.

Theo has grown up and sells antiques in New York, alongside a mentor, played by Wright.  This is one of those films which cuts back and forth between his adult years and his troubled childhood.  Theo has developed a substance abuse problem to go along with his other challenges.  After his mother’s death, the movie explores how Theo was betrayed by those who were supposed to care for him, and encouraged by those who had no such obligation.

I ended up liking the film, but it’s another one that still was a mixed bag.  It’s a long movie and it feels like a long movie.  The transitions between the two main eras of Theo’s life was a little jarring.  The cast was great though.  Reliable performers such as Wright and Kidman still managed to keep me engaged.  It was an interesting story for the most part and delved into the world of art history and antiques, which I didn’t mind.  I was rather distracted by some of the extraordinary coincidences that sort of kept cropping up on how the adult Theo kept reconnecting with aspects of his childhood.  I have yet to read the novel, so I can’t say for sure, but it really felt like a lot was left out of the adaptation which could have helped the screen version make a little better sense.

It’s a film I didn’t necessarily mind seeing, but I would say it’s probably something one doesn’t need to make a special effort to watch.

“The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus” is a chronicle first published in 1994 by Richard Preston.  Preston first published an article two years before in The New Yorker entitled “Crisis in the Hot Zone” in which this particular book further expands.

Preston knows how to rattle the nerves with his accounts of the devastating effects the Ebola Virus wreaks on the body.  He also delves into the personal lives of  some of those researchers who faced this terrible affliction and does so quite effectively.

Preston not only comes off as a meticulous researcher and journalist, but he also is a pretty compelling writer without making the subject more complicated than necessary. There are times when it gets a little dry, but those pages are not too numerous.

I don’t read non-fiction on a regular basis, but I was glad to give this one a gander.  Preston does a great job of presenting the horrors and the noble efforts of the scientists to study the Ebola Virus in a manner in which laypeople can follow fairly easily.

I will next be delving into an American classic about one of the darker periods of this US history.  It’s going to be lengthy reading indulgence, but I am going to be taking on “Roots” by Alex Haley.

“The Reification of Hans Gerber” is a Sherlock Holmes audio drama released in 2011 from Big Finish Productions.  This episode is written by George Mann, and Nicholas Briggs and Richard Earl star as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, respectively.  John Dorney, Dan Starkey, and Terry Malloy are included in the guest cast.

First of all, the title is perhaps a little too ambiguous.  My vocabulary is pretty good, and I had to look up the definition of reification, which means to basically to make a concept or idea into a concrete thing.  I don’t know if many people could recall that meaning easily, so the title could have been better thought out.

In spite of that, I really enjoyed this episode.  I am getting used to Briggs’ portrayal of most famous literary detective, which isn’t bad.  I find the performance of Richard Earl as Dr. Watson as pretty extraordinary.  I don’t know which makes a perfect Victorian sounding voice, but Earl pitches his just right.  He gets amazingly frantic during the action sequences he relates.  He may be becoming one of my favorite versions of Watson.

The other element I enjoyed about this story is that for once, Mann doesn’t have the two adventurers investigate another family curse or supernatural legend.  There are no appearances by other literary or historical figures of that era.  This really is something I could imagine that Arthur Conan Doyle would have written.

The story centers on a suspicious death that leads to a missing will.  The offspring of a banished relative has laid claim to the estate, and Holmes is asked to look into the matter.  Then a murder occurs, and the deductions are pronounced.  There are some pretty good twists here even if they are not entirely unpredictable.

This is the kind of Holmes story I prefer if other writers want to contribute to the legend. Of course, no one compares to the master, Conan Doyle, but Mann’s offering here does come closer than a lot of recent pastiches I have read or heard recently.  He does manage to emulate the prose fairly effectively while laying out some much needed creativity.

Big Finish consistently hires solid if not extraordinary performers who do make some of the more ill-considered storylines at least reasonably enjoyable.  This episode had great performances which I can almost always count on, and a story that would likely make the creator of the most recognizable pair of Victorian crime in literature proud.  Well done, George Mann and Big Finish!

“It: Chapter Two” is the second half of the cinematic adaptation of one of Stephen King’s most iconic novels.  Gary Dauberman wrote the screenplay with Andy Muschietti directing.  So the first film depicted the battle between a group of teen-age misfits and the demonic, murderous clown known as Pennywise.  This film has the kids all grown up and called back to Derry, Maine when familiar murders start to break out again.  James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Jessica Chastain, and Bill Skarsgard are part of the cast, with Skarsgard donning the face paint and wicked looking teeth once again as the malevolent clown.

The film has some new footage of the younger counterparts of the main cast as well as flashbacks flesh out the events that occurred twenty-seven years ago in the first film.

The visual effects were quite good, although some of the manifestations of Pennywise were a little too absurd even for a horror movie.  The performances were strong enough for the most part.  Hader, who is best known as a comedic sketch artist from Saturday Night Live, demonstrated an unexpected range of acting.  He is apparently gotten significant acclaim in television series entitled “Barry”, and the praise seems like it is deserved.

There are times when the story doesn’t flow very well onscreen, however I am willing to show some grace here since the original novel is quite massive.  It’s a pretty solid cast overall.  Not all of the frights worked as well as others.

Bill Skarsgard does have some moments where he is quite chilling as Pennywise.  He was a great choice to take on that role.

The movie works pretty well for the most part.  The fans will see this regardless of the reviews, but I doubt many will be that deeply disappointed.  I noticed quite a few flaws here, but I still ended up finding a fairly significant amount of macabre enjoyment as well.

“Memories of a Tyrant” is a Doctor Who audio drama released by Big Finish Productions.  This particular episode is brought to us by Roland Moore and finally reunites Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Sixth Doctor and Peri, respectively.  Listeners haven’t heard Bryant in this range for a couple of years, but she slips quite nicely back into the part, and the two resume their familiar and enjoyable chemistry.

The Doctor brings Peri to a space station known as the Memory Farm where technology is able to access memories that are thought to be quite buried.  There they find a patient who may or may not have been a ruthless dictator and the scientists trying to verify his identity.  Of course, things take a dangerous turn when the Doctor gets himself caught up in the experiment.

The guest cast includes Joseph Mydell, Charlotte Stevens, and Sean Connolly.  These are actors with whom I am not familiar, but they seem to be well chosen as what can usually be expected from Big Finish.

The episode has a pretty fascinating concept and becomes something of a classic murder mystery at the beginning and shifts into something I found to be a little confusing after the second episode.  I probably just need to have another listen to grasp the middle of the episode a little better.

I will say that it was still great to have Baker and Bryant together again.  Baker still continues to muster the same energy in his performance.  The relationship between his Doctor and Peri continues to have a much more meaningful dynamic than what was sometimes presented in the television series.  Although I enjoy this Doctor’s interaction with the other Big Finish characters such as Evelyn, Constance Clarke, or Flip, I have no issue with revisiting this particular team either.

Moore leaves some unanswered questions when this episode comes to a close, however I found myself not minding that due to the uniqueness of the plot.  Of course, this TARDIS crew being together again does help me shrug off what would normally be an annoyance to me.  There are some elements of the story that are a little hard to follow, at least on the first listening, but this is another example of why I still get an enormous pleasure out of the Big Finish contributions to Doctor Who.