“The Monsters of Gokroth” is a Doctor Who audio play presented by Big Finish Productions.  Matt Fitton is the author of this particular adventure which features Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. Jessica Martin reprises her role of Mags, who was first introduced in the television serial “The Greatest Show In The Galaxy”.  The Doctor first encountered the alien werewolf from Vulpana in the company of intergalactic explorer Captain Cook as they discovered the lethal secrets of the Psychic Circus.

Victoria Yeates and Jeremy Hitchen are included in the cast and do quite well, but that is hardly surprising with a Big Finish cast.

Mags has come to Gokroth to seek help with being able to better controlling her more bloodthirsty tendencies.  Her werewolf transformations have become more unpredictable and a doctor is on the planet studying other monstrous beings.  Of course, discord and fear erupt between the monsters and the humans just in time for the Doctor to discover Mags and trap them both in the center of the maelstrom.

I may have to give this one another listen to appreciate the basic conflict more.  McCoy is great as usual, but I wasn’t drawn that much by the plot.  I do think that revisiting Mags is an interesting direction though.  It does give Big Finish the opportunity to explore dynamics that could have had potential in the television series, and they usually have been quite successful with these efforts.

I think Fitton is a pretty good writer for the most part, and I may learn to appreciate this episode down the road.  McCoy’s Doctor gets a better presentation than he sometimes got in the television series, and his presence is certainly easy to appreciate even here.

Even if this episode didn’t hit it out of the park, in my opinion, it will be fun to hear how things go down between the Doctor and Mags in the upcoming episodes.

“Rocketman” is the musical biographical film about the legendary Elton John.  He was born Reginald Dwight, in case anyone was not sure about the title.  Dexter Fletcher is the director while Lee Hall is the credited scriptwriter.  Taron Egerton takes on the lead role and is actually proven to be a solid casting choice.  Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, and Bryce Dallas Howard are also included in the cast.

This is a musical in the classic sense with people breaking out into song at random throughout the film.  Egerton is known to have sang on his own and does a fine job with it. There’s no way he could sound exactly sound like Elton John, but that still somehow makes the experience better.  It would not be entirely surprising to see Egerton earn an Oscar nomination here.

Some aspects the film seemed a little unnecessarily gratuitous, but I am a staunchly conservative Christian, so of course I am going to wince at some of the excesses depicted in this piece.

I did have some difficulty keeping my bearings as to where I was in John’s timeline as the movie progresses.  I may be too reliant on years being flashed on the screen during biopics.

If I were to meet Elton John, I doubt we would agree much on social or political matters, but I did grow up enjoying a lot of his music over the years.  It was interesting to be reminded of his outlandish stage appearance early in his career.

I didn’t find this to be any grand masterpiece of cinema, but it was engaging.  I certainly could not find fault with the cast or the performances.  Howard seemed to be a bit of a risk as Elton’s mother since she is only nine years older than Egerton, but this isn’t the first time that such a suspension of disbelief was required.

Anyway, any criticism I may have is fairly minor for the most part.  It’s an interesting, thought-provoking movie about someone whose musical talent has made an enormous, if somewhat complicated,  impact on the culture.

“The Girl Who Takes An Eye For An Eye” is a novel by David Lagercrantz and continues the series started by the late Stieg Larsson which featured the Swedish hacker and vigilante Lisbeth Salander.

Lisbeth is finally in prison for a few months after breaking a few laws for the side of the angels in the previous novel.  It does not take her long to run afoul of a gang leader who has been bullying a Bangladeshi prisoner.  Investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist is on hand to help, especially when one of the very few people Salander respects and trusts is murdered.  There is also another clue to Salander’s past that is uncovered involving immoral experiments conducted on twins.

It’s fun to know that Salander can continue after her creator’s demise in some fashion, however this installment is not as engaging as I hoped.  It could be that Salander spends much of this tale somewhat immobilized.  The novel wasn’t really a failure, but there were not that many shocking revelations.  It is heartening to know that Lagercrantz will bump off a few of the characters created by Larsson in order to move Salander’s story forward.

The climax provides a bit of a payoff, however I do not find this to be one of the stronger additions to the series.

Another killer is lurking in early 19th century London, and Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, has another troubling murder to solve in “Why Kill the Innocent” by C.S. Harris.

“Dark Phoenix” is the latest film in the X-Men franchise and was written as well as directed by Simon Kinberg.  The film sees the return of cast members including James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Jennifer Lawrence, Sophie Turner, and several other familiar faces.

The film is supposed to be an adaptation of the comic book era known as “The Dark Phoenix Saga” initially written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne.  I have not read the comic book series even in my younger years, so I can’t speak to the faithfulness of this latest effort.  Audiences saw another version of Jean Grey’s transformation into the Phoenix with a previous X-Men film entitled “The Last Stand”.

The McAvoy version of Charles Xavier has taken in Jean Grey and raised her in his school for gifted children. Of course, the gifted children are not so much geniuses as they have unique abilities courtesy of their mutant DNA.  However, the good professor has kept secrets from the supposedly orphaned Jean.  The actions begins with the X-Men flying off into space to rescue astronauts apparently threatened by a solar flare.  Although the rescue is successful, a mysterious force inhabits the body of Jean Grey, amplifying her already formidable psychic abilities.  Just when the situation can’t look worse, an alien presence has arrived searching for the one who absorbed the powers of the space phenomenon.  The leader of these invaders have taken over the form of Jessica Chastain, or rather the character she is portraying.

Anyway, there is a lot going on in this thing.  The story struggles with a consistent coherence.  Sophie Turner is okay as the increasingly befuddled and desperate Jean Grey.  She tends to get panned pretty thoroughly for her, and I didn’t think she was all that awful.  I thought Fassbender as Magneto was the most compelling of the cast.  It’s a talented cast, and they did the best they could, but really the film suffers from profound mediocrity in the writing.  Plus, as mentioned before, this storyline has already been done on the big screen.

The visual effects were done well enough, but that was not unexpected.  The movie has a few interesting moments and revelations, but nothing that really filled me with awe and amazement.

I would hesitate to call this piece truly terrible, but I can’t say there is much to call it all that good.

“Wraith” is a supernatural thriller written and directed by Michael Sajbel, who decides on a rather unusual genre to express his views against abortion.  Lance Henriksen is probably the only cast member most will immediately recognize.  Much of the film centers on a struggling family played by Jackson Hurst, Ali Hillis, and Catherine Frances. The family live in an impressive old house with too many rooms for a family of three.  The father is looking for work, and the mother is a writer not sure if her next work is going to be published.  Right when the mother learns that she is expecting her second child fourteen years after the birth of her first, strange occurrences are appearing in the house.  There’s a spectral girl running around uttering cryptic things.

It’s not a terrible idea for a movie, but it was cheaply produced.  I certainly don’t have any objection to the message that was ultimately conveyed about the option of abortion. It was kind of heartening to see someone attempt a piece of work that goes against the Hollywood culture.

It’s a basic B ghost movie.  The acting wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t great.  I still think Henriksen has the best gravelly baritone though.  He plays a blind priest who ends up coming to the aid of the haunted family.

Anyway, a production such as this is likely to appeal to those who get a strange kick out of B movies, and for that particular niche, there are worse ones out there.

“Agatha and the Truth of  Murder” is a film that provides a pretty implausible but entertaining explanation for the eleven days in which famous mystery writer Agatha Christie had disappeared in 1926.  Ruth Bradley plays the embattled Christie who is facing divorce and the sense of predictability in her writing.  Pippa Haywood, Bebe Cave, and Ralph Ineson are also included in the cast.  Tom Dalton wrote the script, which was then directed by Terry Loane.

Agatha is approached by a woman wanting some help with solving the murder of her partner which occurred on a train six years prior.  Agatha is reluctant at first since she was merely a writer and not an actual detective.  She finally agrees to take on the challenge and adopts the guise of a legal representative named Mary Westmacott. Fans would recognize this as a writing pseudonym as well. Anyway, she gathers the five people who would make plausible suspects who believe some inheritance is up for grabs. Of course, another murder occurs, and Agatha starts to feel a bit out of her depth.

I am not sure how close Bradley was in her actual depiction of Agatha Christie, however I still found her performance pretty enjoyable.  It ended up being the basic British setup of a group of people in a remote mansion with a killer among them.  Of course, the whole thing of Christie’s eleven day disappearance has been fodder for various writers and filmmakers periodically for decades.

This film may not be the most original and creative cinematic endeavor, but it was still pretty enjoyable, especially if one is an enthusiast for Agatha Christie and the era of mystery writing in which she ruled.

“Rim of the World” is a sci-fi adventure film on Netflix where four kids who meet at summer camp are unexpectedly tasked with getting some important key to some scientist in order to stop some alien invasion.  It is directed by the oddly named McG from a script conceived by Zach Stentz.  Annabeth Gish was the only cast member I recognized.  The intrepid campers are played by Jack Gore, Miya Cech, Benjamin Flores Jr., and Alessio Scalzotto.  They are charming enough, but they can fall into somewhat cliché caricatures, especially Flores.

So these youngsters are at summer camp when aliens rudely interrupt their frolicking with invasion.  A astronaut makes an escape and crashes to Earth and entrusts some key to these kids so they can get it to the scientist who can initiate a satellite or something that could put a stop to the aliens.

The visual effects were pretty good, and I thought the creature design had some originality.  The main cast had some moments of charm, but those were a little too brief and intermittent.  There was a pretty touching moment when one of them had to get a crash course on riding a bike.  It was a bit improbable but somehow managed to work quite well.

It’s not a terrible movie and could be rather fun, but it is unlikely to stick in the memory all that long.

“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” brings back the big green lizard that has stomped around the cinematic world for decades now.  Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields co-wrote this script which was realized by Dougherty as director.  Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, and David Straithairn are part of the cast. Also, the great Charles Dance is there to cause trouble in his usual villainous manner.  The monster gang is here with Mothra, Rodan, and of course the three-headed King Ghidorah along with several other giant Titans thundering about the place.

There is some family drama at the center of this just to make it a bit more incoherent. Farmiga’s character has created a device that can calm the Titans down a bit.  Secrets are revealed about the past of these beasts throughout the movie.  There is a group that think that Titans can clear the Earth of some the more destructive tendencies of the human race and every can live in a much cleaner planet with these giant beasts roaming around.

It’s destruction galore! I thought the visual effects were quite stunning. Some of the action sequences were a little hard to follow due to the abundance of close shots and cutaways.

I sort of liked the daughter played by Millie Bobby Brown in this.  The precocious kid who looked a little older than twelve years-old was pretty well played.  Of course, her ingenuity and spunk required an enormous suspension of disbelief.  Brown is a pretty convincing performer in spite of some of the absurd requirements of the script.

It was a good cast.  Bradley Whitford was on hand as well, and he usually is an interesting addition to the many supporting roles he been handed over the years.  There were lots of gorgeous Asian folks around which is appropriate for this franchise, and they all worked well unsurprisingly.

The movie is rather ridiculous at times, but I ended up enjoying it more than it deserved. I read that the reviews were very mixed, and I can understand why it was not universally loved, however I sure had fun with it, especially when all of the monsters started emerging from their various habitats.  The first half does take a little bit of patience, but it gets much more engaging when the craziness kicks off.

The movie works just fine for this genre.  It’s loud and fun to watch.  I would just advise to not examine the plot or dialogue too closely and just kick back and enjoy the mayhem.

“The Fourth Doctor Adventures: The Syndicate Master Plan- Series 8 Volume 2” is a Doctor Who audio boxset from Big Finish Productions.  It is the second half of the eighth series or seasons of audio dramas starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.  Jane Slavin joins the Doctor as WPC Ann Kelso for this set.  John Leeson reprises his role as the voice of K9.  This is actually a sequel to a First Doctor television serial known as “The Daleks’ Master Plan”.  It explores what happened to various alien races introduced in that story who were apparently allied and then betrayed by the Daleks.  Most of the television story is still missing, and I have yet to hear the soundtrack.  It has also been several years since I read the novelization.

“Time’s Assassin” is the story continued by Guy Adams where the Doctor, Ann, and K9 are caught up in the machinations of the Syndicate on the planet of Kembel.  Jon Culshaw, John Shrapnel, and Anna Acton are included in the guest cast.  It’s not something that impressed me beyond measure, but it works well enough to get the second half of this saga going.  Once again, Baker’s performance makes up quite a bit of slow moments and lackluster dialogue.  It is also another story a little hard to imagine through audio performance.

Jonathan Barnes continues this collection with “Fever Island”.  The TARDIS crew land encounter what seems to be an English spy on a remote island where a dubious experiment is taking place.  Gethin Anthony plays a rather familiar type of caricature. Bettrys Jones, Carolyn Seymour, and Barnaby Edwards are included in this episode.  Of course, the Doctor discovers that that little is as it seems.  It was pretty interesting idea for a story, and the Doctor has an opportunity to display a more villainous performance at times.

“The Perfect Prisoners” by John Dorney completes this collection.  All is revealed, and Ann Kelso has been keeping secrets of her own.  I didn’t get too engaged with this until pretty late into the story.  It was an interesting decision to have the Fourth Doctor travel with an original Big Finish companion and it works for the most part.

I think disappointment is a stronger impression than I want to convey when describing my reaction to this set.  It just seems a little less epic than I was hoping for.  Slavin is a fine actress and her enjoyment with working with Tom Baker is evident.  Tom Baker still seems to have fun doing these things, so that delights me to no end.  May he have several more years left in him where he is well enough to continue his performance! I may appreciate this whole series more once I listen to it again, but I was hoping to be better hooked on the first go.

“The Defiant Ones” is a classic film released in 1958 and stars the great Tony Curtis and the always compelling Sidney Poitier.  Stanley Kramer is the director of this highly acclaimed film written by Harold Jacob Smith, who got the story somehow from Nedrick Young.

Two convicts escape after a prison transfer bus crashes.  Of course, it’s one white guy and one black guy chained together who decide to make a break for it.  That’s about the only thing they can agree on at first.  This was an important film at the time considering that segregation was still a popular practice.

It’s the talent of the two leads that really carries this one and makes this enjoyable.  There is a relationship that develops seemingly out of left field between Curtis’ “Joker” Jackson and a single mother he and Poitier’s Cullen come across along the way.  Cara Williams is part of the cast and plays a woman desperate to leave her current circumstances although the level of trust she displays is somewhat hard to swallow. This movie has some twists and turns to it that are not as easy to buy into as I would like, however it’s still a great experience.  Curtis and Poitier have great chemistry even at the height of their hostility toward each other.  It is heartening to read that Curtis insisted that Poitier share the top billing with him during the opening credits.  It is also too bad that Curtis had to insist on that credit for the more than worthy Sidney Poitier, but  that was how it was at that time.

There are a few moments that had me scratching my head in disbelief, but my incredulity was pretty mild given the overall enjoyment of watching two major Hollywood talents spark off each other during a time when it was considerably more rare to have two men of different ethnicities share such significant screen time together. A part of me would like to have seen it at the time it first premiered just to get a sense of what audiences really thought of it.  It’s a great movie with a great cast, and any  mild criticism I may have is not a good enough reason to pass it up.