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[Nerdspresso] Forgetting Mrs. Tingle
Cruising the streaming channels for what to watch is like combing the beach with a metal detector. Sometimes you find a gold coin, but often you just unearth a discarded tin can. While perusing Paramount+ recently, I stumbled across a title that I hadn’t thought about since the late nineties. A flick that I had…
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[Nerdspresso] Fill Your Halloween Movie Treat Bucket
Halloween just wasn’t my jam growing up. I was a squeamish and fussy kid so I didn’t enjoy being scared or dressing up for trick or treating. Keep in mind that I was a child in the ‘70s so our costumes were those plastic outfits. They felt like a cross between cling wrap and a…
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[Nerdspresso] Terror in the Tar Heel State
Before I wax poetic about filmmaking in the great state of North Carolina, let me share a little bit about my own experiences in the movie business. I graduated from a small liberal arts college with a creative writing degree in 1991 and returned home to make my fortune in the worlds of film and…
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[Nerdspresso] Anemic Salem’s Lot Adaptation Lacks Teeth
It’s Halloween time and there’s a new version of Salem’s Lot, the classic Stephen King vampire story, playing on MAX right now if you’re in the mood. The streamer is rolling out a ton of scary flicks for this time of year so you can kick off the season big time. If you are a…
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[Nerdspresso] What Have You Shame-Watched Lately?
There are good movies. There are bad movies. There are guilty pleasures. And then there is shame watching. Like eating a dozen Krispy Kremes for dinner, shame watching is an indulgence that often leads to self-hatred and nausea. The movies that you shame watch are not so bad that they’re good. They’re just bad. And…
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[Nerdspresso] Kenny Rogers and a “Six Pack” of Orphans
Let’s take a moment and look back on the cultural impact of Kenny Rogers. Before he was famous for fast-food rotisserie chicken and a bad eye lift, Kenny was a pretty big deal in country music. He had a string of hits with evocative “story songs” like “The Gambler,” “Ruby,” and “The Coward of the…
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[Nerdspresso] Taking Another Swig of Beetlejuice
Legacy sequels are all the rage these days. Indiana Jones played with his dial of destiny and Tom Cruise went all maverick. Everything old is new again as Hollywood raids Gen X’s memory banks for the next IP to plunder for fat sequel cash. Not that I’m complaining. Having grown up with these characters, it’s…
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[Nerdspresso] Down the Black Hole: 45 Years in the Dark with Disney’s Sci-Fi Misfire
I saw my first rated PG movie in 1979. Let me rephrase, I saw my first rated PG movie without my parents in 1979. I was a little kid and it kind of happened by accident. Normally, my folks would never let me go see a movie unchaperoned if the MPAA said it wasn’t a…
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[Nerdspresso] An Elegy for Rutger Hauer
Cool. Clever. Cunning. These are the words that come to mind when I think of the legendary Rutger Hauer. We lost this awesome dude five years ago and perusing some of his titles on the streamers recently got me thinking about his cinematic legacy. The dude had some memorable roles: Nighthawks, Blade Runner, LadyHawke, The…
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[Nerdspresso] Alien: Romulus Honors Earlier Films with Fast, Creepy Thrills
Ridley Scott’s Alien is one of the best movies ever made. A visually stunning, paranoid, and intense sci-fi thriller was groundbreaking and terrifying in 1979…but I didn’t see it until about 10 years later. I was a little kid in 1979 and there was no way my parents were taking me to a graphic R-rated…
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[Nerdspresso] Borderlands Provides Popcorn-Munching Fun
The time between early July and mid-August is commonly known as the “dog days of summer.” It’s named the dog days because Sirius, the dog star, rises in the morning sky during this time. Not that Sirius has anything to do with the summer heat, but its rising was seen by the ancient Egyptians as…
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[Nerdspresso] Tough Girls Rule! Furiosa and Other Movie Ladies Who Could Beat Me Up
So Furiosa, the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, has already come and gone from movie theaters. It rolled out earlier this summer with expectations that it would dominate the box office, but it fell short. Like The Fall Guy, another recent good movie that flamed out too soon, Furiosa is now relegated to video…
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