Sam Neill

[7] Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani star in this disturbing horror film from writer/director Andrzej Zulawski. Adjani’s character asks Neill’s for a divorce, but when Neill refuses to let her go, both of them descend into madness. Possession is part psychological thriller, part dark fantasy, eventually introducing threatening doppelgangers and a weird octopus monster that scores with Adjani. If you ask me what Possession means, …

[5] Sooner or later all franchises grow stale. Jurassic, I’m sorry to say your time has come. Jurassic World: Dominion, the sixth film in the franchise, brings back director and cowriter Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World) and unites the cast of the original Jurassic Park with the new stars of Jurassic World. It’s also the first film in the franchise to take place outside the park …

[7] Steven Spielberg passes the directorial reigns of the Jurassic Park franchise to the superbly capable Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Captain America: The First Avenger) for this second dino sequel. Sam Neill returns as Dr. Alan Grant, coerced by a wealthy couple (Téa Leoni and William H. Macy) to return to the prehistoric island for a personal guided airplane tour. But the wealthy couple turn …

[8] Alec Baldwin takes on the mantle of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan in the action-thriller The Hunt for Red October. One of the joys of this movie is seeing Baldwin, previously known mostly for co-starring in Beetlejuice, become a leading man before your very eyes. And a smart one, at that. Sharing the screen with him is Sean Connery as a Russian captain whose new …

[6] Sam Neill headlines this true story about a small Australian community that played a key role in the 1969 Apollo moon landing. Neill plays the manager of the Parkes radio satellite observatory, home of the largest steerable parabolic antennae in the southern hemisphere. The small team at Parkes worked with NASA to receive television signals from the moon and distribute that signal across the …

[8] Aussie director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger) spins a Hitchcockian yarn based on a novel by Charles Williams. Dead Calm is a solid thriller that takes place almost entirely on the open waters of the Pacific. Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman play a couple trying to overcome the loss of their child, when up to their boat rows beautiful but psychotic …

[7] This vampire flick from the Spierig brothers (Undead) is good old-fashioned B-movie fun. The concept of a world full of vampires on the brink of a blood shortage is interesting, even if the plot goes silly at times. I liked Ethan Hawke as the vampire in charge of finding a blood substitute (just when I was pretty sure I’d never like Ethan Hawke again). …

[7] A rescue team investigates a seemingly abandoned spacecraft that has been inside a black hole and discover that its… well, basically it’s haunted. Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne star in this haunted spaceship flick that plays like a cross between Alien and Hellraiser. Some nice moments of tension, especially involving airlocks and decompression, but the barrage of ‘is it real or is it imaginary’ …

[6] Too mature for children, but too immature for adults, Legend of the Guardians may never find an audience beyond those thirteen years of age or thirteen at heart (guilty as charged.) It’s a dark, computer-animated fantasy based on a series of books by Kathryn Lasky. The story is a bit muddled, but it pulls together for the most part. Our hero is a young …

[9] If you think of this movie as Jaws on land, as director Steven Spielberg has suggested, it can’t quite compare to that masterpiece. The characters aren’t strong enough. But it’s still a hell of a summer event movie, delivering groundbreaking effects and well-choreographed thrills. The Michael Crichton story focuses on an island theme park where a wealthy entrepreneur (Richard Attenborough) has resurrected dinosaurs from …

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