Phil Jeng Kane

In a near-future Japan, a flu virus infects the dog population. The mayor of Megasaki City, Kobayashi, banishes all dogs to Trash Island, despite a scientist and political rival, Professor Watanabe, protesting that he is close to finding a cure. Megasaki City is emptied of all dogs.  Six months later, the Mayor’s 12-year-old ward, Atari, runs away from home, steals a plane and flies to Trash Islan...

In 1966, Francis Chichester sailed from Plymouth in the United Kingdom and circumnavigated the globe in 226 days with one stop (Sydney). This feat captured world attention and the hunt was soon on to find someone to sail around the world solo with no stops. In 1968, the UK’s Sunday Times launched a competition to encourage this new potential world record and called it the Golden Globe Race. Amateu...

Gloria Grahame was a Hollywood film star in the 1940s and 1950s. Her fame has not endured with the general public.  Modern audiences tend to know her for one thing only, Violet Bick, the “It Girl” of Bedford Falls in Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946).  Grahame’s career was tumultuous and she frequently had trouble on film sets attempting to deal with her insecurities about acting. This ha...

Max and Annie (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams) meet at a bar running a quiz night. It’s love at first sight as the two super-competitive gamers get together. Eventually, they establish a regular game night amongst their friendship group. It’s fun and it keeps the couple in regular contact with another married couple, Kevin (Lamorne Morris) and Michelle (Kylie Bunbury) and their friend, a serial ...

It is the 1929 in Australia’s Northern Territory. Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) is an Aboriginal stockman working on the property of Fred Smith (Sam Neill). Fred has a new neighbour, Harry March (Ewan Leslie). He is trying to improve his own property and asks Fred to loan him Sam for a few days. He refers to Sam as “black stock”. Fred tells Harry that everyone is equal in the eyes of The Lord. Sam a...

Tonya Harding was an American figure skater who became U.S. Champion in 1991 and 1994 and a two time Olympian. In the early 1990s she was powerful competitor in her sport until one of her rivals, Nancy Kerrigan, had her knee bashed by an assailant at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit. It was determined that the attack was planned by Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly. The subse...

Michael MacCauley (Liam Neeson) works selling insurance. His job makes decent money, but he and his wife Karen (Elizabeth McGovern) are financially over-extended. Everyday, he commutes into New York. His life is somewhat boring, but he seems happy enough. He used to be a cop in the NYPD, but for the last ten years has chosen to live this quieter, better paid life. Everything changes the day he is ...

Q: What the hell happened in the 1970s? A: Stephan Elliot’s childhood. This is the guide rope you need to hold onto in order to get through Elliott’s new feature film SWINGING SAFARI. By definition, any screenwriter or film director’s take on the era in which they were a child and a teenager must be their point-of-view. As Elliott says (in the AccessReel interview) he made a very personal film. Th...

Fans of the Netflix series GRACE AND FRANKIE should read to the end of this article and then check out Season 4 of this accomplished comedy drama. It has just “dropped” as we say, so go, binge. For those unfamiliar with the show, it stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in the title roles. The original concept, back in 2015 when Season 1 debuted, was to create a vehicle for these two Baby Boomer movie ...

The original PADDINGTON movie (2014) told the story of a bear from darkest Peru who travels to London and is adopted by a very nice family called the Browns. Paddington was named after Paddington Station where the Browns found him. The adventure of that film involved a villainous taxidermist played by Nicole Kidman and Paddington’s discovery of how to live with his adoptive family in his new home ...

ONLY THE BRAVE is about the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a real-life group of firefighters who were part of the Prescott Fire Department in Arizona. The film covers events in 2009-2013. The main focus of the story is the progress of young Brendan McDonough (Miles Teller) who joins the fire department as a last ditch attempt to pull his life together. He has a baby daughter as a result of a one-night...

In June 2003, an extraordinary film called THE ROOM was released with little fanfare. It was a truly independent project with no affiliation with a major production house, movie studio or distribution company. The money to make it and screen it came solely from the film’s star, writer and producer Tommy Wiseau. It ran for two weeks and took $1900 at the box office. It cost $6 million to produce an...