Death Train Doesn't Bomb

Death Train (David Jackson, 1993; also known as Detonator in some territories) is better than I expected. A low-budget thriller made for TV, the story follows a small team of counter-terrorists who must foil the plot of a rogue ex-Soviet general who's made two atomic bombs and wants to blow them up for reasons unknown, putting the bombs on a hijacked train rolling across Europe. Patrick Stewart and Pierce Brosnan have to recapture the bombs before ultimate disaster. 

Stewart and Brosnan are in fine form, and they make a great team. The villain has reasonable motivations (from his point of view). And the planning, action, and tactics are compelling but still realistic. Production values aren’t spectacular, but it almost feels like the low budget forced the creatives to improvise and come up with clever solutions that fit the need. 

For some reason, Patrick Stewart's character has a cast on one arm for at least the first third of the movie. After that it vanishes. At no point is there any explanation for the cast. A strange choice. 

Death Train does feel something like a failed pilot for a TV series in the style of Mission: Impossible, but that’s okay; one feels as though this might have been a pretty good show had it been extended into a series.

The Return of Jean-Luc Picard

For the first time since the framing sequence of Star Trek (2009), we get to see the future of the future as Jean-Luc Picard returns to the small screen. Patrick Stewart broke the news today, giving few details other than he's returning to the Picard role and that Picard may be a very different man, 20 years after we last saw him in Star Trek: Nemesis. I can't imagine that Picard will still be captain of the Enterprise, and given the character's history it's tough to see him accepting a promotion to Admiral. Maybe he'll tool around the galaxy, indulging his passion for archeology? 

The Stars in My Eyes

Letterboxd Pro tracks the films I watch, and from that database it's generated a list of my most-watched actors. I'm dismayed that there are only two women and one actor of colour on the list, but I'm unsurprised by the rest of the tally, save perhaps for the inclusion of Dick Miller, who as it turns out was in a bunch of 80s genre films I've seen. (In fact, I've actually seen 25 of his films - reviewing his list of credits reveals that I forgot to log InnerSpace, which I saw in theatres way back in 1987. It's these haphazard connections that have helped me make my Letterboxd inventory more accurate as time goes by.)

I didn't recognize Bess Flowers when Letterboxd first generated this list. As it turns out, she's one of Hollywood's most prolific actresses, appearing in over 700 films, including 23 Best Picture nominees, five of which won the award. Bess probably appears on a lot of Most Watched Stars list for this reason - if you're a film fan, it seems you can hardly avoid her.