The Town

In The Town, Rebecca Hall stars as a bank teller whose bank gets robbed. The robbers order her to get on the floor and to take off her shoes.

Of course she does what they demand.

She's later taken hostage by the robbers who tie her wrists together in front of her and blindfold her.

She's released by a beach, still bound and blindfolded.

She stops walking when she reaches the water, which may be why they made her remove her shoes. The Town is a superb crime thriller that's set in Boston. Check it out.

Not her again!

Belle, my snooping Poser character, is in a heck of a quandary: she's not even snooping, having decided to take the day off to be with a friend. But despite her best efforts, Belle is still captured, and bound and gagged and blindfolded, and now her old enemy Lady Chandra shows up! It's getting so a snoop can't even get a break even on her day off.

You can see the excitement right here.

Discover Star Trek

You can watch the first episode of the second season of Star Trek: Discovery on the Tube of U at the link above. They've done this before with uploading the first episodes of TV series on YouTube, like Outlander and Outcast. But they don't keep these up for very long, so the sooner you view this, the better.

Phase IV

Phase IV is a science fiction film about a colony of ants in the American Southwest that become super-intelligent, and winds up attacking the residents in the area.

Lynne Frederick starred as a local farm girl who's rescued by a pair of scientists who're studying the ant invasion.

Frederick goes barefoot throughout the film.

Phase IV is a fantastic film overall. It's a deep, thoughtful rumination on sentience and a cool take on the alien invasion trope. Don't miss it.

The doctor is out (of his mind)

Criminal Minds is coming to an end. I read an article that the series' fifteenth season will be its last.

I can't say I'm surprised. Usually a TV show that runs ten years or more is ripe for the chopping block. But I will miss the intrepid crew of profilers as they race to save the damsel in distress of the week from the psycho of the week.

In this ninth season episode, To Bear Witness, Emily Podleski is the unfortunate victim of another psychopath.

He's got her straight-jacketed, her bare feet bound, and she's gagged and blindfolded with tape.

While it wasn't as sophisticated, nor as good, as similar shows of its ilk (like Netflix's Mindhunters), I'll still miss the old school, race-the-clock theatrics of Criminal Minds.

You can download the clip of this scene right here.

Close

Netflix debuted another original movie this past weekend. It's called Close, and it stars Noomi Rapace (Prometheus), who plays a bad-ass operative named Sam who gets assigned to be the bodyguard for a spoiled rich girl named Zoe (Sophie Nélisse).

As you might guess, things go south as a team of kidnappers arrive to abduct Zoe, the heir to a vast mining fortune. But they don't count on Sam being there, and thus begins a nice, taut action thriller as Sam desperately tries to keep Zoe (as well as herself) alive.

From the very first, intensely gripping scene, Close grabbed me by the collar and dragged me along for an exciting ride. Noomi Rapace is superb in this film. I've always loved her as an actress since first seeing her in original Swedish The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo films.

Some notes for "those of us": both women get their hands tied at one point (they're fully dressed). This leads to a cool scene where Sam is still fighting her abductor even with her wrists bound behind her. And Zoe goes barefoot for a brief portion of the film. But aside from the stuff that's "for us" this is just a very well made thriller. Recommended.

New Poser Picture

Leslie and Nell went for a nice little tropical vacation to the islands to get a change of pace from a cold, dreary winter. But their vacation becomes dreary when a drunken Nell commits sacrilege against a sacred totem, angering the native population of an entire village. Can you guess what happens next?

Find out right here.