By John H. Foote (***) Now Streaming on Apple Every time Sofia Coppola makes a film I am excited that it might be something very special, that it could be the one to bring this gifted young woman an Academy Award or Directors Guild Award for Best Director. Will she ever equal her film Lost…
By John H. Foote 24. LENNY How is it Bob Fosse’s extraordinary biography Lenny is a forgotten film? When the finest films of Academy Award, Emmy Award, and Tony Award winning director Bob Fosse are discussed, two films dominate the conversation: his searing work of art Cabaret (1972) and his semi-autobiographical All That Jazz (1979),…
By John H. Foote 25. LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR (1977) The sexual revolution exploded in the seventies, going far beyond the innocence of the sixties when free love became a practice among the youth. It was nothing in the seventies for college kids to have a different partner each night, affairs were far more commonplace,…
By John H. Foote Legendary screen icon Sophia Loren might just be a nominee for Best Actress for her new upcoming Netflix produced film The Life Ahead, soon to be streamed. Directed by her son Edoardo Ponti, the gritty film looks to tug at heart strings in its depiction of two people at opposite ends…
By John H. Foote 26. KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979) Robert Benton’s powerfully honest divorce drama which is more about a father and son learning to love one another, won five Academy Awards in its year of release. Best Picture, Best Actor (Duston Hoffman), Best Supporting Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Director (Benton) and for the screenplay…
By John H. Foote 27. THE SHOOTIST (1976) The last performance given by John Wayne was so filled with bitter irony, almost as though it had been pre-ordained. Cast as John Bernard Books in The Shootist, Wayne would portray an aging gunfighter dying of cancer. What the cast and crew realized as filming took place,…
By John H. Foote Sure, when I was a kid, the old Universal monsters – Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Wolfman- scared the beejeezus out of me. Imagine sitting in a dark old house, my father in the middle of the couch, my brothers and I are on either…
By John H. Foote 28. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING For decades Academy Award winning Director John Huston wanted to make this film, with a variety of actors, but it simply could never happen, there always seemed to be another film, another adventure for the boxing partner of Hemingway. In the seventies, he finally…
By Alan Hurst This one really isn’t that high up on any list of Woody Allen’s best films, or for that matter a list of the great comedies of the 1990’s. But a recent re-viewing – a couple decades away from the behind the scenes personal dramas that were playing out in real time during…
By John H. Foote 29. AN UNMARRIED WOMAN (1978) An Academy Award nominee for Best Picture, this superb Paul Mazursky film gave Jill Clayburgh the role of her career as Erica, a beautiful near fortysomething who goes through a startling transformation. Seeming to be the perfect couple, they have it all. A daughter, beautiful apartment,…