By John H. Foote 10. JFK (1991) Walking into Oliver Stone’s JFK in 1991, I always thought I knew a little bit about the Kennedy assassination, but emerging three hours later, I realized I had known nothing and now I was convinced I knew who shot the President. The film is that convincing and that…
By John H. Foote For just the second time in history a woman has been awarded the Best Director Award from the Directors Guild of America as Best Director. The winner is Chloé Zhao for Nomadland. Previously the only woman to win the prize had been Kathryn Bigelow in 2009 for The Hurt Locker. Bigelow…
By John H. Foote Glenn Frankel has written two books that sit on my bookshelf, and I just added a third. They are three of the finest books I have ever read about filmmaking as they explore each film with striking intimate details. Yet, each is a love letter to a particular film, managing to…
By John H. Foote 11. FIGHT CLUB (1999) “There is one rule about fight club. You do not talk about the fight club. The second rule is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB.” – Tyler Durdan (Brad Pitt) in Fight Club (1999) So says Tyler Durden in laying out the rules for the strange…
By John H. Foote (****) Streaming on Apple Tom Holland is best known as Spider Man to today’s audiences, at least the latest actor to play the role of Peter Parker and his alter ego. Holland has had some great moments in The Avenger series but none better than his haunting death in Infinity War…
By John H. Foote 12. THE CRUCIBLE (1996) Twice I have had the pleasure of directing productions of Arthur Miller’s extraordinary play The Crucible, which might always be the most relevant work ever written. Both times were among the most exciting times I have building a play with two exceptional casts. Each time they were…
By John H. Foote Yuh-Jung Youn. Remember that name. Why? She just might win an Oscar in a few weeks for Minari. Diversity riled last night at the Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG), taped last Thursday, announced and broadcast last night. Suffice to say there were some jaw dropping moments. For the first time in…
By John H. Foote 13. APOLLO 13 (1995) I swear this was purely coincidence, that number 13 on the list of the nineties greatest films was Ron Howard’s great space epic Apollo 13. Truly. Making a film about a historical event can be problematic to say the least. Making a film about a historical event…
By John H. Foote Not all our revisits of films are about the great ones, the ignored masterpieces or misunderstood films. No, sometimes we go back and explore a huge flop. This is one of those revisits. Burt Bacharach was one of the greatest song writers of the sixties and very early seventies. Hugely successful,…
By John H. Foote 14. BULLETS OVER BROADWAY (1994) The surprise hit of the 1994 movie season was Woody Allen’s excellent comedic farce Bullets over Broadway set during the Great Depression in the grand world of old Broadway in New York City. Unlike his previous films, his best ones, this one is less about relationships…