By Alan Hurst This year marks the 40th anniversary of Natalie Woods tragic death. She was one of the biggest female stars of the sixties and, before that, one of the better child/teen actors of the late forties and fifties. But she is now more famous for the circumstances surrounding her death by drowning in…
By John H. Foote For the most part, the Golden Globe Awards went to the films we thought they would, some deserving, some contentious. Split into categories for Drama, and another for Comedy or Musical, the Globes have often been the target of scandal, accused of accepting bribes, of enjoying lavish press junkets in Las…
By Marie-Renee Goulet (****) Available on Crave (HBO) How does Aaron Sorkin do it? The first time I had this thought was watching the first four seasons of The West Wing (1999-2003) and thinking: “how can this one man write like this week after week?”. This was the equivalent of writing 11 feature films a…
By John H. Foote As Dr. Martin Dysart in Equus, Richard Burton delivered arguably his greatest film performance, though his work as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) certainly must be considered in that conversation. In Peter Shaffer’s breathtaking Equus, Sidney Lumet’s probing camera strips Burton free of everything but his face and…
By John H. Foote 28. NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994) The most controversial film of the decade was also among the most brilliant, a daring picture utilizing different stocks of film and video, animation, breaking all the rules and making them work. Oliver Stone’s film Natural Born Killers is among the darkest masterpieces of its time.…
By John H. Foote On March 15, the Academy Award nominations will begin the countdown to the biggest night of the year in Hollywood. Wildly late, and leaned down due to the pandemic, this year’s Oscars are going to be the strangest on record. So many films, major works set for release last year, were…
By John H. Foote (****) Streaming on Apple The scam is perfect, unless like any scam you attempt to grift the wrong person. Dr. Amos (Alicia Witt) keeps her eye open for the perfect victim, the cherry as she calls it. This is an elderly person, with family or without, doing well, not yet infirmed,…
By John H. Foote 29. BUGSY (1991) Watching Bugsy again the other night it was impossible not to feel a pang that Warren Beatty’s volcanic, freight train performance of the celebrated mobster Bugsy Seigel failed to win the gifted actor, director, writer an Academy Award for Best Actor. Though Beatty is an Academy Award winning…
By John H. Foote Confession: Alan’s recent article on Marsha Mason sent me back watching a handful of Richard Dreyfuss films from the seventies, so I thought I might flash back to him. Credit to Alan for inspiring this one. After a few years toiling between small roles in film and television, Dreyfuss was cast…
By John H. Foote By the end of the nineties audiences would know precisely what the following things and people were: CGI, Jurassic Park, the American western, Apollo 13, Dances with Wolves, Woody and Buzz, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Carrey, Paul Thomas Anderson, M. Night Shymalan, Truman Burbank, Tyler Durden, John Travolta, Hannibal Lector and Clarice…