By John H. Foote 3. PULP FICTION The two bandits in a donut shop make the decision to rob restaurants, though I bet this is the last one they attempt, and draw their weapons screaming their threats. Freeze frame, the surfer guitar music comes in with a roar, the screen goes black and the words…
By John H. Foote 4. UNFORGIVEN (1992) By the late eighties, actor Clint Eastwood had established himself as a fine director, even causing Orson Welles to comment that “Eastwood is the finest director in the cinema” on the popular “Mike Douglas Show”. Having proven himself behind the camera right off the bat with his first…
By Alan Hurst For an actor or actress to play against type, they had to have had a certain amount of success in a particular genre of film or played a consistent type of character. Think of James Cagney’s gangster films, Esther Williams’ aqua extravaganzas, Burt Reynolds’ good ol’ boy comedies. Cagney and Reynolds did…
By Craig Leask In the early 1980’s a rash of new films were released focusing on the teenage demographic in hopes of establishing a new market. The success of Porky’s (1981), which earned $7.6 million on its opening weekend on its $2.5 million budget, launched a rash of teen sex comedies including The Last American Virgin…
By John H. Foote 5. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) It has been more than 75 years since Allied forces stormed that beach, dubbed Omaha, leaving it blood soaked, littered with bodies torn to pieces by heavy machine gun fire from the many nests above the beach. There are fewer and fewer veterans each year to…
By John H. Foote 6. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) From the time I first screened The Silence of the Lambs I have maintained the great strength of the story, the secret weapon if you will, is the superbly empathetic performance of Jodie foster as FBI trainee Clarice Starling. I am aware that Anthony…
By John H. Foote Personally I enjoy remakes. People say they are unnecessary, but I pose the question, how many productions of Hamlet, Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet have there been around the world? How many productions of The Crucible or The Glass Menagerie have been staged? What about the great comedies of Neil Simon: The…
By John H. Foote 7. L.A. Confidential And back to the counting down of the greatest films of the nineties, we are almost there. The Oscars interrupted us! At the end of 1997, while audiences were lining around city blocks to see Titanic, James Cameron’s massive love story set aboard the doomed ship making its…
By John H. Foote The casting of Nicole Kidman in a new film as television icon, the beloved Lucille Ball, known simply as Lucy, is drawing the wrath of Ball’s fans online. People are wondering why Kidman, best known for her work in intense drama, was cast as the hilarious comic, who proved to be…
By John H. Foote (**) Streaming on Amazon How well do you know yourself? I know myself well enough to state that being in space or a submarine would drive me insane – drooling, gibbering, twitching bonkers. Yep, that would be me in the corner, tied to a chair, eyes crazy, whacked out of my…