By John H. Foote (****) In Theatres/Netflix There was a time Steven Spielberg was going to direct this, but it never seemed to jell, not even the great Spielberg could get the film off the ground. As the project bounced around it eventually fell at the feet of Emmy Award winning, and Academy Award winning…
By John H. Foote After the streaming service leaped into the production business in 2015 with the critically acclaimed Beasts of No Nation, which earned critical acclaim and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor for actor Idris Elba, Netflix was taken seriously. They were, however, not necessarily feared or even taken as…
By John H. Foote For his magnificent performance in Cast Away (2000) Tom Hanks won the coveted New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor seeming to pave the way for a third Academy Award which would have made him the first actor to win three Oscars for Best Actor. Further he would have…
By John H. Foote (****) On Criterion Blu Ray Fifty-nine years before the election of Donald Trump to the office of President of the United States came this cautionary tale directed by two-time Academy Award winner Elia Kazan, and starring a rising actor named Andy Griffith. The film was not a success, though in the…
By John H. Foote (BOMB) In limited theatres Why? That question burned through my mind as I found myself attempting to endure this film without screaming out loud, “WHY”!? Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman, Christopher Walken, are worth a combined $590 million dollars – De Niro $500 million, Walken $50 million, Thurman $45 million –…
By John H. Foote Glenn Kenny’s sublimely research and written “Made Men – The Story of GoodFellas” – is easily among the finest books on cinema written this year, standing alongside Jay Glennie’s outstanding “The Making of The Deer Hunter”, and Oliver Stone’s memoir of his early success in film, “Chasing the Light.” Writing about Martin…
By John H. Foote Nominated for Best Actor for his splendid performance in Alexander Payne’s black and white Nebraska (2013) many thought veteran actor Bruce Dern might win the Academy Award for best actor based on his performance, but also as an actor with a lifetime of fine performances. He did not. Leonardo Di Carpio…
By John H. Foote (****) When Halle Berry won a much-deserved Academy Award for her searing performance in the incendiary drama Monster’s Ball, she became the first black woman honoured with an Oscar in a leading role. Since 1927, not a single black actress had ever won an Academy Award for Best Actress, and shockingly,…
By John H. Foote In what has to be the stunner of the season, the long awaited, highly anticipated Dune, directed by the great Oscar nominated Denis Villeneuve, has been bumped to October 2021. Originally to open to December, the science fiction remake of the David Lynch bomb has been bumped just under a year.…
By John H. Foote (****) On Criterion Blu Ray Can one imagine what it must have been to exist as poor John Merrick, that misshapen, horrifically deformed human being known as the Elephant Man? I doubt it. There is a scene near the beginning of David Lynch’s film biography The Elephant Man, where Dr. Frederick Treves…