By John H. Foote There have been so many, narrowing it down to ten was a nightmare, but I felt rather do a massive extended list I would practice discipline and stick with 10. Yes it was difficult, yes I could have done a list of thirty. Here are the greatest travesties of the Academy…
By John H. Foote 25. DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990) By the late eighties Kevin Costner was a major movie star and reasonably well thought of as an actor. His performance in Silverado (1985) as the hotdogging gunslinger on the side of right was great fun and earned him attention from audiences, critics and directors. Delivering…
By John H. Foote 26. BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997) Honest statement, I have not ever been a fan or watcher of hard-core pornography. The simple fact is I would rather be having sex than watching naked, writhing couples on a TV screen, and frankly just find most of porn insulting to women. What porn I have…
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 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 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 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 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…
By John H. Foote The nineties cinema, closely, for me resembled that of the seventies. Audacious, bold, inventive, with an array of established filmmakers doing the finest work of their careers and emerging artists challenging them for greatness. Long ignored for an Academy Award as Best Director, Steven Spielberg would win twice in the nineties,…