By John H. Foote (****) Remember Beanie Feldstein from Lady Bird (2017)? She played the best friend alienated by Lady Bird herself, though they manage to reconcile before a valued friendship is lost forever. She is also the sister of Oscar nominee Jonah Hill and if her brilliant performance in this film is any indication,…
By John H. Foote (***) What if Superman had been a bad guy? What if used those powers for selfish reasons, to conquer, to kill, to destroy? We saw in Superman II (1981) the awesome power of General Zod, hellbent on destruction, bringing down armies on his way to encounter the Man of Steel. Brightburn…
By John H. Foote (**) Like so many of the recent releases from Disney, this film is critic proof. There is a built-in audience of those curious to see what Guy Ritchie has done with the hugely successful animated film of 1992, made flesh and blood for 2019. Add to the mix the die-hard Disney…
By John H. Foote (***) Horror remains subjective, like comedy the most personal of the film genres. What scares you might not scare me and so on and so on. When I was a boy the supernatural horror films from Universal frightened me, but not really because I knew under the make-up were actors. But…
By Alan Hurst 20th Century Fox was known for many things during Hollywood’s heyday – child star Shirley Temple, skater Sonja Henie, socially relevant dramas like The Grapes of Wrath (1940), some great westerns like My Darling Clementine (1946), and some terrific film noirs including Laura (1944) and Kiss of Death (1947). But whether it…
By Melissa Houghton Growing up, in my home, we were taught not to speak badly about people. So, when the team was challenged to write about a movie that should not have been made, not in these words per se, I admit it took time to decide upon my choice for the project. Well before…
By John H. Foote (**) Much was made of Sir Richard Attenborough and his twenty-year battle to bring the turbulent life of Gandhi to the screen. The three-hour film finally flickered onto screens in late 1982 and film critics wrote extensively about both the film and the account of bringing the work to the screen.…
By John H. Foote (****) At the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, David Cronenberg brought to us his new film, A History of Violence, based on a popular graphic novel about secrets in a small town. Darkly brilliant, unsettling and frightening, it is a modern-day real-life horror film, among the finest of the decade. Tom…
By John H. Foote (***) In 1978 the Festival of Festivals in downtown Toronto, struggling to find its identity as a festival, landed the film that would put the upstart fest on the map, Midnight Express. Directed by Alan Parker, adapted to the screen from the book by Oliver Stone, the film, a prison drama, stormed…
By John H. Foote (Worthless, Repellent, Horrific) What began as what could have been a notable film, a biography of the quite insane and depraved Roman Emperor Caligula, instead was transformed during its making into a major pornographic film produced by Bob Guccione of Penthouse Magazine. Though esteemed writer Gore Vidal had written by all…