By John H. Foote (****) As a blue-collar family, my father worked for 41 years in General Motors building cars. He would work two weeks days and two weeks nights, until he gained enough seniority to work steady days. He despised factory work, but had a wife and four kids to cloth, feed, and raise,…
By John H. Foote Every major actor working today – film, stage or television, professional or otherwise – owes a debt to Marlon Brando, arguably the greatest actor in the history of the art form. Do I believe he has been surpassed as our greatest actor? I do, but his impact and staggering domination of…
By John H. Foote (**) Mike Flanagan had an enormous task ahead of him when he agreed to make this film. On one hand, he was adapting the best selling novel by the great Stephen King which had been written as a sequel to the novel The Shining. On the other hand, he was creating…
By John H. Foote (****) Divorce can be an ugly, vicious event in the lives of two people who were once in love. Everything they have experienced together, good and bad, can be used as a weapon against them by the other party, distorted, twisted until they do not recognize the person they were married…
By John H. Foote (***) There have been two previous incarnations of Henry V on screen, both based on the Shakespeare play. The first was the Laurence Olivier film of 1944, a fine version of the play which drew close parallels with the Second World War. That film was the first truly great Shakespearean adaptation…
By John H. Foote (*) “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…” Do not forget that lyric watching this film, never ever let it out of your mind, in fact, burn it into your brain, take it literally. Romantic comedies exist only if there is genuine heat, lust between the two leads, without it, the…
By Nick Maylor (***) Following the plot/timeline of any of the Terminator films is tricky. The time-travel and pre/post-apocalyptic plot elements don’t make for a simple narrative structure. The 4th and 5th installments of the franchise each ignored (in part or completely) one or more of the films that preceded it and Tim Miller’s Terminator:…
By John H. Foote (***) Edward Norton established himself as one of the most electrifying and gifted of American actors in the nineties with an array of brilliant performances. Seared into minds of everyone who saw the film, that arrogant raising of the eyebrows and smile after brutally killing a group of thieves intent on…
By John H. Foote (****) By now it is clear Martin Scorsese is a filmmaking legend who will be remembered long after he has left this life. Scorsese’s films, the best ones, are films for the ages, movies that historians who come long after me will be discussing if fifty to seventy years. Scorsese, all…
By John H. Foote (**) Everyone I think wanted this to be a movie for the ages, a masterpiece documenting the life of the great abolitionist Harriet Tubman, a former slave from Maryland, who escaped across the state border into Pennsylvania, where slavery was outlawed and she could live free. Directed by the gifted Kari…