By John H. Foote (***) Was it ever as good as people thought it was back in 1976? Who can forget that Rocky won the Academy Award for Best Picture over masterpieces of modern cinema such as All the President’s Men, Network and Taxi Driver, all greater films in every way. I was 17 years…
By John H. Foote (***) In Theatres and Streaming Fanboy alert—a new superhero opened, and it is a dandy. Great action sequences, two great performances along with several very good ones (however under-written) and enough high voltage action to be three films. Superheroes are back. This is a sure sign the film industry is back…
By John H. Foote Martin Scorsese is regarded by many as the greatest filmmaker in history, certainly the greatest living director. He just might be, though I would argue that Steven Spielberg gives him a powerful run for that title. Has Martin Scorsese ever made a truly terrible film? Choosing his 10 best films was…
By Craig Leask What started as an ego driven concept to market a camera system, developed into a very successful series of star laden road films, all of which are over the top travel films loaded with scenery, locations, and movie stars. What makes these films so entertaining is not necessarily the plot, but rather…
By John H. Foote Is Barry Lyndon the greatest film Stanley Kubrick ever made? For years I have believed his greatest film is A Clockwork Orange (1971), which I still believe to be an absolute masterpiece, a stunner that comes along once or twice a generation. Barry Lyndon is a very different film, more emotionally…
By Alan Hurst Everyone has their favourite summer big screen movie, a movie that seems to define summer with just its very title – The Seven Year Itch (1955), Jaws (1975), Grease (1978), Dirty Dancing (1987), Independence Day (1996), Call Me by Your Name (2017). These are all movies where the season and time of…
By John H. Foote 1. SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993) My apologies it has taken so long to get to number one of my top movies of the 90s, but I found this decade more difficult to write about than any other. It certainly wasn’t because I was having difficulty choosing. There was never any doubt in…
By John H. Foote (****) Watching Steven Spielberg’s melancholy, mesmerizing Lincoln for the first time, you can’t help but be struck by the extraordinary performance of Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th President of the United States. We hear Lincoln before we see him, speaking in a surprisingly high, reedy voice, instead of the deep, powerful…
By John H. Foote (****) Criterion Blu Ray Release “…in dreams, I walk with you…” – Roy Orbison, “In Dreams” The first time I saw David Lynch’s darkly hypnotic, nightmarish Blue Velvet it felt like I was in someone else’s dream. This haunting, surreal nightmare of a film cannot merely be watched. Like all great works of…
By John H. Foote (**) Sitting shocked and livid with anger, I watched as Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi (1982) the “biography” of the man who fought for the independence of India from British rule collected eight Academy Awards, including Best Actor (Ben Kingsley), Best Director (Attenborough) and Best Picture. 1982 was a very strong year…