By John H. Foote 3. PULP FICTION The two bandits in a donut shop make the decision to rob restaurants, though I bet this is the last one they attempt, and draw their weapons screaming their threats. Freeze frame, the surfer guitar music comes in with a roar, the screen goes black and the words…
By John H. Foote 4. UNFORGIVEN (1992) By the late eighties, actor Clint Eastwood had established himself as a fine director, even causing Orson Welles to comment that “Eastwood is the finest director in the cinema” on the popular “Mike Douglas Show”. Having proven himself behind the camera right off the bat with his first…
By Craig Leask In the early 1980’s a rash of new films were released focusing on the teenage demographic in hopes of establishing a new market. The success of Porky’s (1981), which earned $7.6 million on its opening weekend on its $2.5 million budget, launched a rash of teen sex comedies including The Last American Virgin…
By John H. Foote 5. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) It has been more than 75 years since Allied forces stormed that beach, dubbed Omaha, leaving it blood soaked, littered with bodies torn to pieces by heavy machine gun fire from the many nests above the beach. There are fewer and fewer veterans each year to…
By John H. Foote 6. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) From the time I first screened The Silence of the Lambs I have maintained the great strength of the story, the secret weapon if you will, is the superbly empathetic performance of Jodie foster as FBI trainee Clarice Starling. I am aware that Anthony…
By John H. Foote Personally I enjoy remakes. People say they are unnecessary, but I pose the question, how many productions of Hamlet, Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet have there been around the world? How many productions of The Crucible or The Glass Menagerie have been staged? What about the great comedies of Neil Simon: The…
By John H. Foote 7. L.A. Confidential And back to the counting down of the greatest films of the nineties, we are almost there. The Oscars interrupted us! At the end of 1997, while audiences were lining around city blocks to see Titanic, James Cameron’s massive love story set aboard the doomed ship making its…
By Craig Leask By the 1970’s, the American public had survived the shocking 1963 assassination of JFK with the implausible Warren Committee conclusion of a lone gunman having committed the deed – a simpleton by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald. Add to this: the murder of Oswald (televised live) by Jack Ruby (who perished…
By John H. Foote I freely concede it took a long time for me to recognize that the films made in this country are powerful worthy works, something the rest of the planet had discovered before most Canadians. The struggle to get Canadians to watch Canadian cinema is still an ongoing battle, but things are…
By John H. Foote 8. THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994) Watching The Shawshank Redemption for the first time at TIFF, my breath was literally taken away three times in the film. The first time was with the two lead performances, Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, as two men serving long sentences in Shawshank Prison, the second…