By Alan Hurst For the two of us, New Year’s Eve isn’t about heading out to a party, joining the throngs downtown or even making it to midnight. It’s more about hibernating and hunkering down after the social and gastronomical whirl of the previous few weeks with friends and family. Our perfect New Year’s Eve…
By Alan Hurst 1968 was a spectacular year for movies, from art house films like Ingmar Bergman’s Shame, to mainstream hits like The Planet of the Apes, to more challenging fare like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Best Picture nominees that year were Carol Reed’s well received adaption of the Broadway musical Oliver!, William…
By Clarisse Tenreiro After dedicating all my attention to the big screen that had been projecting all kinds of flickering lights and sounds into my brain, and finally taking that satisfying gulp of air one feels allowed to take once the credits roll, I felt like the past hour and a half couldn’t have been…
By Alan Hurst 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of one of the most successful movie musicals of the sixties featuring one of the most spectacular movie debuts in movie history: Funny Girl starring Barbra Streisand. The film has been a staple for me since a first viewing on television in 1973 –…
November 11th is Remembrance Day here in Canada. For our American neighbours, it is Veterans Day and is also known as Armistice Day. We here at Foote & Friends On Film decided to offer a few recommendations for films that shine a spotlight on war times and those to whom we owe our freedom. Please…
By Nick Maylor My mother grew up in England and in the 1960s, Halloween wasn’t really a thing. However, less than a week after October 31st would be Guy Fawkes night. For the week leading up to November 5th, kids would go door-to-door, collecting firewood and other sundry items that would be set ablaze on…
By John H. Foote KING KONG (2005) (****) In 2005 I saw one better film than the remake of King Kong (2005) and that was Brokeback Mountain (2005). Peter Jackson had tried to remake King Kong in 1996 before his success, and Academy Awards for his sublime The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but he was…
By John H. Foote Cool Hand Luke (1967) (****) “What we have here is, failure to communicate!” – Warden (Strother Martin) When the great counterculture films of the sixties are discussed, I am stunned how often Cool Hand Luke (1967) is left out of the discussion. Very few films tapped into the disdain for a…
By John H. Foote A. I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) (****) Let me state here and now, that I believe this to be among the finest, most daring films of Spielberg’s’ career and among the best five films of 2001. That it failed to find an audience is of no consequence to me, I loved it…
By John H. Foote Beloved (1998) is not the sort of film that wins awards, however, it was clearly made TO win awards. It is called Oscar-baiting when high minded, self-important folks think they are making an important, lofty work they hope the Academy will recognize. Instead, the film, or performances within, are pretentious. Oscar-baiting…