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…
By Alan Hurst You always hear some older movies described as “the perfect rainy-day movie” (I’ve done it myself numerous times). But I think Now, Voyager truly is that movie. It’s one of the great bittersweet romances in film history, the ultimate depiction of the ugly duckling turning into a swan, and one of the…
By Nick Maylor 2003 was a pretty abysmal year for Ben Affleck’s career. He appeared in three films that year, Daredevil, Paycheck, and Gigli (now considered one of the worst movies ever made). The bad press from Gigli was compounded by the overexposure of Ben Affleck’s relationship and subsequent breakup with his co-star, Jennifer Lopez. None of this was…
By John H. Foote Dances with Wolves (1990) (****) The American western had been all but dead when the superb mini-series Lonesome Dove was broadcast on network television in 1988. Based on Larry McMurtry’s sprawling cattle drive novel, the film was made with major actors such as Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, each in…
By Nick Maylor In the world of sword and sandal epics, this 2004 film by Wolfgang Petersen isn’t often mentioned among the best of the genre. It’s a reimagining of the Trojan War as told in Homer’s Illiad. The film tells the tale as narrated by Homer through the lens of a “what if?” scenario where it…
By Alan Hurst Released in late 1964 in time to qualify for Oscar consideration, Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte is many things: creepy, funny, campy, and probably the best example of Grand Dame Guignol there is with two older but still fabulous stars, an unbalanced central character, severed hands and heads popping up, stray meat…