By Alan Hurst The is the first in a series where I’ll attempt a very subjective selection of the best film comedy of each year – from the thirties up to present day. I’m starting with the thirties and the advent of both sophisticated and screwball comedies, as opposed to the dizzying physical and slapstick…
By John H. Foote (Bomb!) Why revisit a terrible film? Why rescreen the worst film of the 2000’s? A film widely known as an abomination? I will reveal that later. Every actor and director, every artist in fact has their dream project. Mine as a stage director was directing a Canadian play Can You See…
By Marie-Renee Goulet (***) Rarely can we study a global disaster movie for its accuracy by having the “opportunity” to live through the said global disaster. Contagion (2011) is a movie about the spread of a deadly virus that rapidly becomes a worldwide pandemic. I revisited the film back in March during the first shut…
By Alan Hurst Remember the Night starts off as a snappy and fast paced comedy, very typical of the genre in the late thirties and early forties. But then it takes you places you aren’t expecting – first a little risqué (but not really) and then it becomes quite dark, almost threatening. But minutes later…
By John H. Foote 10. EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1987) It pains me to list this masterwork at number 10, but the fact is, there were nine stronger films than this one. The day I screened the film for the first time remains as clear to me as the moment that hooked me on cinema…
By Craig Leask It Happened on 5th Avenue is one of those little gems that reappeared after having slipped into obscurity for several decades due to a series of unfortunate events, finally falling out of copyright in 1976. On Nov 11, 2008, Warner Home Video released the film on DVD, and in 2009 Turner Classic…
By John H. Foote 11. BLUE VELVET (1986) After the acclaim he received for his first feature made for a studio, The Elephant Man (1980), David Lynch took on the massive science fiction epic Dune (1984) with an expansive look at the universe, complicated visual effects, and a huge budget. Based on the huge novel…
By John H. Foote 12. SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1982) Through the course of her extraordinary career Meryl Streep has won three Academy Awards and massed a total of 21 nominations, which shatters the closest rival. No, let’s be fair, no one is close. No one. She was been nominated for the Golden Globe Award 32 times,…
By John H. Foote 13. THE RIGHT STUFF (1983) “There was a demon that lived in the sky. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach One, on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour,…
By John H. Foote 14. UNDER FIRE (1983) There will be no surprise from me if you have not heard of this film. It opened and was out of theatres within a month. Incredibly it earned rave reviews, and I thought after seeing the film for the first time, it would be rewarded with no…