By John H. Foote (****) There are seven great plays of the 20th century that remain as fresh, as powerful and as urgent as the first day they opened on Broadway. They are Death of a Salesman, The Glass Menagerie, The Crucible, A Streetcar Named Desire, Equus, Angels in America and this masterful study of…
By John H. Foote There is, in Warren Beatty’s remarkable film Reds, a moment that defines journalist John Reed. While covering Pancho Villa in Mexico, he rises during a battle and chases a horse-drawn wagon, reaching out to touch it, but does not quite do so. That was John Reed, forever chasing history, forever wanting…
By Craig Leask Shirley Valentine is a 1989 British romantic comedy which follows forty-something Shirley Valentine through a comedic mid-life crisis as she revisits and rediscovers the dreams of her youth and her innocent love of life. The film (and play) addresses the questions: “What happened to the high school rebel full of dreams of…
By John H. Foote (****) I had just turned sixteen the first time I saw Jaws (1975) not knowing the film and work of the director would alter the course of my life. The film was electrifying, terrifying and wildly entertaining, it’s two hour running time seeming to breeze past. Directed with absolute brilliance by…
By Craig Leask In 1983 the age of the Yuppie was just beginning its rise. Thirty-something individuals had become focused and obsessed with success and all of the material trappings that came along with it. These are the same people who had protested in the 1960’s against established institutions, conformity and all things government, and…
By Alan Hurst Comedy on film is probably the hardest thing to pull off successfully on the big screen, and yet of all film genres it’s the one that struggles for critical respect. Good, even bad comedies enjoy much more success at the box-office than their more serious counterparts, yet come awards season it’s rare…
By Nick Maylor I believe that Biblical films often work best when they establish a mythical, fantastical or otherwise otherworldly setting or tone. I believe Mel Gibson’s passion project (no pun intended) about the final hours in the life of Jesus does this successfully via two mechanisms. The first is the ambience created by having…
By John H. Foote (****) TIFF, 1997, 11 am. The line to the screening was immense as word of mouth had leaked that this film was quite something. Having gone to the front and told press was lining up, I began trudging to the back when a hand shot out and pulled me into the…
By John H. Foote (****) Ten years after Apocalypse Now (1979) rolled on movie screens, the definitive film about the war in Vietnam, three years after Oliver Stone’s powerful Oscar winning Platoon (1986) came Brian De Palma’s incendiary film about the conflict in Southeast Asia, Casualties of War (1989). Having read the article upon which…
By John H. Foote (****) Released in late summer 1988 after screenings in New York and Rome caused an explosion of controversy, the film was supposed to play the Toronto International Film Festival, still known in 1988 as The Festival of Festivals. However, when word leaked out of the screenings that director Martin Scorsese had…