By John H. Foote “They train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won’t allow them to write fuck on their airplanes, because it is obscene.” – Kurtz (Marlon Brando) The University Theatre sat on Bloor Street in Toronto, standing like a massive cathedral for cinema, a church to…
By John H. Foote (****) Recently my colleague Craig Leask named the original King Kong (1933) as his greatest film of all time. Like Craig, I love that creaky old black and white movie with its primitive special effects that remain effective to this day. There is something wonderfully nostalgic about the film, the creation…
By John H. Foote THE APOSTLE (1997) (****) Imagine being Robert Duvall in 1984. He had by then won an Oscar and awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and National Society of Film Critics as Best Actor and was hailed as one of the greatest actors in American film history. He had appeared…
By Alan Hurst June 22, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of Judy Garland. She was only 47, but seemed to have packed multiple lifetimes into that short span of years. She had achieved significant success in films, records, on stage, and on television, but the well-known struggles were equally part of her…
By John H. Foote (****) The first film Sofia Coppola directed after her brilliant, career altering Lost in Translation (2003) was her dream project on the young queen, Marie Antoinette. Armed with an Oscar for her Screenplay, and a nomination for Best Director for Lost in Translation (2003), The first American woman to be so…
HEAVEN’S GATE – A LOOK BACK; A LOOK TODAY By John H. Foote It was never as bad as the critics made it out to be. They were out for blood, after being lied too and betrayed by director-writer Michael Cimino and blood they got. Cimino made it easy for them given his irresponsible behaviour…
By John H. Foote How can I properly do justice to one of the greatest American films of all time? A film that was brilliantly directed by Czech Milos Forman, using his documentary style to bring to the screen a new realism that was startling? Can words truly do justice to the breathtaking, and there…
By John H. Foote There are I am sure other films that display American patriotism, that wave the flag, that celebrate America. However, is anyone really in the mood to celebrate a country run by a complete buffoon? A man who in less than eighteen months has ruined the office of the President, has proven…
By John H. Foote How did it lose Best Picture, Best Director? In 1989, at the end of the decade, Premiere Magazine, that wonderful now defunct movie magazine polled the nations top film critics to ask them what was the best film of the eighties? To no ones surprise, they voted Martin Scorsese’s searing boxing…
By John H. Foote COMING HOME (1978) (****) Hal Ashby was a bonafide free spirit, a hippy who hated the system that held the power of making movies. He loved making movies, loved it with an unbridled passion, but he hated the suits that held the power to making those movies. During his most fruitful…