By John H. Foote (***) In 1978 the Festival of Festivals in downtown Toronto, struggling to find its identity as a festival, landed the film that would put the upstart fest on the map, Midnight Express. Directed by Alan Parker, adapted to the screen from the book by Oliver Stone, the film, a prison drama, stormed…
By John H. Foote (Worthless, Repellent, Horrific) What began as what could have been a notable film, a biography of the quite insane and depraved Roman Emperor Caligula, instead was transformed during its making into a major pornographic film produced by Bob Guccione of Penthouse Magazine. Though esteemed writer Gore Vidal had written by all…
By Nick Maylor Having already become the second highest-grossing film of all time, Avengers: Endgame (2019) is a film that one could easily argue is loaded with “awesome”. After months of anticipation, I presented the 10 things I wanted to see the most in the massive, ensemble superhero blockbuster. I left the theatre having not…
By Nick Maylor I began playing the guitar at age 14. Although pop punk bands like Blink-182 and Green Day were the primary motivators for me to pick up the instrument, I quickly became enamoured with the blues. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King soon worked their way into…
By Alan Hurst Doris Day – one of biggest movies stars and top vocalists of the last century – passed away today at her home in Carmel-by-the Sea, California. She had turned 97 last month. Day has always occupied a special place in my movie obsessed mind. I remember vividly watching her movies on Saturday…
By Alan Hurst The team challenge to write about the most worthless film each of us had ever seen was a head scratcher. Worthless to me meant that it had to have zero redeeming qualities: a waste of talent, time and money that should have been stopped at some point during production. But coming up…
By Craig Leask For Mother’s Day I have chosen Mrs. Miniver, as the film that not only acknowledges the strength, endurance and fierce protectiveness found in most mothers, but the film also masterfully celebrates them. Mrs. Miniver was the right film at the right time. Based upon the 1940 Jan Struther novel of the same…
By Alan Hurst Movie moms tend to fall into three categories. You have the self-sacrificing, almost saintly mothers as epitomized by Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver (1942), Irene Dunne in I Remember Mama (1948), and step mom Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965). Then there are the dark, edgy creations like Margaret Wycherly…
By Melissa Houghton Would we exist without mothers? That’s rhetorical. Real and fictional mothers- love, support, protect, nurture, provide for, shape and inspire us. But let’s not take mothers for granted; they also have needs and want some of the same things they selflessly give to their families and others. To all the moms, mom-dads,…
By John H. Foote The movie season is divided into three specific categories. From January through April we have the dumping ground, the months the studios release their films that they are unsure of. From time to time we get a Captain Marvel to shake things up, but usually audiences are still going to see…