By Nick Maylor So far this December, Alan, Craig, Melissa, and John have all listed their favourite/must-see Christmas/Holiday films. Alan and I also threw a spotlight on television specials we hold dear. When I was asked to do a list of my top 5 Christmas movies, I found myself at the inescapable truth that at…
By Nick Maylor I’m not a huge fan of having to rank things in numerical order. It’s hard to decide which performance, moment or movie is objectively better than any other (at any given time). However, there have been 10 theatrically-released, live-action films in the series; Episodes I through VI in the “saga” films and…
By John H. Foote If there is one aspect of the Harry Potter universe that I think was criminally underappreciated it was the production design. Audiences were plunged into worlds described by Miss Rowling in her splendid books, and the wizards within Hollywood had created. Hogwarts Castle was a miracle of engineering and fantastical designs…
By John H. Foote Whatever type of human being he might have been, hard taskmaster, Nazi sympathizer, ani-Jew, Walt Disney lived to entertain, to create. His creation, Mickey Mouse is as synonymous with the movies as Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe. The animated shorts he made prior to 1937 were groundbreaking for the art form,…
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 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 During the first press screening of Hook (1991) I remember spending a great deal of the time shaking my head in disgust. When the film was over I felt nothing but relief, but oddly could not move from my seat. I hated it. On so many levels I hated the film.…
It was Easter, 2001. I had been in the hospital since Valentine’s Day, three and a half weeks of that in a coma, and had been transferred from Sunnybrook Trauma to the St. John’s Rehab Hospital. Hit head on, I had been choppered to Sunnybrook with life-threatening injuries, long story, not for here. Easter Sunday,…
By Nick Maylor I’m trying to focus here on films that have not started production and are still in the early stages. I also am avoiding films that are merely rumoured, as the following entries all appear to be confirmed to be going ahead. There’s cool stuff coming, folks. Here they are (in no particular…
By John H. Foote A couple of years ago Alex Garland gave us his excellent science fiction thriller Ex Machina (2014), a thriller that was far better than perhaps it had any right to be. Confident, even brash behind the camera Garland has done it again, even more so, with his new film Annihilation, which…