Simon's Movie Reviews

  Despite all the fantasy elements and the many battles, it would be reasonable to consider Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy a holiday tradition. All three movies all came out during the holiday season, feature family and friends joining together, and it is wonderful escapism to enjoy on a cold winter day. The Return of the King (2003) is especially joyous since it is the culmination of all the adventures the characters have gone through, even though there are about five different culminations as the movie winds down. Whether you are a fan of the fantasy genre or if you have read the books, seeing The Return of the King on the big screen is quite the experience. It is not with every movie that you get to see thousands of riders charge against an army of orcs on a battlefield only to get attacked by a battalion of elephant-like creatures. That is one of the most spectacular scenes in a movie filled with plenty of spectacular scenes over a two and a half running ti

  Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) should be what all action movie sequels aim to be. Some people say less is more; James Cameron says more is more. With this sequel he pitted two terminators against each other, turned Linda Hamilton into a heroine for the ages, and just as he did with Aliens, he increased the scale of the action sequences by 10. On paper the concept for the Terminator films sounds like a low-grade B movie: a robot from the future, played by an Austrian actor with the world’s thickest accent, is sent to the past to kill the leader of the human resistance. What ended up on screen is a ground-breaking special effects bonanza that takes viewers on an epic adventure. This was a seminal 90s movie, so of course my brother and I ended up owning a copy on VHS, which had repeated viewings. Some of the action scenes were probably too graphic for my age at the time, but I’m not complaining. Whenever I feel today’s action movies have too many G-rated gunfights with superheroes

  If there is a university course that explores the possible correlation between movies and real-life crimes, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) is probably on the curriculum. Despite the fact the movie never endorses the horrible crimes perpetrated by the protagonist, it inspired copycat crimes to the point Kubrick supported the decision to pull the movie from theaters. The question of if this should be done every time a criminal is inspired by a movie could be debated for hours. As for the movie itself, I think it has a lot of artistic merit, great performances, and poses very thought-provoking questions. I just wish those questions had been better explored by the time the movie ends. I first became aware of A Clockwork Orange in the early 2000s when Stanley Kubrick movies were airing on a movie channel. Given the explicit content of most of Kubrick’s movies, they were airing slightly after most bedtime hours. However, some kids at my school clearly did not care because o

  Heat (1995) is a crime movie in which screen legends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro shared the screen for the first time. That alone should be good enough to guarantee near perfection. Fortunately, this is also a Michael Mann movie featuring some crackling dialogue and action choreography that makes the audience feel like they are right in the streets amid the gunfight. The result is a movie so good it influenced a slew of other crime movies in its wake, including Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight . My first viewing of Heat was sometime in the mid-2000s when I watched it the old-fashioned way by renting it from the video store. I did not know much about it other than it was a crime movie starring Pacino and DeNiro, and upon first viewing I thought there were a few lengthy moments in between the action scenes. Having recently viewed it again, I have more appreciation for the scenes when the bullets aren’t flying because those quieter scenes do a good job of establishing the charact

  The Matrix (1999) was the equivalent of a small earthquake in for Hollywood movies. Nobody saw it coming and yet despite a mind-bending plot it became a massive hit that influenced pop culture for years to come. Following its release it became the standard for special effects, with every new action movie boasting “it has the best special effects since The Matrix ”. Culturally it became a sort of expression to be used whenever something so bizarre has happened that it must mean we are living inside a computer simulation. In the early 2000s that was the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the governor of California, because surely that is too weird to be true. We were all pretty naïve back then. Since the movie came out in a pre-Twitter world, I first became aware of its existence in the summer of 1999 when its posters were plastered everywhere. Given that all it shows are the main characters wearing leather trench coats and sunglasses, it looked like just any other action movie. Th

  Vertigo (1958) checks off all the boxes for an Alfred Hitchcock movie: there is an elaborate murder scheme, a man in way over his head, and a blonde woman who is more than what she seems. The film also highlights Hitchcock’s ability to utilize the tools of his trade as it was the first movie to use a dolly zoom, which helped give audiences a glimpse of what it must feel like to experience the titular feeling of vertigo. Not being too keen on heights myself, I have to say the zoom has the desired effect. I crossed this movie off the list after my mom gave me an Alfred Hitchcock DVD box set filled with five of his greatest hits. From Rear Window to Psycho , these are the movies that if you have not seen them, you have seen other movies that either reference them or parody them. Vertigo is a bit less ingrained in pop culture, so I watched it not quite knowing what to expect. That is the best way to go in, as this is one of Hitchcock’s most cerebral thrillers with quite a few twists a

By Allied Artists - IMPAwards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35144391   I had mixed feeling while watching The Man Who Would Be King (1975). On the one hand you could see it as a story about colonialism, cultural appropriation, and immoral men. On the other hand, said immoral men are played by Sires Sean Connery and Michael Caine, two actors who could read a dictionary and still come off as charismatic. Factor in that they are directed by John Huston, the man behind at least three other cinema classics, and you end up with one of their best films of their careers. This is another classic on found on Turner Classic Movies and is not available on most streaming channels. I had heard of it many times and was curious to see the pairing of two legends of cinema, especially Sean Connery in one of his post James Bond roles, where he played a more morally dubious character. Apart from that I was not too familiar with the story and was surprised by where it went. Conn

  Cinema has given the world some very memorable villains, many of whom usually show up around Halloween armed with sharp instruments and scary masks. The villain in The Night of the Hunter (1955) has no scary mask but should still stand alongside Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger. This particular monster is a misogynist, a killer of women, and a manipulator. Depending on the filmmakers this sort of material could be just a cheap slasher movie. Instead, this is one of the most visually striking and powerful thrillers ever made. Despite its quality, The Night of the Hunter is difficult to find. As far as I know it is not on any streaming service and it is not often shown on TV. Recently it did play on the Turner Classic Movies channel, which sadly I watched on my IPad. I say sadly because even though this movie is in black and white and has zero explosions, it should be seen on the big screen. Many scenes are so artistic they could be paintings, and the use of shadows and lightings is

  When Richard Lester directed A Hard Day’s Night (1964) he pulled off some sort of miracle. Here is a movie that is simultaneously a great musical, a funny comedy, and all the cast members have effortless chemistry. It helps that the main cast members are John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr playing themselves at the height of Beatlemania. At that point in their career these four had such good rapport that they practically finish each other’s sentences, oftentimes to make fun of Ringo. When they are not busy causing trouble for their managers or ribbing each other, they are playing their songs, giving the movie one of the best soundtracks in cinema history. As I watched this movie vaccines were becoming more and more available, meaning the light is finally getting brighter at the end of the horrible tunnel that is the global pandemic. Eventually all cinemas will reopen and watching movies will once again be a community event. Until then, anyone still stuck

  Zulu (1964) is a war movie that is surprisingly good in spite of its subject matter. Based on the true story of 150 British soldiers who had to hold off a force of 4000 Zulu warriors, it sometimes feels like a Monty Python sketch given how many of the soldiers keep their upper lip so stiff you would think they just graduated from gentlemen’s school. However, this is also an old-school epic shot on a grand scale with thousands of extras, it has great performances, and a surprising amount of nuance. Equally noteworthy, this is the first major role of Sir Michael Caine, demonstrating in almost every frame he has the makings of a movie star. With a 139-minute running time, this is yet another perfect movie for anyone confined to their home and with limited outdoor activities available. If you are also limited on your budget, it is streaming for free on Tubi minus a few 30-second commercial breaks. Plus, if you are tired of staring at the same walls of your apartment and winter weather

  The lives of gangsters are often filled with drama, loss, betrayal, and the occasional shootout, which explains why Hollywood has made so many movies about their chosen professions. Once Upon a Time in America (1984) is a very interesting entry in the genre since it was directed by an Italian director, is based on a book by a Russian-American and takes place over three different eras in New York City. Also noteworthy is the fact the gangsters here are all Jewish, something rarely seen in a genre generally populated by Italian American characters. At 229 minutes, it is a massive epic that is worth the time but might leave some viewers shocked by one character’s particular crime. Given the movie’s length it is best viewed on an afternoon when one has nothing to do and nowhere to go, which over the past year has been the case for me and billions of others. This was yet another discovery on Amazon, which brought me one step closer to checking off every movie directed by the Italian ma

When Todd Phillips’ Joker shook the world of comic book movies in 2019 (which is now starting to feel like a decade ago) two films kept being cited as influences: Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1983). Having already seen the violent Taxi Driver years ago I could see how that made sense and was curious to see how The King of Comedy also influenced the origin story of the Clown Prince of Crime. This week Amazon helped me fill in that cinematic blind spot, as I found yet another way to pass time indoors during this cold winter pandemic. Both Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy were directed by Martin Scorsese, star Robert De Niro as a loner living in New York City, and play with perceptions of reality. However, while Taxi Driver proved to be hit, The King of Comedy earned praises but not as much box-office success. Perhaps it is because it does not have as much violence as Taxi Driver or memorable lines, but I would venture it is because this movie was ahead of its time. Th

Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) must be a bit of black sheep for a lot of Western fans. When this genre started out morality was portrayed in a very binary way, with the bad buys wearing black hats and getting shot during an honourable duel by the good guys who were of course wearing white hats. As cinema grew, so did the Western. The line between right and wrong became blurry, especially when Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone introduced Clint Eastwood as a more or less good guy doing bad things to even worse people. However, in Peckinpah’s ultraviolent take on the Western the protagonists are irredeemable bad guys and the people chasing them are definitely not wearing white hats. I’m guessing John Wayne would not have been a fan. We are now almost a year into the global pandemic and in my part of the world things are so bad I’m not even allowed to go in the streets at night. The good news is at-home entertainment is years away from drying up, and I even found yet another way to