Simon's Movie Reviews

  Some Like it Hot (1939) features icons of American cinema at the peak of their talent and has one of the funniest line deliveries ever recorded. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon star as a pair of cross-dressing musicians on the run from the mob while screen legend Marilyn Monroe is the love interest caught in their web of lies. The shoot was apparently very difficult for Monroe, but the end result, directed by Billy Wilders, is a comedy classic. This is a very interesting movie to revisit today. For one thing Marilyn Monroe is having a bit of a moment with that new biopic out on Netflix. Then there’s the fact the two main male characters spend a good part of the movie disguised as women, which was very controversial back at the time and probably still ruffles some feathers today. There is also the question of whether the movie’s jokes still work after over 60 decades. That depends on the audience, but in 2009 I watched it as part of a film studies course in Vancouver and the class laug

  Citizen Kane (1941) is a movie whose story and reputation has overshadowed its creator, Orson Welles, and the movie itself. For many years it was described as the Greatest Movie of All Time, and Welles never managed to make a movie that was as successful. It was not for lack of trying, Welles having directed and starred in plenty of other great movies, but none had the impact of Citizen Kane . You might have heard the expression “this movie is the Citizen Kane of its genre” to describe a movie’s quality. Given it is ranked 28 th on Empire magazine’s Greatest Movies list of 2008 shows there are better movies. There is however no denying it is a cinematic achievement, whose themes of greed and power remain relevant to this day. It is also a movie so influential that the first time I watched Citizen Kane ’s story was as a parody on Tiny Toon Adventures with rich kid Montana Max in the role of Kane, and Hamton J. Pig as the journalist investigating his story. It’s funny how writers of

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) is that rare Western that goes off the beaten path, at one point quite literally by leaving the American West behind. It is also sometimes cartoonishly funny as outlaws use too much dynamite to blow up a safe, jump off a cliff to evade a posse, and have to learn a new language in the middle of a bank robbery. At its core it is the story of two friends who, despite the occasional argument, stay together until the end. The first time I saw the movie was more than a decade ago when if I wanted to watch a classic movie I had to rent it from a store. It was not the best cinematic experience since the disc was scratched and the image kept jumping in the first minutes, but eventually it got better. I recently rewatched it on Disney +, since Disney seems intent on owning everything, and was pleasantly reminded of what a fun movie this is. It is not Blazing Saddles in terms of silliness, but it’s certainly not Unforgiven in terms of violence either.

  Some movies have their main characters fight against nature, some against armies and others have them fight against institutions, always with the odds against them. Cool Hand Luke (1967) falls into that last category as it follows a character who clashes against the often-troubled institution that is the American prison system. It helps that the people in charge of said prison are borderline sadists and that the convict rebelling against the system is the legendary screen presence that is Paul Newman. I had a great first impression of this movie even though the first time I saw it was years ago while it had already started playing on TV. The dialogue was dubbed in Spanish since I was living in South America at the time, but once you get into the story it is hard to let go. Watching Paul Newman defy and outsmart prison guards is not on par with all the spectacle you see in cinemas nowadays, but it is certainly engaging. I recently rewatched the movie, from beginning to end, on a cl

Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (1981) manages to be an outstanding thriller while also educating the audience about the mechanics of making such a movie. Many moviegoers might not understand the concept of editing, sound mixing, or why they have their own categories at the Oscars. Through the eyes (and ears) of a sound technician, we get to see how every sound in any movie is carefully picked in order to elicit the right reaction from the audience. Things take a tragic turn when said technician records an actual murder. Jack Terry (John Travolta) is a self-described “sound guy” who has quite a few movies under his belt. Unfortunately, those movies are not Oscar-winning dramas shot in Hollywood, but low-budget slasher films that border on sexploitation. Yet Jack works diligently out of his Philadelphia office, always trying to find the right sound to mix into the film. Those sounds can be anything from the sounds of a creaking door to the scream of an actress as a maniac is about to stab h

  Alien (1979) is a perfectly executed horror movie with a simple premise that works and a slim cast treating the material seriously. The movie’s one-word title perfectly sums up the story and its deadly antagonist: an unknown alien creature is aboard a spacecraft and is killing the crew one by one. This is a B-movie plot that had been done before plenty of times and has been imitated repeatedly. However, in the highly capable hands of Ridley Scott, this haunted house movie set in space slowly build up to be one of the scariest thrillers ever made with only a few jump scares. It helps that the monster is one of the scariest creatures ever designed in the history of horror.   Two things about me and this movie’s monster: first, when I was a kid, seeing it in a 30-second trailer was enough to scare me. Second, Mel Brooks made it a lot less scary. There is an entire generation of movie-goers who were scared and possibly vomited in their popcorn bags when they first saw the scene when t

  Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) is a very well made look at how reporters, back when they still had stable careers, operate in unstable countries. It looks at ethical questions, from the point of view of both the journalists covering the conflicts, and the people who actually live in the country and have to live with the impact of their coverage. One of these people is a photographer played by an award-winning Linda Hunt. Unfortunately, the other major role is played by Mel Gibson, a name now synonymous with controversy, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from seeing the movie. Between Christmas and the start of 2022 like many people I was stuck indoors with a lot of time to kill so I caught up on a few shows and movies. I can’t say I was itching to complete my viewing of Mel Gibson’s filmography, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Linda Hunt have such a prominent role. Certain TV viewers might know her as the boss on NCIS LA , but here we see her early in her car