Simon's Movie Reviews

  Sometimes in a detective story the mystery is not half as fun as the detective stuck in the chaos of the story. Philip Marlow is one of those detectives. His name is synonymous with Hollywood noir and in The Long Goodbye (1973), he dives deep into a mystery involving a murder, then a suicide, then a missing person, and eventually a very violent gangster operating in sunny Los Angeles. One thing I love about this version is that this detective loves his cat enough to go buy him food at three o’clock in the morning. Now that is a dedicated pet lover. The late great director Robert Altman starts the action at a slow pace to introduce Marlowe (Eliott Gould) as he wakes up to his hungry cat. Here is a man who falls asleep in his clothes, always the same suit and tie, and is either constantly smoking or lighting a new cigarette. He is a friendly person, nice enough to pick up an item for his neighbours while going out to get cat food. It probably helps that said neighbours are five young

  An American Werewolf in London (1981) is quite the strange beast. This is a werewolf movie from John Landis, director of comedy classics such The Blues Brothers and Trading Places , that is full of gore, gratuitous nudity, tension, and quite a few laughs. The movie’s tone is sometimes inconsistent, switching one minute from horror to self-aware comedy. However, it earns its place in the pantheon of horror thanks to one of the best werewolf transformation scenes courtesy of effects legend Rick Baker. I feel like I watched this movie in the wrong venue and with the wrong frame of mind. This is not a movie to watch by yourself on Tubi for free with commercial breaks. This is a movie to watch on the big screen with a midnight crowd after a few drinks. Some movies require the audience to be quiet, An American Werewolf in London needs an engaged and possibly drunk crowd to laugh at the jokes, the absurdity of the situation, and the bloody kills. Hollywood has a few weekends to fill this ye

  Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) is one of those movies that gets more relevant with each passing decade. Set in a (now passed) future in which Los Angeles is overrun with people and pollution, the story focuses on artificial lifeforms clashing with their human creators. As the chase for these lifeforms progresses, writers Hampton Francher and David Peoples imply they may not be so different from the humans chasing them. If this sounds topical in 2024, imagine how relevant it will sound ten years from now. When writing these amateur reviews, I usually try to think back on the first time I watched the movie and what I felt at the time. This is tricky with Blade Runner considering there have been five versions of the film released since the 1980s. I believe the first version I did see on TV was the original theatrical version with the narration to guide the audience since executives thought that was needed. I eventually disagreed and purchased the Final Cut on Blu-Ray to see the st