Simon's Movie Reviews

Having left this world much too soon Heath Ledger will forever be remembered for his Oscar-winning role as The Joker in The Dark Knight . Had he died earlier his defining role would have probably been the much more restrained Ennis Del Mar in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005), a film that boldly went where few love stories went by having the two lovers be male. The fact that they were cowboys gave the film the unfortunate moniker “the gay cowboy movie,” but it is much more than that. Take away the fact the two main characters are men and you have one tragic love story regardless of gender. The film begins in the 1960s, a time when homosexuality was a something that had to be kept secret for one’s own safety. Today gay marriage is legal in certain countries, but unfortunately there was still a lot of backlash towards a movie about two gay characters when it was released. I remember a fellow student in college saying he was upset he paid money to go to the theatres and see THAT ...

Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) is a sad tale of one man’s quest to provide for his family. Despite being set in post-World War II Rome and being shot in black and white, the film still has plenty of themes modern audiences can identify with and will probably be able to identify with for years to come. It doesn’t matter what country you live in or what century it is, plenty of people can sympathize with a workingman trying to make ends meet and trying to be a good man in the eyes of his son. Like many people my favourite Italian movies are Sergio Leone Westerns, but that doesn’t really count since they are essentially American movies made by an Italian director. When I watched Bicycle Thieves on Netflix last fall I knew I wasn’t going to get a gun-toting Western or gangster movie, but as fan of cinema in general I will watch anything. Plus having travelled to Italy and taken a few Italian courses it’s always fun to watch an Italian movie to practice the language. Turns...