Simon's Movie Reviews

Say it with me: “Surely you can’t be serious?” “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.” Now is that comedy gold or what? A lampoon of all the disaster movies set on airplanes during the 1970s, “Airplane!” (1980) was the blueprint for movie parodies for years to come. Unfortunately this would lead to the inferior and unimaginative “Scary Movie,” “Disaster Movie,” and “Epic Movie.” All of those movies were filled with cheap gags and references to movies that came out less than a year ago, whereas “Airplane” is filled with jokes and gags that still hold up 30 years later. When I rented the movie to watch it for the first time while finishing high school, I knew the late great Leslie Nielsen was in it, and that was enough. Even when he was in a sub-par comedy that great Canadian import always did his best to make the audience laugh. For examples, see “The Naked Gun,” “Spy Hard” and Mel Brook’s “Dracula: Dead and Loving It.” I was watching the movie with my mom, and the mo...

Say what you want about Sylvester Stallone’s career (and you could say a lot) but he did manage to create one of the most inspirational movie characters in sports movies, or in movies in general for that matter: Rocky Balboa. Of course everyone agrees the first movie is the best of the Rocky anthology as it shows Rocky at his weakest, before the fame, the legend, and the fights with Mr. T, Hulk Hogan and Dolph Lundgren. On the other hand, every one of those movies gave exercise enthusiasts some of the best workout montages ever, making “Eye of the Tiger” the song of choice for joggers. Not that I am a hardcore fan of the Rocky series, but I have seen every movie except the second one. Each movie has a varying degree of popularity, but they are not very difficult to find. I rented the first one from a rental store (a nearly extinct institution) while in college in 2004, only for the movie to play on TV the very next day. If you have access to a movie channel that plays o...

“Cloverfield” directed by Matt Reeves and produced by J.J. Abrams, is America’s answer to Godzilla. It features a monster that crawls out of the sea and decides to use New York as its new nesting ground, creating all sorts of havoc in a city that has already been destroyed countless ways on screen. On paper you would expect the filmmakers to tell the story on a grand scale, with wide shots of F-16s taking shots at the monster, but instead they decide to tell the story from the point of view of a few young party-goers whose night definitely does not go as expected. This being one of J.J Abram’s special projects, a considerable amount of work went into building buzz for the movie without revealing too many details about the plot, or what the monster would look like. This included the mysterious teaser trailer featuring the head of the Statue of Liberty landing in the streets of New York and a viral marketing campaign. The teaser trailer sold me, but apparently the viral marketi...

When I was growing up, I knew of three super-heroes: Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man. Yet Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man” (2008) showed me a hero that is, if not as interesting, even more entertaining than these three put together. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has the money of Batman, the brains of Steve Jobs, but also the libido of Hugh Hefner. The scene that says it all in terms of characterisation is the one when he is flying to Afghanistan in his private jet with his Air Force friend James Rhodes (Terrence Howard). As they drink and talk shop, polls descend from the ceiling and the stewardesses begin to…well you know. This movie was one of the highlights of the 2008 summer seasons. I was on vacation from Sherbrooke University and was working a summer job in Quebec City. But when the week-end came, man did I have some choice cuts at the Cineplex: “The Dark Knight,” “WALL-E,” “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” and “Tropic Thunder.” “Iron Man” was one of...

Dive beneath the ocean with the geniuses from Pixar. “Finding Nemo” is a great movie because it has the best the studio has to offer: state-of-the-art animation, engaging characters, funny gags, strong dialogue, and a solid story. Directed by Andrew Stanton, the movie was one of the hits of 2003 and was the fifth success for Pixar after “Toy Story” in 1995. Children love this movie for the story and adults can enjoy it for the smart humour. I first saw “Finding Nemo” in theatres with my brother in 2003. It was a busy summer: my parents and I had just moved back to Quebec City after an 8 year stay in South America. When we were not busy unpacking and painting the walls of our new home, I would ask for a break to go to the movies. The movie was dubbed in French, which I hate, but it’s different with animated movies. The stories told are usually universal, and the jokes can be translated in any language. Seeing a great white shark called Bruce say “Fish are friend, not food”...

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” I don’t know who came up with that quote, but whoever it was, they most likely did not have the hero of “V for Vendetta” in mind. Although when I use the word “hero” I do so only because the villains are much worse than him. To a fictional fascist government “V” is a terrorist who destroys government buildings and kills government officials. To the people, he is a freedom fighter who opens their eyes to the lies they have been sold. One thing is certain: he believes violence is part of the solution. I hope that is a prospect a lot of people find divisive. I first saw this hundredth graphic novel adaption at a movie theatre in Quebec City in 2006, but I had a much more interesting second viewing in 2010. One of my courses at the University of Sherbrooke was Cultural Studies, and wouldn’t you know it, the graphic novel “V for Vendetta” by Alan Moore was required reading. Once we were done with that exhausting homework ...

When you have a movie where the title is the name of the main character, you can assume a few things off-hand. First, said character is about to encounter a heap of trouble. Second, he will most likely find love, or at least re-deem a relationship. Third, by the end of the movie he will have made some major changes in his life. “Jerry Maguire” follows all of these rules by throwing the life of its protagonist upside down and have try to turn everything right side up. He is like the Coyote in Looney Tunes: if he stops and looks down, he just might realize he is walking on thin air and will fall into a canyon. Sometimes it’s better to keep looking up.  The funny thing is, the first time I watched this movie I didn’t know I was about to fall down a canyon myself. It was in January of 2003, back when I was still living in Chile. In May my parents and I were going to move back to my native Canada, but first, a father-son trip. My father thought it would a great idea for hi...

Take a look at any bubby cop movie that has come out in the past twenty years and odds are it has been influenced by Richard Donner's “Lethal Weapon” franchise. It has all of the necessary elements for that genre: two cops, one white, one black, one is by the book, one breaks all the rules, one is a family man, one is single, one is old, one is young and they both have a weapon of choice. In real life cops investigate, gather evidence, and then arrest all the bad guys at once. Buddy cops investigate, get shot at, find out where the bad guys are hiding and then kill everybody in a massive shoot out while dishing out quips. There are a total of four titles in this franchise and in just about all of them Danny Glover’s character says: “I am getting too old for this shit.” By the fourth one even Mel Gibson was getting too old and everyone knew it. I have seen all of them, but not in chronological order. I saw the second and third on TV and the fourth one on the big screen. Finall...

Quentin Tarantino must be a major annoyance to a lot of film teachers. They say to become good at anything you must first learn from the experts. Tarantino learned a lot before becoming a filmmaker, but from watching the stuff other people had done. It’s the dream of every guy who has ever worked at a video club: I have watched thousands of movies, what if I made one myself? Of course now that video clubs are going out of business we’re not likely to see someone emerge with a similar back story, but if anything he has proved you can watch and learn. With “Kill Bill Vol. 2” Tarantino shows what he learned by watching Westerns and Kung Fu movies, resulting in one of the best revenge movies of the last ten years. By the time Volume 2 came out in early 2004, I was still reeling from having seen Volume one the year before. I must have had a weird facial expression after I left the theatre because my brother had looked at me and said: “You’re not going to go see the sequel aren’t you?” ...

You know you have a cult hit on your hands when a movie inspires fashion. Walk into a rock or a Goth clothing store and odds are you will find hats or t-shirts with motifs from Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Leave it to that Vincent Price obsessed director to come up with a movie where the monstrous citizens of Halloween Town take over Christmas. Each of his creations are animated not by computer but via stop-motion, the process in which objects are moved inch by inch and then recorded to give the illusion that inanimate objects are moving by themselves. It also works as a musical, with music and lyrics provided by long-time Burton collaborator Danny Elfman. Released in October of 1993 as “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas,” despite being directed by Henry Selick, the film worried Disney executives because of it might be too scary for young children. I guess my parents thought the same thing since I had to discover that nightmare by myself. It wasn’t too...

Among the great partnerships between actors and directors you can count Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, John Wayne and John Ford, and my personal favourite, Kurt Russell and John Carpenter. Together they made an Elvis Pressley biography, a horror movie (“The Thing”), and a post-apocalyptic action movie (“Escape from New York”). With “Big Trouble in Little China” (1986) they tried a mash-up of three genres: comedy, martial arts, and action. The result is a blend of Chinese legends, monsters, kung fu fighting, and Kurt Russell trading quips with Kim Cattrall in the San Francisco underworld. Man, movies were crazy in the 80s. I saw this particular genre mix back in 2009 while spending the summer in Vancouver as a summer student. Wonderful beaches, but since I only had three courses and didn’t know a lot of people in town I had a lot of free evenings. Always count on iTunes to have a large variety of titles at low prices if you want some home entertainment. Rather appropr...

For my personal taste, most horror movies today have a lot of gore, but little suspense. In 1982, horror master John Carpenter made “The Thing,” a frightening story that had a lot of gore, very suspenseful scenes, a scary setting and memorable characters. This being October and the weekend when the prequel to Carpenter’s version is released, it seems like an ideal time to revisit the 1982 version. The first time I saw this movie was in a basement, by myself, during one of those horror marathons they have on the Space channel during Halloween. The only thing missing was a rainstorm outside and scratching sound on my bedroom windows.  It’s one of those movies that are scary to watch by yourself, but of you watch with other people it’s kind of funny. When I watched it as part of a double bill at the film club at my university (with David Cronenberg’s “The Fly”) we would laugh at some of the film’s more shocking moments, and also at the somewhat dated special effects. My ideal scena...

Among the dozens of comic-book movies that have come out in the past twelve years, “X2: X-Men United” is one of the best of the bunch. It has awesome special effects, an army of original characters, a menacing villain, and a strong plot. Like all of the movies in this particular franchise, it touches on themes such as racism, civil rights, and fear of the unknown. Only instead of people of different skin colour, it is people with mutant abilities who are being persecuted by fearful government agencies. Cheesy, but it makes great action scenes.   Ideally I should have seen a big comic-book movie like this with friends my age at some major multiplex in Canada. Instead when it came out in 2003 I was still living in Santiago, Chile, and on that particular occasion my dad wanted to spend some more time with me since he was home from work. I am the movie geek, so I get to pick the movie. Unfortunately, during the previews he asks me if this is a spy movie, meaning h...

Gus Van Sant’s “Good Will Hunting” is a very effective dramatic film that could appear in one of those “Before they were Famous” specials. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who were both supporting actors at the time, wrote the screenplay. Their words and individual performances earned them both Oscar nominations in 1997 before they went on to become major movie stars. Casey Affleck, brother of Ben, has a supporting role, and he also would eventually move on to bigger things. I remember seeing the Oscars in 1997 and knowing this movie was a big deal, but I never got time to see it. I was probably too busy adjusting to living Chile, having recently moved from Newfoundland. About ten years later I finally rented it and watched it in my off-campus room near the University of Sherbrooke. I was studying English, not math, so I couldn’t really indentify with a main character who is a closeted math genius. Yet on some level, I think there is something for everyone in this story. Matt Damo...