Simon's Movie Reviews

Marlon Brando has starred in quite a few Greatest Movies. The Godfather is regarded as one the best movies ever made and Apocalypse Now , despite the fact he is one of the reasons why making it was an apocalypse, is one of the standards for great war movies. On the Waterfront (1954) is one of his oldest films and possibly not as re-watched as the two I've mentioned, but its themes of corruption and morality remain relevant to this day. One could also argue the second season of The Wire owes a great deal to screenwriter Budd Schulberg and director Elia Kazan.   Until recently this was not an easy movie to find, but if you are in Canada you can watch it for free online at the CTV app. It's nice to be digging for old movies and then you discover there is a legal way to access a small treasure trove of classics without having to pay anything. I watched this one with no prior context, other than it deals with the grip of organized crime on dock workers in New York. I w...

With North by Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock finally hit peak Hitchcock. It has many of the tropes from his past movies such as an accidental hero with slight mother issues, a sexy blond female co-star, international villains, and a MacGuffi. However it also goes further than any of Hitchcock’s previous work by having the well-dressed protagonist embark on a crazy adventure that takes him to various set pieces that each become and more and more dangerous. On the surface it may all seem terribly silly, but crucially it is also incredibly fun. I got the movie on DVD as part of an Alfred Hitchcock essentials collection a few years ago for Christmas, but its action set pieces are so iconic I had already seen them be parodied in pop culture many times before. For instance, the sequence where the hero is attacked by a crop duster is replicated in the spoof Wrongfully Accused , but because it is a Leslie Nielsen comedy the crop duster is a small toy plane. Then there is the final sta...