Simon's Movie Reviews

By all accounts The Big Lebowski (1998) shouldn't work. The plot changes almost every 15 minutes, the hero is a stoner who doesn't want to participate in the story anyway, and the humour is a bit hard to grasp upon first viewing. Yet somehow over time this Coen Brothers comedy has not only had repeat viewings from many fans of cinema around the world, it has also earned a very strong cult status. Star Wars has a Star Wars Celebration day, but The Big Lebowski has Lebowski Fest in which fans dress up as The Dude (Jeff Bridges), go bowling, and drink White Russians. I think we can agree which film has the best fans. (Before going any further I just want to remind whoever might be reading this that I'm reviewing movies based on Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, and somehow on this list The Big Lebowski is exactly one spot above Schindler's List. Make of that what you will.)  The first time I saw this weird comedy/film no...

Whereas Blood Simple demonstrated how the Coen Brothers could handle gritty violence, their sophomore effort Raising Arizona (1987) showed what they could do with cartoonish violence. Even though the movie revolves around the kidnapping of a baby, armed robberies, and a Lone Biker of the Apocalypse, it is madcap fun from beginning to end. Nicolas Cage, nowadays known for throwing everything including the kitchen sink in his performances, makes for a great lead in the pantheon of Coen characters even if this has been their only collaboration so far. This was another instance of being able to mix work with pleasure, since back when I was at the Université de Sherbrooke I took a Scriptwriting course and part of our homework included doing an analysis of Raising Arizona. It is hard to dispute the educational component of such an assignment, since this is one of the Coen Brothers’ lesser successful films, at least financially, and we certainly all learned a lot watching it for the ve...

The writers at Pixar have this ability to take ordinary concepts or objects and turn them upside down. What if children’s toys sprang to life when you left the room? What if cars could talk? With “Monsters, Inc.” (2001) they asked the question “what if the monsters in your closet were average guys trying to make a living?” I first saw Pixar’s fourth film while living in Lima, Peru, with my brother and my mom. American movies in South America are usually released in English with Spanish subtitles, but they make an exception for kids’ movies and dub them in Spanish. I would have preferred to hear the voices of John Goodman and Steve Buscemi, but as with all Pixar films this is more about story and visuals than dialogue. Besides, once they get to that scene where Mike and Sully enter the room with a million doors, who cares what language they speak? Only one word comes to mind: WOW! In the city of Monstropolis, power is generated by capturing the screams of little ch...