Simon's Movie Reviews

  Citizen Kane (1941) is a movie whose story and reputation has overshadowed its creator, Orson Welles, and the movie itself. For many years it was described as the Greatest Movie of All Time, and Welles never managed to make a movie that was as successful. It was not for lack of trying, Welles having directed and starred in plenty of other great movies, but none had the impact of Citizen Kane . You might have heard the expression “this movie is the Citizen Kane of its genre” to describe a movie’s quality. Given it is ranked 28 th on Empire magazine’s Greatest Movies list of 2008 shows there are better movies. There is however no denying it is a cinematic achievement, whose themes of greed and power remain relevant to this day. It is also a movie so influential that the first time I watched Citizen Kane ’s story was as a parody on Tiny Toon Adventures with rich kid Montana Max in the role of Kane, and Hamton J. Pig as the journalist investigating his story. It’s funny how writer...

Some movies start off with a bang but with his 1958 film noir Touch of Evil cinema legend Orson Welles decided to start with three minutes and 20 seconds leading to the bang. During a tracking shot set in a U.S – Mexico border town we follow a car right after an unseen person has installed a crude bomb in the trunk. It’s a lovely evening with people having a good time and border agents diligently doing their jobs as they let the car cross over onto the American side. Then the bomb goes off, two people die violently, and suddenly it’s not such a good evening. That’s one way to hook in your audience. Some people resolve to eat better, quit smoking or do more exercise for the New Year. As we start off 2019 one of my resolutions is to try to watch more classics films, and even though I got a lot of great films as Christmas gifts I thought I would use my day off to check one classic film I had never seen off my list. Of course I am familiar with Orson Welles, a filmmaker so prolific...