Simon's Movie Reviews

  Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) is a very well made look at how reporters, back when they still had stable careers, operate in unstable countries. It looks at ethical questions, from the point of view of both the journalists covering the conflicts, and the people who actually live in the country and have to live with the impact of their coverage. One of these people is a photographer played by an award-winning Linda Hunt. Unfortunately, the other major role is played by Mel Gibson, a name now synonymous with controversy, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from seeing the movie. Between Christmas and the start of 2022 like many people I was stuck indoors with a lot of time to kill so I caught up on a few shows and movies. I can’t say I was itching to complete my viewing of Mel Gibson’s filmography, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Linda Hunt have such a prominent role. Certain TV viewers might know her as the boss on NCIS LA , but here we see her early in her...

It seems today you can’t flip a channel without running into a show about competitive singing, competitive dancing, scavenger hunts, or just plain competitive living. Everyone from the airheads on The Jersey Shore to ordinary idiots pretending to live their lives on Big Brother want their every moves recorded so the whole world can see them on their TVs, laptops, tablets or their phones. In 1998 Australian filmmaker Peter Weir and New Zealand screenwriter Andrew Niccol warned us with American film “The Truman Show” starring Canadian Jim Carrey. This international talent pool made a brilliant satire of the rise of reality television by showing us a world willing to watch the life of an ordinary man 24/7. The catch is that man has no idea his whole life is a lie. This movie came out when I was around 11 years and my family and I were living in South America but we would spend the summer back in Québec. I had zero interest in reality shows, but I loved Jim Carrey. Movies h...