Simon's Movie Reviews

  Heat (1995) is a crime movie in which screen legends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro shared the screen for the first time. That alone should be good enough to guarantee near perfection. Fortunately, this is also a Michael Mann movie featuring some crackling dialogue and action choreography that makes the audience feel like they are right in the streets amid the gunfight. The result is a movie so good it influenced a slew of other crime movies in its wake, including Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight . My first viewing of Heat was sometime in the mid-2000s when I watched it the old-fashioned way by renting it from the video store. I did not know much about it other than it was a crime movie starring Pacino and DeNiro, and upon first viewing I thought there were a few lengthy moments in between the action scenes. Having recently viewed it again, I have more appreciation for the scenes when the bullets aren’t flying because those quieter scenes do a good job of establishing the cha...

Top Gun (1986) is pure 1980s American gun-ho patriotism as well as an unofficial recruitment ad for that country’s air force. It features Tom Cruise in the nascent stages of his career as the world’s biggest movie star, U.S pilots flipping off those pesky Russians in the air, and the chart-topping single by Kenny Loggins, Danger Zone . Many aspects of this movie are now dated, but on first viewing it is hard not to be pulled in by the adrenaline-pumping ride. For many people this movie was a defining moment in pop culture, leading viewers to either adopt the nickname “Goose” or “Maverick,” or go a step further and actually join the air force. That was not the case for me since I was born the same year Top Gun came out, and I don’t think I was ever its specific target audience anyway. When I think of Anthony Edwards I don’t think of him flying fighter jets, I think of him operating on patients as Doctor Greene on E.R . However over the years I kept seeing the cultural influence o...